Hi, welcome to the You Can Quit Smoking podcast, where we go over stories of success with overcoming smoking addiction. Many people have moved through this radical transformation and use smoking as an opportunity for inner growth, with deeper self-awareness and a greater capacity for compassion. So many have done it and you can quit smoking, too. I'm your host, Jessi Hartnett, founder of Honor Your Heart.

Jessi:

Hey everyone, welcome back. I'm here today with Ken Tomaro. Ken, can you introduce yourself?


Ken:

I'm Ken Tomaro from Cleveland. That's about as in-depth as I can get.


Jessi:

[laughter] Well, it's great to have you here. Tell us about your experience with smoking.


Ken:

I'm fifty-five right now and I actually quit 3 years ago, maybe four. I know they say that you're supposed to write that date down and tell everybody. But my brain doesn't work that way. I know it's been a substantial amount of time that I quit. I have quit several times over my life, but there is, I guess, a reason why this stuck.

But I started smoking when I was eighteen. I've been smoking since then. And like I said, quit about three to four years ago.


Jessi:

Let's talk about how you started then. So you started at eighteen. What was it like that first time you smoked? What were you looking for?


Ken:

I wasn't looking for anything. To be perfectly honest with you, my mother died of lung cancer when I was twelve-years-old in 1982. I got on my soap box as a pre-teen and a teen. I said, “I’m never going to pick it up. It's disgusting. You shouldn't smoke.”

And then one day, I was eighteen. I was working at a Little Caesars in a strip mall. And my manager asked if I could run [over] two shops down to get him a pack of cigarettes. And I did. And I got back and I was like, “You know, can I try one of those just to see what the big deal is about all this?” And my reaction was just like everybody else's: [I] coughed. It was disgusting. I thought, “Why the hell would anybody?” and–excuse my French, I know a lot of four-letter words–“Why the hell would anybody pick this up?”

And then the next day, I was like, “Oh, I guess I'm a smoker now.” I went out and bought a pack and I had been smoking ever since.


Jessi:

Wow, that's a big shift from, “I'll never try it” to “This is who I am now.”


Ken:
I used to, you know, when people say it's an addictive drug and in my younger years, I was like, “Oh, that's bullshit, whatever.” No, it's true. It's an addictive drug and anything that when you try to quit makes you angry and lash out and gives you withdrawal is a drug. So, I get it now.


Jessi:

Yeah. It's hard to know how it's going to affect you until you're in it, right? You were doing it at work. Was it tied to your work life?


Ken:

I worked in the restaurant business for probably fourteen or fifteen years, in the back of the house: kitchens and stuff. And it's very stressful, very hot, and very busy. And anytime you can get off that cooks line to get a cigarette or whatever. So back then I treated it as like a stress relief: “I get off the line for 5 minutes, have a cigarette and I'll feel better.”

And thing is years later I discovered, even working in like an office environment where I would just go and smoke out of boredom, it absolutely is not a stress relief. You get done with that cigarette and you go back in and you're like, "Holy crap, I'm still stressed out about whatever." So it's an excuse really.


Jessi:

I found that for myself as well. I briefly was working in a restaurant and I found a lot of community with it as well. Did you have that element?


Ken:

Yeah. You know, any restaurant or office or whatever, if you're kind of all standing around with a bunch of other smokers. Yeah, there is this sort of community. I made the joke that I feel like smokers were a lot tougher than non-smokers because if we could stand outside in a two degree blizzard with no jacket just to get a cigarette then the rest of the world was a bunch of sissies. That mentality to me is like, “Okay, it wasn't that we were tougher, it's that we were just more stupid.”


Jessi:

I definitely think that tough image is part of it, the way we feel about ourselves. So, how did you feel about yourself as a smoker?


Ken:

You know, that's funny. And as cliché as it is, in my younger days, I really do feel like I thought I was some kind of badass with a cigarette in my hand and I had the answers to everything and knew how the world worked. Now that I'm older and a little more wrinkled, not so much.


Jessi:

Let's talk more about the quitting then. Maybe even starting with that. Did you have an identity shift that helped you quit or did one come after you quit? What's different between who you were as a smoker and who you were when you were done with that?


Ken:

Well, that depends on which time I quit, I guess. And again, when I say “they”, I guess it's the experts or whatever. And they tell you that it takes about five to seven times before you really quit for sure. And again, if you multiply that by like two or three, that's how many times it's taken me over the years.

The longest I quit before this was for a year. And I was doing the patch, which gave me really awesome vivid dreams. But quitting is just as much mentally as it is physically. Your head has to be in that frame of mind. And I thought it was at that time. Like I said, I quit for about a year and I was good. And then some stupid thing popped up. I don't even remember what it was and I picked it up again.

This go-around feels completely different to me. Like I don't think about it, or if I do, it's like a split second and then it's gone. I don't get any cravings. If I walk past somebody who's smoking and I smell it like, "Yep, that's cigarette smoke.” But that's it.

I have an older sister who had a stroke during the pandemic and she lost a lot of mobility. She lost a lot of freedom. She lost a lot of things. The one thing she would not give up is smoking. Like the assisted living facility she went into, it was dependent on whether she could smoke or not. On my birthday, she sent me a text. She was in a facility. It was like twenty-five minutes down the road. And she sent me a text like, "Oh, if you're not doing anything, you think you want to come and give me a smoke break?"

In her mind, it was no big deal to expect me to get in a car, drive 25 minutes, and then give her a break and then come back home. And somewhere in that my brain just kind of kicked in or clicked or something happened. And I was like, “I do not want to be that person where whatever this thing is has such a hold on me that I have no problems whatsoever inconveniencing anybody else.” It had such a hold on her and like I said, something just clicked. So I have not had cravings. I rarely, rarely think about it. I don't know. My life is, I guess, a little bit different.


Jessi:

Yeah, that would have a big enough effect. It's hard to watch someone go through that and struggle with that. And I'm sure the smoking had something to do with the stroke as well.


Ken:

Yeah.


Jessi:

Yeah. We're talking about [how] you had this future version of yourself. You're like, "Hey, I don't want this to have a hold on me." Did you see it having a hold on your life already? Because I felt like I was just tied to smoking. It occupied so much of my focus and my time.


Ken:

Yes and no. With cigarettes, your brain, you just try to justify every little thing. I think once in my life I bought a carton of cigarettes instead of just a pack because again, my brain was like, “Well, if you buy a carton then you really are a smoker.” Never mind the fact that I have been smoking for the last twenty years and I go out and buy a pack every other day. So it really does some stupid shit to your brain.


Jessi:

This last time you said you had a lot of motivation. You had that vision of your future, of maybe what you didn't want and probably what you did want as well. So, how did you end up quitting? Did you use the nicotine replacement or was it cold turkey or did you cut down? How'd you do it?


Ken:

That's the crazy thing. The very first time years ago, I tried cold turkey. It didn't work. It just makes you really angry and you lash out. I've tried the gum, did the patch. This go-around I actually did cold turkey. Like I said, I feel like something in my mind just clicked and I woke up and I'm like, "Don't need it. Don't want it." It was just such a weird way to go considering my entire life. I've had a cigarette in my hand and I've quit a thousand times and tried everything I could think of and this for some reason just clicked.


Jessi:

That's incredible. That's so powerful, the motivation.


Ken:

I can't even honestly say, well maybe subconsciously, it was a motivation. I wasn't thinking of it as a motivation. And like I said, I just woke up one day and I was like, “Just don't need it anymore.”

I write a lot of poetry and somewhere in there I wrote something about smoking. Secretly, I was just trying to kill myself with the slow burn of years of smoking, right? And I guess somewhere in there I decided my life was worth living. Not that I don't want to say I'm suicidal or was, but again, you do that, “I'll just die of cancer one day, because of the smoking.” But I found something worth not smoking about.


Jessi:

No, I saw that in myself for sure. There's something that's going on there beneath the surface where it's like, “Yeah, we'll see how this goes. I don't really care one way or another,” But it's that brush with death that actually can motivate us to live.


Ken:

That's the funny thing. If I think of all the things: it wasn't the health benefits, it wasn't saving money, it wasn't the yellow teeth, it wasn't being able to breathe again. It was just this one weird thing.

And that it's different for everybody. I can't tell you how many times people in my life had said, "Oh yeah, I used to smoke and I just quit." And I want to look at them and say, “You know, that's really cool. But also, fuck off.” Because everybody is completely different in how they go about it.


Jessi:

That's why I like the stories so much because it's really interesting to see what worked for people because it's so different and the motivations are different. Well, there's similarities, but there's also just a unique strain. And what worked for me is not going to work for everybody. I know that. So, I love people coming on and saying, "Hey, it was really easy for me.” Because it was not for me.


Ken:

Yeah. That's totally different for everybody.


Jessi:

I want to take a step back. So, you had mentioned that you were smoking when you had stress. Were you able to adapt to a different way to cope with stress when you didn't have smoking? What changed with stress?

Ken:

I mean, I still have stress. I still get it. I just don't immediately need to reach for a cigarette. Because I think, again, my brain said that, “It’s just a crutch. It's not fixing the problem. It's not teaching you how to adapt to stress.”

I still have my days where I get stressed out. But I'm like, “You just need to step back and take a breath instead of grabbing a cigarette. Or turn on the TV. Or, because I write a lot, I can do that.” So, I don't know that it was any one thing.


Jessi:

But you were able to adapt just fine without smoking.


Ken:
Yeah. And any other time, like I said, I would still get the cravings and I would still think about it. And I would think, "Oh, well, I'll buy a pack and I'll just smoke one and then I'll hide the pack in the glove compartment of my car.” Which is not hiding it at all. I know where it's at. But it's just, I don't know how I adapted, but all of a sudden it was just like, “You're no longer a smoker.”


Jessi:

And what benefits have you seen since quitting smoking?


Ken:

The big one is just breathing better. If I walk up three flights of stairs, I may get winded for a few seconds. When I was smoking, I'd be winded for fifteen minutes. And that's the thing, too. You walk up a flight of stairs, you can barely breathe. You feel like you're going to fucking die. And even that is just not enough to get you to quit.

I think over the years, I've had some other asthma issues and things. So, those are still around. But the breathing for sure. I've gained weight in the last year. But I’ll go on a side note and say I believe that's because pot became legal around here. And apparently pot gives me the munchies. So, I got to work on that.


Jessi:

And I think that with the breathing, what's so interesting is that, at least for me, I didn't know how good it felt to breathe. Because I had been smoking for so long that I was like, “This is just how it is. I just have to cough and be winded and be tired and you know this is life.” And then when I quit I was like, “I've been missing out this whole time?” It shocked me how much better I felt.


Ken:

That is exactly right. And then the second thing to me is that your sense of smell comes back. And I felt like, at least the first month or so, it was like, “Everybody in the world around me smells like cheap dollar store dryer sheets.”


Jessi:

Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] They're not always good smells.



Ken:
Yeah. Yeah.


Jessi:

Yeah and the taste, too. A lot of people can maybe get a little too excited about eating because of that. But I was happy to have an appetite back after. I used to not eat when I smoked. I didn't have much of an appetite at all.


Ken:

You know what? I can agree with that, too. I mean, I still ate. But yeah, you would have a cigarette or two for breakfast and something for lunch, and that was, “Hey, I'm good.”


Jessi:

Yeah.


Ken:

That's so weird how that works.


Jessi:

Well, cool. So, thanks for coming on here. I'm wondering, do you have any final words to someone that's struggling? Maybe they're like you. Maybe they tried to quit and it didn't work. What would be your bit of advice or wisdom for them?


Ken:

My advice or wisdom, and it's nothing new, is honestly, and maybe it sounds cliché, but keep trying. Like I said, everyone is different. I know it's real easy, like if you tell everybody you're quitting and you quit and then you slip up and then you feel really bad because you told all these people. It's okay. You can quit again. And everybody's different and you just have to find what that is that works for you and just keep trying. And again, you have to be mentally into it, too. Just understand that it's not just a physical thing. Your brain has to say, "I'm ready."


Jessi:

One hundred percent. Thank you. How can people get in touch with you? And do you want to talk more about your work and your writing?


Ken:

I have a website: kentomaro.com. It's got all kinds of free writing. It's got YouTube videos. I have a blog in there. I have a couple of books out. You just go there and check it out. I always say this: if you remember the poetry from when you were in school, it's not that. It's not rhyming. It's not really academic. It's just down-to-earth kind of blue-collar stuff. And I'm sure I know there are several poems in there that reference my smoking.


Jessi:

Neat. Do you do similar themes or do you mix it up every time?


Ken:

All of my writing has the same kind of themes: death, love, loss, memories, childhood. So when I write, I don't do like one book with just one theme. I don't know if I could read an entire book of poetry on the theme of love or loss or whatever. And to me, it's organic. It just kind of comes how life comes. So, it's all generally the same kind of themes.


Jessi:

That sounds wonderful. That's the stuff that really matters. So, thank you.


Ken:

And it keeps my brain out of thinking about smoking, so.



Jessi:

Yes. The passions, the hobbies, are so important. Thank you for coming on here and sharing a piece of yourself with us. And I really appreciate it.


Ken:

I appreciate the opportunity. When I saw that, I don't know what it was, again something just clicked in my head and said, "Maybe I should talk about this."


Jessi:

Yeah, it's better the more we can process what we went through. Because it's pretty wild when you look back and you're like, "Wow, I really did that,” you know?


Ken:

Yeah. It's a big deal.


Jessi:

Thank you so much. And I'm happy for you that you moved on and that life is good.


Ken:

Thanks.


Jessi:

Take care, everyone. We'll be back next week.



End of interview.


Jessi:

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