Made his bed and died in it

Most of us know what we should be eating, drinking and not smoking, and doctors usually do remind us at our check ups if we answer their questions honestly. So, yes personal responsibility for your neighbor and also his wife.

Many of us are enablers or at least don't try hard enough to get our partners to stop doing what is killing them. BUT, each person chooses for themselves, if the comfort of smoking, drinking and/or overeating is worth shaving years or possibly decades off our lives. It's easy to say, well I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, so I might as well enjoy my vices while I can. We all have to make our own choices.

Personal responsibility vs. bad luck or just fate can sometimes be a tricky thing to determine. For the benefit of the group, I wanted to make a couple points on it, that show that I don't have a hard and fast position on any areas of life being always due to just one, personal responsibility, or the other, fate, combinations of factors, etc. Human behavior, which is almost always involved, and life circumstances, are both just too damn complex to classify or label absolutely.

For example, I have known too many people that took good care of their health, but they inherited bad genes, and were thus sicker than most folks, and also died earlier. Same with some people who inherited good to fair genes, but worked most of their lives in unhealthy jobs or workplaces, and got sick from that, no matter how well they tried to take care of their health, not smoking or drinking excessively. Even living in poverty can and will usually affect your health by what foods you can afford to buy. Or how polluted the area you can afford to live in is.

I have also known some people who were good at their jobs, worked hard, but got forced out of a good paying, good benefitted job late in their career, and got screwed out of their retirement, due to either the employer's greed and not wanting to pay their retirement pensions, etc., or due to terrible office politics in which they were victimized or scapegoated. It happens way more than most people realize or want to admit, even in government jobs.

Some people grow up with lots of opportunities and advantages, but blow them and end up working in poor jobs and living in or near poverty, sometimes due to addictions, and others grow up with no advantages, in poverty, etc. and they somehow manage to claw their way up into getting degrees and a middle class or even greater lifestyle. But they tend to be really rare, in my experience and observation. In America, most people end up in about the same class level and education level as the family they started in, and, if anything, in the last few generations, most people move downward class and standard of living-wise. And I really doubt you can attribute that to a widespread lack of effort or personal responsibility. More likely it's because college education has been priced out of their range, good jobs have disappeared rapidly, and the economy is rigged so that more and more of the profits from work have gone upward to the top1%, rather than remaining with the peasants and workers who actually produce it.

If life were always fair, it would be easy to know when bad things or outcomes are due to poor personal choices or lack of personal responsibility, but people who are intelligent enough to understand complexity, intellectually honest enough to recognize and admit the truth, and open-minded enough to actually check out what is going on with others, instead of sticking with general assumptions, know that why things happen is usually a mixed bag that is rarely simple.

Covid may be one of the few examples where it usually is pretty simple, some people get vaxed and take precautions, resulting in rarely getting seriously ill or dying, and others refuse to do either, and they end up much more often getting seriously ill or dying from it.

His wife is in denial.
Not uncommon.

No one here gets out alive.
Some of us do things to hasten our exit.

There is nothing political in the OP.
It's sad that some people are so obsessed that they can inject partisan politics into every waking thought.

From either end of the political spectrum it must be a depressing way to live.

Whatever happened to: "God helps them who help themselves?" We were endowed (by God?) with a mind to think with and free will to strive with. Poor God. He/She/It is dumped on so much by lazy people. He probably dumped on everyone in his life.

Sounds very republican.

And yet, these same people love to bash the poor as not taking personal responsibility, etc. and they oppose any government assistance to the poor, the disabled, etc. The people who vote Repub love to preach personal responsibility, but often are total hypocrites on that point.

I'm almost certain that his doctor did advise him to quit smoking. That is pretty standard.
And if he was truthful about any excessive drinking, the doctor would have told him to cut back on that too.
You are right, people want someone to blame for their own reckless behavior.

I always wonder how people think they can beat the odds. Shit happens especially when it is looked for.

It's a Whole bunch of somebody else's fault from the Reich Wing. Too bad they give being Conservative such a bad name

"He smoked and drank from the of" .... ???????