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"If the fear is big enough, it's easy"
Diagnosis: lung cancer ! When Peter Maffay (63) heard this, the shock was huge. "Maybe you can take a lung away, then you can breathe again and live with a half lung for a while and maybe sing, " said the doctor at that time to the singer. In such moments one sees his life already passing by.
In a moving interview with the "ZEITmagazin", Peter Maffay revealed details about this terrible news. "I stopped drinking and smoking from one day to the next, " he says. And confess, "If the fear is big enough, it's easy, I was just scared for my life."
Fortunately, it was a misdiagnosis. It was a virus that the doctor had mistaken for lung cancer . After two weeks, the matter was over.
But the shock remained and thus a new life: without smoking, without excessive alcohol consumption. I thought, this is your chance, " Peter Maffay says today in retrospect. It was a warning to him. He had refused all good advice until then.
He drank two or three bottles of whiskey a day for years. His secretary even wanted to hide his bottles. "Bottle hiding is not your job, " Peter Maffay told her then. "That was pretty broken."
But the misdiagnosis changed his life completely. Since then he has had a beer or a glass of wine, he never touched whiskey again. "And the desire for cigarettes is over."
