I’m sorry to say it, but scrolling through this category makes me a little ashamed of being a teenager.

By the looks of things, most of us are intent on gabbling on about the news that (shock-horror) smoking, drinking and drugs can shorten your life-span. As if we haven’t been told enough already. Now, I’m not advocating a life that revolves around the next fix, cig, or flagon - but let’s at least enjoy ourselves. Without these three deadly sins, where would we be?

Where would art, music and our beloved literature be without drugs? How could the artist, musician or novelist survive without the odd hasty cigarette clenched between their troubled lips? Where would the weekends of stumbling, spewing and stupidity be without the litres of white cider and mysterious mixed spirits?

If we are all as clever as we would like to think, why is it that we still torture our bodies with these fatal excesses?

The answer is fun - doing stuff for the pure hell of it - it’s supposed to be what we (teenagers) live for. Now is the time to feast on rebellion, however petty, and believe ourselves to be invincible. So why waste it preaching to the unconvertible, when there’s plenty of sensible heads on aging shoulders to do that for us?

Let’s stop patronising each other, and just enjoy surviving. After all, good health is merely the slowest rate at which we can die!