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 there, everyone. I'm here today with Dr. Bill. I’m so excited you can join us. Can you introduce yourself to the audience please?


Dr. Bill:

Hi, I'm Dr. Bill Brendle. I'm a former smoker that works in the paranormal world. I write books. I used to be an engineer, but that was a very stressful job. Now, we're moving on.


Jessi:

I can relate. I worked in land survey, so I've been part of that world before. Oh, yeah it is very stressful.


Dr. Bill:

It is.


Jessi:

So, talk to us about your story with smoking.


Dr. Bill:

Well, I started very young. I'm the youngest in my family, and my brother is six years older than I am. My sister is seven years older than I am. So, I hate to say I had some bad influences growing up, but I did. I came from a house where both my parents smoked. Pretty much everybody in my family smoked back in those days. So, the first time I started smoking, I was around twelve years old. That's very young, but I started smoking then. And I never quit.


And, you know, as I went through, I played sports. I was an athlete yet I still smoked. It was just something that was accepted at the time. And I never thought too much about it. And cigarettes were cheap and everything else. And I just went through life. And then I was fishing on a Bass Tour. And one day I was out on the boat. It's like, “Man, I can't breathe.” I was like, “I must be getting sick.”


Well, it turned out I had a heart condition that was caused by smoking. And at forty-four years old, the cardiologist wanted to do open heart surgery on me. And I was like, “Well, we've got to come up with a different plan here. I don't want open heart surgery at this age.” Because at that time, it wasn't as advanced as it is now. So, pretty much if you had it done, that was it. There was no more work that could be done to you. So, we came up with a different plan. And we ended up putting in ten stents over twenty years’ time. And I finally had open heart surgery about six years ago. But I had the new style where I'm good to go.


And smoking was just something that was part of my life. So when they told me it was caused by smoking, I said, "Fine, I'll quit." I had never tried to quit before in my life. Like I said, it was just part of life. And I decided to quit. And I talked to my wife about it. And she had smoked too. And she said, "I'll quit with you." That really helped when she decided she was going to quit at the same time.


So, the first thing I did was decide, “I'm going to give myself thirty days to get this done. I've got thirty days before I go in and get my first stent placed. So, I've got thirty days to quit smoking.” So, “I'm not going to smoke in the house.” We all smoked in the house back then. So, instantly, I didn't smoke in the house anymore. Then, I set a time frame for myself to smoke. Every hour on the hour, I would smoke a cigarette. So, I would go outside. It didn't matter if it was raining, snowing, 10° outside, or 80° outside, I went. And then it got to the point where, “Man, I hate coming out here.” Of course, it's difficult because your hands don't know what to do with themselves.


Jessi:

Yeah.


Mr. Bill:

So, I decided, “Well, I'm going to start eating sugar-free popsicles because I don't want to gain a bunch of weight.” So, I used sugar-free popsicles to help me quit. And then I would just sit and chew on the sticks for, you know, an hour and have another one.


It's a completely different mindset. You have to restructure your whole life because you have a drink, you want a cigarette. You have a meal, you want a cigarette. You have your morning coffee, you want a cigarette. So, you've got to reprogram yourself. That was probably the most difficult part was reprogramming myself.


Definitely a life-changing event to quit. And I only ever quit once. I'm not a quitter, but I quit smoking. I've only ever quit once. I haven't smoked for twenty years.


Jessi:

On the first try, too, with such a great motivator. So, up until that point when you found out you had this heart trouble going on, you never had any desire to quit? You never saw it as a problem? Did you–like a lot of us–wake up with the phlegm and the cough? Were you kind of going through that at all?


Dr. Bill:

Yeah. I mean, you always do, but you don't pay attention to it. You just, “Well, that's part of life and you keep on going.” I never wanted to quit. I enjoyed smoking. I looked at it as my time. When I sit down and have my cigarette or whatever, it was my time. And I was a very heavy smoker. If I was on the water fishing, I smoked almost three packs a day.


Jessi:

Wow.


Dr. Bill:

So, I wasn't a light smoker. I went through a carton-and-a-half a week just in a normal week. So I was a very heavy smoker.


Jessi:

You said it was just part of life. So it was something you just did on autopilot? You weren't really mindful? You just, you know, smoking that much, it seems like you’ve got to be smoking all day. You got to be chain smoking.


Dr. Bill:

I was. I mean, I wasn't chain smoking, but I smoked a lot. I mean, I was constantly having a cigarette. At work, I had my own company and everything, so it was no problem smoking in the office, things like that. And at work, I'd light a cigarette. I'd set it in the ashtray, and I'd get to doing something, then the cigarette would be gone, right? Just burn out in the ashtray. So, I'd light another one and take up a puff, set it in the ashtray, and go on like that.


After I quit, it took about six to eight weeks. I'd be standing in a line at a grocery store or something and I'd smell someone that smoked. And it'd be like, "Wow, I used to smell like that." I didn't realize how offensive the smell was to someone that didn't smoke. You never contemplated it.


Because back then, in restaurants, you could choose smoking or non-smoking areas. We always selected smoking because we smoked. But I remember several times where I'd get upset with the family because the father or something would go, "Hey, do you mind not smoking? We got our kids with us." And I'd be like, "I chose the smoking area. So did you apparently. That's not my problem." But now I would be more considerate of it, understanding the smell and the effect of it.


Jessi:

Did you have that whole clean out when you have to go through all your things and get the smell out? It just feels like you’ve got to, with everything that you had during that time.


Dr. Bill:

Yeah, my jackets, and my clothes. The house was probably the worst. We repainted the whole inside of the house and did everything else to get rid of the nicotine and everything. Because it was bad. For many, many years even very rarely still now, I'll smell when someone lights up a cigarette. And that first lit smell, I'll be like, “That smells good.” It's still there and that amazes me. It's still there. It's never left. It's more addictive than any drug that I know.


I mean I have a varied background. I was born in the ‘60s and grew up when a lot of people did drugs and stuff. Drugs were never as addictive as nicotine was. It's amazing how much it draws you in.


Jessi:

And some of us when we quit smoking, we can turn to other addictive behaviors. Because we still have that trouble being comfortable, dealing with our emotions, dealing with stress, things like that.

So, you said that you were just pretty much smoking all the time. Did you have any specific triggers like that where you're just like, "Oh, I don't know what to do. I wish I could smoke." And how were you able to adapt to life without that? How were you able to keep yourself calm?


Dr.Bill:

That's where the sugar-free popsicles came in.


Jessi:

Okay.


Dr. Bill:

I would eat a sugar-free popsicle and then I would just chew on the stick. That kept my mind focused.


I remember when they put the first stent in. My cardiologist comes in and he says, "We're going to put you on the patch." And I'm like, "No." He goes, "What do you mean no?" I go, "Well, the milligrams of nicotine in this patch is more than I was smoking when I quit." I did that 30-day thing and I smoked my very last cigarette the morning I went for my surgery. I said, "That's it. No more."


And so I wouldn't let him put me on the patch because the nicotine in that was more than the cigarettes. I said, "We're not fixing anything." And he was, "No, you'll never make it. You'll never do this. You'll never do that." And I saw him a few months back. I see him every year. I saw him a few months back and he still laughs. He goes, "The guy that told me to go fly a kite, he's not having open heart surgery. He’s the one that's still kicking." He goes, "Other people I've worked on never made it that long." Each person's different. You’ve got to have a strong mindset.


Jessi at Midroll:

Before we jump back to the show, I have an important announcement for those of you considering a permanent shift. I want to talk to you about Personal Coaching.

As we look ahead to 2026, I’m planning some incredible expansions to my one-on-one program to help you quit smoking for good, and because of this, the investment for Personal Coaching Packages will be increasing starting January 1st.

If you've been listening to these stories and realizing you're ready to commit to the deep, personalized work required to finally move on from smoking, this is your chance to lock in your coaching at the current 2025 rate.

Don't wait until the New Year; start your transformation now and save. You can find the link to book a free connection call and learn more in today’s show notes.

https://www.honoryourheart.net/schedule

Now, let's get back to the episode.


Jessi:

And that's always hard to hear from a doctor when they’ve got their plan for you. I think it's really interesting that you had that support from your wife at the time. I’m wondering how that looked. Would you guys say, "Hey, I really want this." How would you encourage each other and keep each other accountable?


Dr. Bill:

Well, she had barely smoked to begin with and she had quit several times before. So, it was a lot easier for her. She might have smoked two cigarettes a day. She never smoked until after she’d come home from work. Then she'd have one or two in the evening. So, it was a lot easier for her.


But, she was really good at encouraging me: “You don't need to smoke. You don't need to do this. You don't need to do that. We'll do whatever we need to do.” She wanted to keep me around. We've been together thirty-six, almost thirty-seven years. So she wanted to keep me around a little while.


I am an intelligent person, I’d like to think. So I knew that it was bad for me. You just go through life. You accept certain things in life. And now it's not cool to smoke. It's not normal to smoke. You're the outcast. And I think that's good. It's better for society.


I was in a motorcycle club for a lot of years. And even after I quit smoking, people smoked in the clubhouse and I would be in there. The secondhand smoke would be horrible. I'd have to go sit outside or something. You don't realize how bad it is until you don't do it anymore. I'm glad the government pushed certain things.


Jessi:

Oh, yeah. Things have definitely changed with that.


But I'm wondering about your personal relationship with health then. Like you said, you had this knowledge that this isn't healthy. But you're not really accepting it. You're not really applying that to yourself. Has that changed with the heart problems? And have you kind of looked at health, does it have a different priority for you now?


Dr. Bill:

Oh, absolutely. Health's got a different priority for me. I had to change my whole diet with the heart. And then I had my gallbladder. It had gone bad and it became gangrene. And when they removed my gallbladder, they had to remove part of my pancreas and part of my liver. So, they told me then that, “You're going to be diabetic one day. It's not a matter of ‘if.’ It's a matter of ‘you're going to’ because we removed almost half your pancreas.”


Well, it took about fifteen years, but it finally showed up. Because I had changed my diet and I changed my exercise routine. Even today, I’ve got my exercise routine that I do religiously. I walk. I do other things. I like to say, “I'm an old guy now. I'm retired and I just do my writing and stuff,” but exercise has to be an important part of your life. Especially if you have something that was caused by smoking or any health related disease.


I’ve got my little things that I like that I won't give up like an ice cream on a Friday night or something like that. But I don't eat steaks often. And I try to eat some salmon a couple times a week. Just my whole lifestyle has completely changed around everything.


Jessi:

So, I want to go somewhere and it's okay if you don't really want to talk about this. But I'm wondering, when you're in the doctor's office and he's telling you like, "Hey, this is because of smoking," what was going through your mind? And how were you feeling? Did you have that regret that some of us do when we have to deal with these effects of smoking? And it's just like, “Man, why did I start this?” Were you feeling that? How did you come to terms with the things you couldn't change that were already done?


Dr. Bill:

Anger.


Jessi:

Anger. Yep.


Dr. Bill:

Anger. Because when I found out about it, I had been doctoring about what was going on. And when I met my cardiologist, he gave me a stress test and I passed it. Believe it or not, I had ten blockages ranging from eighty to one hundred percent. And I passed a stress test because I was healthy. I did karate, I jog, everything else. You know, I did those things. I think that helped my condition. But he said he wanted to do a heart catheterization.


So we go in and we're doing a heart catheterization. About the time he goes, "When the dye hits you, you're going to feel…..." He goes, "Holy crap." And I'm like, "What?" He goes, "You need open heart surgery. We're done here." And I'm like, "Well, nope. We're not." I said, "I'm not having it." Because I did my homework before I went in. I had an idea of, "Okay, I got some kind of heart condition going on. So, let me read up on this." And I read up a lot on it. So, I had an idea of what needed to be done.


And he was very upset. I mean, it was kind of a wild beginning with him. Because I'm laying in the little recovery room. They went through my femoral artery to do the catheterization and they've got this gigantic humongous guy sitting on the bed with me holding pressure on the artery until it heals up.


And he's telling my wife that I’m going to die if I don't have this surgery right away. And my wife's bawling her eyes out. And I got very angry. And I said, "You're right. I'm going to die. Because I'm going to get off the bed and I'm going to beat the crap out of you for scaring my wife to death. I didn't die coming in here. I jogged this morning. I'll be fine. We're going to figure out something.” And I just had a mindset and knew that everything was going to be fine. I had no panic with my health. I just had anger.


Jessi:

That's incredible.


Dr. Bill:

Yeah. Then it was like, “Why did I do it to myself?” You know? But that was it. I mean, I just had anger.


Jessi:

Yeah. And you were able to be an advocate and connect with yourself and have that positive mindset when that can be very difficult in that situation. So, I have a lot of admiration for that. We can fall into fear and panic, like you said. So I'm sure that served you well and having the courage to change this habit that you’d become so dependent on.


Dr. Bill:

Yeah. Well, I always was able to do anything I've chosen to do in my life. I graduated high school when I was sixteen years old. I left home when I was sixteen years old. I went on my own and I've been able to accomplish anything I wanted to in life. I own my own businesses, everything else. So I knew my mindset would work. I figured, “I can fix this. I fix anything.” Like I said, there was no panic. There is no raw emotion of, "Oh, poor me."


Because I've always been a firm believer that we're the result of a choice we make every minute. Everything that happens to us in life is because we've chosen to do something. I've never looked at it as anybody else's fault or anything like that. I've always understood it's a choice we've made.


Jessi:

The power of choice is everything. And you changed your choice.


Dr. Bill:

Exactly.


Jessi:

And here you are still. Still going,living the good life. So, what was one of the biggest benefits? I'm sure the heart, to improve your health with your heart. But what else was a gain from quitting smoking for you?


Dr. Bill:

Financial. It was a gigantic financial gain. I started putting that money back that we put for cigarettes and stuff. I remember like, “Well, I want to buy a new bass boat.” My wife's like, "We'll never afford that." I said, "Well, I quit smoking. I'm going to quit drinking beer now, too." She says, "What?" I said, "It'll be easy since I quit smoking." So, I bought a new bass boat within a year's time and it was like $20,000. So, I saved a lot of money.


Now you go to the store and you see how much cigarettes and stuff are like ten dollars a pack or something like that. That'd be almost a thousand dollars a month. How do people even afford that? That's crazy. But the biggest gain was financially for me.


Jessi:

Oh, that's great. Yeah. And the prices have gotten out of hand. But somehow you always make money for it. You know, you switch the money around. It's the priorities. And so I'm glad that you were able to invest in something that made you truly happy, not just something you have to do or a habit that's harming you. So that's great.


And I'm wondering, so someone that's in it, they're struggling. Maybe they're not like you, maybe they weren't able to quit on the first time. They've had to come back to it and wrestle with it. What word of advice would you give to them?


Dr. Bill:

There's medications out there. There's help out there, and there's support groups out there. Definitely use them.


I know my son, he smokes. He's quit several times, and he just quit again because we're on them all the time. It's like, “Look, family heart disease here.” We're on him all the time. And we remind him of when he was little, he used to go, "If you loved me, you'd quit smoking, Dad." So I tell him all the time, “If you love me, son, you'll quit smoking.” But he started using some of the drugs out there, the Nicorette gum and some support stuff. And he’s really doing well with not smoking. He's gone almost a year this time.


Use what's there. There's tools there. You don't have to be ashamed to say, "I can't do this alone," or, "I need help." Put your ego to the side. Ego doesn't do anything but kill you in the end. No. Ask for help. It's there. Find a good support group. Make sure your friends… if your friends don't support it, maybe you need new friends, maybe they're really not your friends, things like that.


Jessi:

And that was really powerful with you because you had that support at home.


Dr. Bill:

Yes.


Jessi:

So, I think we all need support when we're going through something hard, a big change like that. That's great advice.


And I'm wondering, can you talk more about your work and your podcast and how people can get in touch with you? I did listen to your podcast. It was fun. It got my imagination going. I listened to a little bit of the Norse mythology. That got me so excited because that's my wheelhouse. I love mythology and just would love to hear more about your work.


Dr. Bill:

Okay, thank you. I retired from engineering. When I did that, I decided I'm going to start writing and we're going to do the podcast, so on and so forth, because I'm going to stay busy.


So, we started a podcast called 4Ever Paranormal and it's available at 4everparanormal.com or anywhere you get a podcast. We talk about anything paranormal. It's not just about ghosts or cryptids or something like that. Like you said, Norse mythology, draugr, things like that. If we can make a paranormal connection to it, we'll talk about it. And I can usually find a way to make a paranormal connection to just about anything out there. There's always a way to tie it back in. And we've got a couple years in there doing that.


And like I said, I'm also an author. I've been published by Beyond the Fray Publishing, who is a typical publishing company. I'm not self-published. I've got several books out there. I'm under contract for a couple more. One of them is about North Carolina's Cryptids and Monsters. It’s all about the legends of the state of North Carolina.


And then one that just came out in October is a really, really good book, I think. And it's called Heretics of the Harvest Moon. And it's true stories of the witch trials from the 1400s all the way up to current times with things still going on in South Africa and things like that today. It's horrible. But it talks about how the Church and the self-proclaimed witchfinders and stuff function and how screwed up it was and how much the Church controlled society at that time.


And then I have another one coming out here in a few months called Dog Man Declassified, which is a cryptid book. Again, that's under contract [with] Beyond the Frey. And there's three or four others out there at publishers right now. You can find the book stuff at wjbrendle.com.


And I hope you enjoyed the podcast. I mean, we try to do something informational with it. We don't interview people, but we talk about different topics. Anything from witchcraft through draugr, Norse mythology. I've got a replay coming here for Christmas about the Icelandic elves, you know, and all that stuff.


Jessi:

That’s fun.


Dr. Bill

Yeah, we try to have fun with it and we try to educate people about different things.


Jessi:

Yeah, it was a great podcast, the one I listened to. I think the format is funny with the skeptic voice.


Dr. Bill:

Yeah, that's my wife. She is a resident skeptic.


Jessi:

That's great.


Dr. Bill:

Like I said, we've been together thirty some years. And I also practice folk magic witchcraft. I've done that since I was a child. My grandmother did it. My mother did it. And she's seen a lot of different things in her life with me. But she's still a skeptic. And I like that about her. I really do.


Jessi:

Oh, that's great. You guys make it work.


Dr. Bill

Yeah.


Jessi:

The opposites. [laughter] Love that.


Well, thank you so much for coming on here and sharing your story, the struggles you've been through, the hardships you've overcome. And just a different perspective is always helpful because I had to try to quit a hundred times. So, it's always amazing when I hear someone, “Hey, I quit on the first try.” That's really impressive to me.


And it just shows the power of your mindset and your intention with it. And I just really admire what you've done and I'm so happy for you that you've come through the other side. And now you're in a place where you're living your best life and you're healthy. You're here. I mean, just that alone is amazing. So, thank you so much for coming on.


Dr. Bill:

Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. I appreciate you having me.


Jessi:

Take care, everyone. See you next week.

End of Interview


Hey, you made it to the very end. If you're still listening, you likely heard my announcement earlier, and you're seriously considering change. Don't let this be just another thought. I know that you can move past your deepest blocks and fully enjoy your life without relying on smoking anymore. I am ready to support you through the tough stuff in coaching. Remember, prices are going up after the New Year, so please book a free connection call now to secure the current rate. You'll find the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.

https://www.honoryourheart.net/schedule