Your doctor comes to you after a recent checkup looking pensive. There is a moment of chart flipping after which he tells you one of your regular habits is taking a toll on you. He estimates that if you keep doing what you are doing you will only live another 5 years, but if you stop you could live another 20-25.

This is bad news because you like this particular vice of yours, and would rather not give it up.

In this scenario what is your vice?
How hard would it be to give it up, what do you think your life would be like without it?
Do you think you would make it 5 or 25 years?

Doesn't matter what it is, or how plausible it is that it would have an actual effect on one's health. The question is purely about what you love and how hard it would be to give it up.

Participating in online forums. I would give it up in a second for 20 more years.

The problem with this question is that you specified "vices." I spent the first half of my life acquiring vices and I've spent the more recent half giving them up. They're bad and bad for me and bad for the people in my life. That's why they're called vices. If you give up your life for a vice you are a fool or weak. If you are weak, God help you. There's lots of people who can't even give up cigarettes when they are on oxygen. I tried more than once but have now been without for 9 months. Yippee me.

Activities and people I actually love? I wouldn't give them up even for life. That's what love is.

Giving up my mustache and the twiddling thereof for 20 years? No way.

*Twiddle*

That's kinda the point. Vices aren't really worth the price, but we hold on to them anyway.

I think I would have the most trouble with soda. Seems like lately every time I tell myself it's time to stop with it I just end up sucking down even more.

Then there is Chinese food (or Asian foods in general). If someone put that on the blacklist I would probably say "I give up. Just take me now."

I love ice cream. Dairy in general really.

While it does make me fat if I stop exercising the real problem is I am lactose intolerant, so it's a big pain in the ass. Still, I could stop cold turkey for sure, in the scenario you describe. I actually stopped eating ice cream completely for around 5 years in my 20's, before getting re-addicted a few years ago.

I disagree. In general, we hold on to them as long as we perceive that they are worth the price. The scenario you describe is trading in 20 years of life in order to hand on to the vice. That tips the balance for sure, for nearly everybody, for nearly every vice.

Moustache give us super power

Fact.

That seems like a very obvious contradiction. :-)

1. Nail biting
2. Excessive soda drinking
3. Internet addiction

I don't know, I feel I could give up the first, the second I'll need a substitute and the last will slowly pass away when responsibilities start to line up, the last is more of an issue during free time which is a pity, I waste too much of it.

Gaming is my only vice. It's better than some of the things I could be doing though, and I use it to compensate for a lack of rewarding social interaction.

you shouldnt have been on chat roulette then. we all saw you

This is an easy one. Smoking. I started in college. I looove it, despite knowing that it's bad for me.

I go to the VA once a year for a checkup. I went a few weeks ago and everything inside is functioning the way it should - some things even improved from last year - so yeah, the only thing I really should do is give up smoking.

I gave it up for four months during basic training, but as soon as I had the chance, I started again.

Of course, for me the question would be, would those twenty years be good ones? I'd rather have five great years full of life and die in my sleep than twenty years of going downhill, watching myself fall apart, losing other people, and end up shitting myself in some sterile room somewhere. :-)

That actually happened to me, so I quit drinking. I fall off the wagon every couple of years but so long as I don't go back to how I was and get back on the wagon in quick enough time I survive.

Now, another similar situation also took place but it didn't involve death. When the doctor told me what would happen if I continued another vice I told him, "Fine, I'll start shaving my palms."

That's not a vice, it's a biological function.

I'm a cigar smoker. No way I'm giving that up, though.
I also have a lot of porn (is it sad that I have waaayyy more cartoon/anime stuff than real people?).