I knew a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.

A darkly comic jab at extreme self-denial, the line suggests that “healthy living” can become hollow if it strips life of pleasure, connection, and meaning. By stacking familiar vices—smoking, drinking, sex, rich food—the joke sets up an expectation of improved wellbeing, then undercuts it with suicide, implying that mere physical health is not the same as a life worth living. The humor depends on shock and reversal, but it also gestures toward a broader critique of moralizing wellness culture: longevity pursued as an end in itself can ignore mental health, joy, and balance. It’s less an argument against moderation than against joyless absolutism.