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:

Hi everyone, welcome back. I'm here today with Gareth. Gareth, can you introduce yourself?


Gareth:

Hi Jessi. Lovely to be here talking with you today. My name is Gareth King. A bit about where I am right now, I'm in Melbourne, Australia. What I do is I'm a creative director, art director in the advertising and marketing space. Kind of got there through my career and some of that will tie into the stories that I'm going to tell you today about smoking.

Beyond that, I also host a podcast. It's called Ruined by the Internet?. And that's taking up a little bit of my time at the moment. And of course, when I saw your show here, Jessi, I thought, what a great idea here. And I'd love to share my story and hopefully help some of your listeners as well.


Jessi:

Yeah, I'm so happy you reached out. I really enjoyed listening to your podcast and just want to hear your take on life and how you got through it. So, what's your story with smoking?


Gareth:

Ah, my story with smoking. I guess you could say, I mean, it sounds awful, but it probably started from the moment that I was born. Being born into a family where my dad, he was a full-time smoker. I was born in 1980. It was a bit of a different time in the context of cigarettes to what we're at now. It was very, very normal.

My dad smoked my entire life that I could remember. And he wasn't just smoking light cigarettes. It was like real adult cigarettes, like Marlboro reds, like hardcore ciggies back then. And so it was always around me as a kid. And I just thought it was so normal.

And I guess the fact that it was so acceptable socially as well back then, that you could see people smoking indoors. You could see people smoking in their car. Like my dad was smoking the car. I got the family. I got a younger brother. We're all in the car. He's still smoking. It doesn't matter.

No one really thinks twice of it because everybody was doing it. Cigarette advertising was everywhere. You could see people smoking on TV, everyone. And it's like, “Okay, cool. Cigarettes.”
And so, I guess being a kid growing up with my dad smoking all the time and just seeing it everywhere, it was so normal. I guess I was exposed to smoke my entire life. So, I was always curious about it, you know? It was like, “Oh, it's so grown up. It's like an adult thing to do.”And when you're a kid, you want to be a bit more adult.

I remember there were some times I'd be walking behind my dad in the park or something. He would be having a ciggy and would blow the smoke out. And I’d try to like catch it in my mouth. And it was like awful because I was probably like eight years old or something but you know whatever.
And I think it was probably when I was about fourteen I actually tried to smoke a cigarette myself of my own volition. It was pretty gross but it was okay. But I think what I liked more than the cigarette itself was the social aspect of it. Like I said back then, we're talking into the mid '90s now, everyone was curious about smoking. Like people similar age to me and so everyone's kind of discovering smoking. But the one thing about it was the social aspect.

Anyone that's smoked theoretically should understand that sharing a moment, having a cigarette with someone is a brilliant conversation point. And so I think it just becomes this hand-in-hand thing with not only meeting new people, and having conversations. But then you know at the age of around fourteen, I don't know what it's like where you are, but you're kind of discovering alcohol as well. So you're just discovering all of these things and I think I mentioned alcohol there because as time went on cigarettes and alcohol became the hand-in-hand thing for me.

I did go through some time when I was in my later teens probably from about 17 or 18 until I was about 21. I was like a full-time smoker, probably smoking 25-30 cigarettes a day. And so obviously you're not drinking alcohol all the time. So I was a full-time sober smoker at that point.
And look, the people I was hanging around with, we were into certain things. Loved going out. And like the going out thing, you could smoke indoors at that point in time and like at a club or whatever. You could be at a gig, it doesn't matter. You're drinking and smoking all in the one place. So there was no effort to have cigarettes. So that builds on the habit because it's very convenient and easy to do wherever you are really.

And I think I was about 22 the first time, I say the first time I quit. And it's like, “Do you really have multiple times you quit or is it just kind of one that you quit?” But the first time I guess I could get rid of cigarettes was when I was about 21, maybe early 22. There was no big revelation or anything.
It was just that I'd started getting into fitness at the time. And I had a packet, like almost a full packet. I just threw it in the bin and I was like, “That's it. I don't smoke anymore.” I just didn't even really think about it beyond there.

Like to me, I didn't think that I was addicted to cigarettes. I think it was just a thing that I did, part of my life. Like it wasn't my personality. It was just one aspect of the way I lived life. And so I threw that pack in the bin and I didn't smoke another cigarette for 4 years, I reckon.
Because I also stopped drinking as well after that. Because I knew that the drinking was when I was really weak in regards to my willpower with smoking. So I stopped drinking to get through the initial hump. And yeah, I just didn't smoke for like 4 years.

One night I was getting drunk. And I thought I had the cigarettes taken care of and then I just got curious. I was like, "Ah, that's all right. I'll just have one." And then I had one. And then that became two and it didn't do anything. And then a little bit later on again. Like same kind of moment. I was like, "Yeah, look, I'm not a full-time smoker now. This is fine. I can just have a couple on a night out." And so I didn't think it would become a thing again.

We've all heard that story like it starts a social thing and it just gets worse and worse. And then before I knew it, I was back to smoking again. And I think by that time, it's probably a few years later, that's when I went to uni. And again, it was back to that social conversational connection thing. You're meeting people. Smoking areas are always a brilliant place to kind of encounter people. I like talking to people and I like being social.

So, I think the habit again, it just presented lots of ways to ingrain itself back into my life. And then before I knew it, I was smoking again. But it wasn't like a zero to one hundred thing. It just slowly crept in over years.

And I think for me, a few years after that I moved to the UK from Australia. And now this was the real game changer moment in smoking. Again, like in a bad way for me. Because in Australia at the time the least amount of cigarettes you could buy was 20. So you could buy 20, 25, 30, 50 or you know whatever you wanted. When I got to the UK you could buy 10.

And so 10, it's such a convenient number because I wouldn't want to buy 20. But 10 feels like, “Oh, this is not as bad.” You know, if I've just got 10, you can wrap that up in a night and go on your way the next day. You don't have leftover cigarettes calling out to you to say, “Hey, you've got these, you may as well smoke them.” You've got rid of the pack. It's gone. And that's fine.

I guess the other connection to this story is, as I mentioned, alcohol for me was the marriage with cigarettes. And now drinking culture in the UK was different to what I was used to. Like there it's very accepted. It's very normal just to be drinking any night of the week. You go to the pub. It's social. It's fun. And you got your 10 cigarettes.

And so you can do that almost every night. And so that's what ended up happening because it was very acceptable to smoke. And so I found myself drinking most days, smoking most days. And so the habit was back. And then I lived in the UK for 7 years. And by the end of my time there was when I knocked cigarettes on the head for good, I hope.

But over that time in the UK, it just expanded more and more and more. Because lots of people smoked because it was acceptable and you can drink whenever. And so it was just there constantly.
And I was back to this point where I was smoking almost every day, more than just like two or three cigarettes. Like the more you would drink and you know for me if I had a drink like I would take one sip, light a cigarette. And it was that chain smoking the whole time I’d drink.

And I remember the moment that I decided that I wanted to quit smoking again when I noticed, I felt like, it was making me look old in my face. And it sounds so vain and stupid. But that was like, “Oh, I notice that smoking cigarettes makes my face look a certain way.” So I generally just said, “Okay, I wonder how long it takes to not smoke to see if there are any changes in there?” And I found it was around 5 or 6 days, which was funnily enough a perfect amount of time to quit after a weekend, have a week of being great. And then the weekend comes again. And you just start that same cycle over again. And so I got caught in that for ages.

It was only I think towards the end of my time in the UK that I was smoking on a night out. I got sick with the flu or something. And then as soon as I was better, I went out again. I did it all again. And then I just got like flu again. I was super ill and I was like, “It's got to be cigarettes not helping.”
But it was only really then that for me I associated cigarettes with health. I knew cigarettes were bad. Everyone knows cigarettes are bad. But it's like it feels like a longer term consequence than anything in the moment. Whereas smoking and then feeling completely ill for a week afterwards. That was an immediate consequence that I didn't want to have to deal with again.

So that was the catalyst for me. I was like, “I don't like feeling sick. I'm not going to smoke now.” And I guess the times that I've stopped smoking, I'd never used patches or vapes. I quit before vapes were like as massive as they are now. I haven't had a cigarette for 8 years and 2 months. I just checked now. So hopefully this is it.

But yeah, like it was just, “How am I going to quit this smoking?” And like I said to you, I always could be bad on the weekend and get a really good start like through the week in my quitting experience. But then the weekend would come and I was like, “Cool, it's time to be social again. What's everyone I'm hanging out with doing? They're drinking and smoking. All right, I'll just fall back into that trap.” And so that cycle went on for a while.

Until the thing that actually helped me the most to quit. I downloaded this app called Smokefree. It's a super basic app. And what I found was that it gamified quitting. Essentially, you put in how many cigarettes you have and how much money you would be spending on them, whatever. And it would give you these awards.

After 12 hours of not smoking, maybe your heartbeat has gone back to normal. So you get an award for that. And then it's like you're breathing after a certain amount of time. All these things over a certain amount of time.

And when I say it gamified it, it's because each of these awards obviously took longer of not smoking to achieve. And so after getting into this app, I got two or three awards deep a bunch of times before again, I would hit the weekend. I was like, "Ah, it's all right. It's a weekend. I'll drink and smoke again."

But then one time I just decided to see if I could reach the fourth, let's say, award along. And that was seven days. And I can't remember what it was but I remember the time I got to that seven day award. And I was reading so much like how long it takes to break the psychological hold of cigarettes and a lot of the things that I was reading. Obviously it's a longer ongoing thing to deal with. But apparently something like 7 days was this magic number.

So I was like, “All right if I can get to that, I'll get that award that I've not got before. And then I'll keep going from there.” And so once I got to that, that gave me the motivation to keep going to the next award and the next award and the next award. So it wasn't so much about being motivated by not smoking. It was about the challenge I was giving myself, as stupid as it sounds, to achieve these awards in this app on my phone.

So that's the method that worked for me. You know, I've got like a couple of awards left to get. I think the last one comes at 10 years. So that's really the technique that I've so far employed in this last hopeful time of stopping smoking to quit.

Yeah. Like I wasn't driven so much by this realization like, “Oh my god smoking is bad for me.” I've known that since day one. Everybody that smokes knows that. And it's like everyone's got their own method to try and quit. And for me the way that I found to help me quit was just this free app that comes in the app store.

And as I said I never used vapes or patches or anything like that. It was just challenging myself and mental focus on this phone based app which sounds insane. But yeah that's what's kind of worked for me.


Jessi:

Whatever works then. I don't think there is any stupid way. I mean smoking…



Gareth:

No, no exactly. And I think that for me, like I say, smoking it wasn't something that I considered my identity or my personality. It was just a thing that was part of me.

And I justified it to myself. As if I'm doing all this other stuff to look after myself then I'm offsetting smoking in some kind of way. But the reality is I don't think you really can offset smoking because it's pretty bad and damaging for all sorts of part of your body.

But what I found was I had to really be in the right headspace to decide, “All right, I'm not going to smoke from this point.” Any other time that I thought, “Uh, I should quit smoking because it's bad.” It wasn't right for me. I had to really reach the point where I would be in the headspace to say, "Yes, all right. I'm going to try and quit smoking now." I had to want to do it rather than guilt or force myself to try and do it. So, I'm not sure how many other people experience that, but that's kind of what I found with smoking.


Jessi:

So, I'm wondering about that connection piece. Because I heard in your podcast that I listened to and with the guest I spoke with last week, it came up. I'm not sure the name of the study, but there was that study where loneliness was shown to have a very significant health impact. And we'll do things that hurt ourselves because subconsciously we know that we can't be lonely. We need connection and that's how humans survive.

So, I'm thinking about what you were going through in that context as well. You're like, "Hey, I don't want to smoke, but this is how I connect to my friends. This is how I have fun." What broke that cycle for you when you got to day seven? Were you spending time with those friends and just choosing not to smoke? Did you have to kind of withdraw a little bit? How did that look for you?


Gareth:

It was kind of making the decision. And look, I think what I probably did was just say, "Hey, I'm not going to see anyone this weekend." So it was kind of a short-term sacrifice to get that award in the app on the phone.

After that weekend, I would go out and kind of go out as normal. Which would be like in the pub having a drink or whatever. And it was tough to not smoke. But because I had the award locked in my phone, I was, “I don't want to ruin my streak now. I'm going for the next one. If I have to sit in this discomfort and bee uncomfortable. And feel like I'm fiending for a cigarette for a little bit while I'm having a drink, I'm just going to have to deal with it rather than give into that.”

And like I say, cigarettes with booze for me was always the real danger zone. And I've always been aware of that. So, I think it's just having that understanding of these are the situations and the circumstances that I will be most likely to smoke in. And just peeling away some of those layers and making sure they're not there for when I actually wanted to have a real go at not smoking.

Because as I mentioned at the start there, social smoking for me was a brilliant way to meet people and have conversations. There was always someone interesting to talk to in a smoking area. And that became even more of a thing when they brought regulations in here that you couldn't smoke indoors anymore. So instead of being able to smoke indoors, in like a noisy club or whatever, you actually had to go outside where it was quiet. And you could have those conversations with people.

What we noticed in these smoking areas, which venues here were all built as they scrambled to cater to their customers who still smoked. It was that people were congregating in smoking areas to just have conversations, smoke cigarettes, have a drink, and just talk to people. And so I don't know if it actually helped or hindered that you couldn't smoke indoors. Or if people just carried it outside.

Which I guess, from my recollection, ironically was the catalyst for the start of outdoor dining that all places do over here. Now, you can't smoke anywhere where people eat food. You've got like a tiny square meter area that you can go and smoke in. You know, it's all very well regulated and they do make it difficult to smoke these days.

But at transitional time it was just like, “Okay, cool. We got to go outside now.” There wasn't really any deterrent to smoking unless it was freezing cold or raining outside. So, it was yeah, it was an interesting time, but I do think it's a lot easier now to not smoke. There is so much more of a social stigma around smoking. And I think people now, are not only more health conscious, but conscious of the social effect and the smell of smoking. There's so many negatives.

But as I'm sure many people have seen, the flip side of it all is now we've got an entire section of people just completely addicted to sucking down a vape at any given time. And I've seen people who've started on a vape and then transitioned to full power cigarettes. Which it's uncommon, but it does happen.

One of the problems with cigarettes in Australia is they've made them so insanely expensive. They're trying to tax them out of existence for people smoking them. They don't ban them because it's a huge tax generator. But what it's done, it's very very ironic. That they've added so much tax and made them so expensive that it's actually allowed this super successful black market of cigarettes to flourish in Australia.

So, you can buy black market cigarettes basically everywhere. And now that you can and they're cheap, people are leaving vapes and going back to these cigarettes. So, it's kind of unintended consequences, you know, but whatever. Hopefully, everyone that's smoking can eventually find their way to quit if they want to quit.


Jessi at midroll:

We will get back to the conversation in just a moment.

If you are listening to today’s story and feeling a bit of that familiar tension in your own journey, I want to share a resource with you. We all know that a craving is just a temporary sensation, but when you are in the middle of it, that feeling can take up a lot of space.

I put together a free minicourse called How to Survive a Craving. It is a collection of the specific tools and mindset shifts I used to navigate those hard minutes and stay connected to my true desire to quit.

You can grab it for free at honoryourheart.net/craving so you have those tools ready for the next time you need them.

Now, let’s head back to today’s episode.


Jessi:

Yeah. And you know, you don't need to answer this, but I'm just wondering. Sometimes what happens with people that have an addiction. They'll swap them out like you said. They'll go to vaping or they'll pick up drinking more. Or some people even over exercise. And did you notice any of those kind of tendencies in yourself?


Gareth:

Possible. I think it's that I never really saw myself as addicted to cigarettes. I probably was. It's just not something that I ever really thought about. I thought it was just a thing that I did.
I was probably more addicted to the social behaviors that came with it. You know, you could connect a cigarette addiction to that. But I think that I was just more addicted to the action of smoking while having a drink and then the addiction to that moment.

Because, don't get me wrong, I used to love smoking. Like I used to love it while I was having a drink, sitting outside in the sun with my friends. Everyone's smoking. Everyone's having a drink. And I don't want to glamorize smoking, but it was like that's what I loved. It wasn't the cigarettes that I loved. I loved the entire combination of things.

And I think I didn't really need to replace it in my mind because it wasn't a thing that I did solely on its own. It was kind of always in a context with other things and other elements. So if I could keep the other elements, it was like I'm still doing the thing I love but just without this one input which was cigarettes.

Now if I was smoking cigarettes solely just to smoke cigarettes… like I mentioned earlier about I started my career. And what I was doing was marketing advertising and it was like people smoked. But you could always get that go away from your desk. “Hey, let's go for a cigarette break.” Again, social conversations, whatever.

Being in a work environment where you've got money for cigarettes, you can take breaks to have cigarettes and then you can go and have a drink with your colleagues and smoke cigarettes. It was just things like that all contributed to smoking.

But yeah, in terms of just going back to your question, I don't think I ever saw myself as, “I'm a cigarette addict.” I just saw myself as, “Hey, I smoke cigarettes.” And I think I always just in my mind assumed that I could just quit whenever I wanted to, which obviously isn't the case. Like that's a very naive way to think about it, but it's not something that I was super worried about not being able to stop. Despite the fact that it did take me a lot of time to find the right set of circumstances and situations to be able to do it.

As I mentioned, I didn't really think about the health aspects of it, which sounds really bad. Because, when I was 19, I was in my kind of peak smoking time. And my dad, as I mentioned, he was a full-time smoker. He died of a heart attack. He was very active still. But they said it was probably largely caused through smoking. And he probably started when he was like 15.

And even through that, it just didn't even click in my mind that I shouldn't be doing this. And I think it's probably because at the time I turned to more drinking to try and, you know, deal with the aftermath of that. And with more drinking bought more smoking. And it just kind of became a thing that I was just doing. But yeah, like I said, I never really considered I was aware that, “Hey, this is really bad for me”.

But I didn't see it as an instant bad. So, it was kind of out of sight, out of mind. And I just always felt with the positive associations and the good times with people, I could ignore the bad stuff as long as I was having those good moments.


Jessi:

Well, I think you said it beautifully that you were able to meet your needs without the smoking. You were able to spend time with people, connect with people, enjoy that time together.

And that's very hard to lose your father like that. I can see how that would play out that way. We don't think it's going to happen to us. Even when we see it happen to people, especially when we're young, we think we're invincible.

But when you did quit, did you notice any changes after that? Either physically or emotionally? Did something change for you? What were some of the gains?


Gareth:

Yeah. I think once I finally did quit, it's the same as when you stop drinking alcohol. Like, I don't know if any of your listeners are regular drinkers, but you do notice a huge change that you seem to notice it overnight. Not immediately, but you notice it in the space of waking up one day and go, "Oh my god, I feel so much better not doing this."

And I think that's what I found with not smoking is while I was chasing, and again every time I say it I just feel so silly. While I was chasing the awards in the phone, it was after probably a month of not smoking, I felt great. It wasn't immediate, but it was after about a month that I just kind of woke up and I was like, "Oh my god, I feel a thousand times better than I did a month ago." And I can directly put that down to not smoking because that's the only thing that I had changed.

While I was smoking, I would still run. I was still exercising. I ate okay. I also ate some crap. But I was still drinking. And like I said, the only thing that I changed was not smoking. And so that was a huge realization to me that whatever was in those cigarettes that we all know are awful and we just kind of ignore as we puff on them was going into my body. It’s having this effect that I didn't even realize. I felt that was just normal for me, like how people felt. And like I say, it was only this day I woke up and I was like, “This is incredible! I feel healthy. I don't feel tired.”

I don't know through your own journey if you experienced something like that. But that's what happened with me and it's very hard to describe other than this kind of clarity around, “Oh this is actually what you should feel like as a person.

That's incredibly motivating as well to hit that point. And you realize, “Oh my god there's actually positive changes happening. This is worth sticking at.” And I think it's combining all of those things, it's made me. Like I said, I haven't had a cigarette at all, a puff of a cigarette ,for even over 8 years now. And I don't even feel like it.

I can go out. I can get super drunk, which is obviously my massively vulnerable time for smoking. I can party in other ways. I can do anything. It doesn't matter. Like eat the most incredible food. You know, some people like to have a cigarette after a meal. Some people like to have one with coffee. All of these moments, not a single moment that I'm like, “Hey, I want a cigarette now.”

So, I think part of it is just mental as well. Just telling yourself, “Hey, I'm not a smoker. This is not what I do anymore.” Just focusing on that and telling yourself that. That's the kind of methods that have worked for me and hopefully continue working for me.


Jessi:

Yeah, that's so nice to paint that picture of what can be possible. And it's hard to even know when you're in it. I think that's what makes quitting so difficult because you're used to feeling that way. And when you smoke, you feel better for a little bit. So, it's hard to have that long-term vision or even remember what it was like to be able to breathe properly, to have energy and to just pop out of bed in the morning. You know, those are some rough mornings.


Gareth:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you've just hit the nail on the head there by saying it is hard to imagine what waits through not smoking. The mental challenge of not smoking, it feels difficult. Like if you are so into cigarettes, you love cigarettes, whatever your current relationship with cigarettes are, you can only break it through time. You can't just go and take a pill or eat a thing or whatever and fix it. Like the only remedy to get the reward is giving it time. And it is absolutely worth it for anyone thinking that they want to find out what's at the other side of that health wall to reach after stopping smoking.


Jessi:

So, you've just given some wise words, but I always ask, do you have any advice?


Gareth:

Yeah, I think I've touched on one of them before. I've got two pieces of advice.

First piece of advice is don't guilt yourself into quitting. Get yourself to a point where you're ready to quit. Even if you've got to say, "Okay, I'm going to work towards quitting in 3 months and 6 days from now." It doesn't really matter. Just give yourself a moment and commit to it so you're psychologically and mentally ready to do it.

Don't force it on yourself when you actually don't want to quit because you won't. And it's going to make it so much harder because you're unprepared mentally. And in my anecdotal experience, it's the mental aspect that's the hardest. The physical stuff, you can beat that with mental strength. It's having the mental state and the frame of mind to quit that is the most important thing to set you up for success. So yeah, that piece of advice is to quit when you're ready, not when you think you should.

And then the second piece of advice would be there's an infinite amount of tips and tools out there and tricks to try and quit. Keep going until you find the one that works for you. And I don't think there's any one-size-fits-all way to quit smoking. Whatever works for you.

As you've said, Jessi, some people might replace it. I know people who've replaced cigarettes with chocolate. They say they got addicted to chocolate. But you know, my friend that that happened to, he's like, "Hey, it's probably better for me than being addicted to cigarettes. I'll deal with the chocolate problem further down the line." Like, that's an easy one to solve.

But like I said, I found the combination of things that worked for me, which was this free app that gave me awards for not smoking. It wasn't even saving the money or anything. It was just this little badge on my phone screen, coupled with looking up a timeline of how your body heals from not smoking. So that for me was the biggest motivator. What health things am I going to unlock rather than feeling guilty for damaging myself? I just kind of ignored that and just focused on the positive changes that were going to happen.

Doing that and telling myself, "No, you don't need to smoke. Think about this positive change that you're working towards." That was kind of my technique. I just stopped guilting myself for smoking and just said, "No, you're working towards something good." Which kind of, I guess, gave it a more positive spin. That can really make a difference.


Jessi:

It did for me thinking about what you're gaining. So, I appreciate that advice.


Gareth:

How long have you quit now for?


Jessi:

It's been over five years. I don't have a…



Gareth:

That's good.


…an app, so I don't know how many days. But it's been a good time. And I just feel that I'm not going to go back. But I don't want to be too confident. Got to keep some guard up, you know.


Gareth:

No, totally. And I still keep a guard up. There's times I'll speak with my fiance and she quit maybe a few months after I did. And sometimes we say, "Oh, you know, maybe if we ever retire and live on the beach. And then you could have like a beer and a cigarette in the sunset."

From here in Australia, like people go to Bali all the time, right? And we have this kind of saying that Bali cigarettes don't count. So everyone goes to Bali and smokes while in Bali. Because it's like a dollar a packet, you know, whatever. But it's like I don't know. People just justify.


Jessi:

Yeah. We have Vegas over here. Las Vegas.


Gareth:

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, it's something that I'm always cautious of, not falling back into. And I just think that for me, the the motivator now is remembering how I felt while I was smoking and avoiding that.

I can smell cigarettes, like I can be around people smoking. It doesn't bother me whatsoever. I'm not grossed out by it. But it's just remembering how I used to feel versus how I feel now that that keeps me not smoking.


Jessi:

Yeah. Cherishing what we've gained from it is…


Gareth:

Exactly.


Jessi:

There's nothing I would trade to lose this.


Gareth:

No, exactly. It's totally not worth it. It is a slippery slope, unfortunately, with cigarettes. Because we find, “Oh, one is not going to hurt. Oh, well then two is not going to hurt.” And then, “Five is not going to hurt.” And then it's like, “I only do it once a week, it's not going to hurt.” And then before you know it, who knows how much you're smoking? And so, yeah, it's just it's easier for me to not smoke at all.



Jessi:

Same. Moderation is not my my game.


Gareth:

No, no, me neither. Awesome.


Jessi:

Yeah. So I want to give you a chance now to talk more about your podcast and your work and how people can get in touch with you.


Gareth:

Yeah, I have this podcast called Ruined by the Internet?. Essentially, it was inspired by the fact that I had so many conversations with people and read so many things of people blaming the internet for ruining everything. And I was like, is this true? Like, you know, I don't feel like it.

And so I started investigating various different things. One of them was speaking to someone about their attention span being ruined because he was addicted to TikTok. And I was like, is this true? And so then I just kind of researched it a little bit. And the more I researched it, I was like, “This is a thing that people say a lot, but the reality could be quite different.”

So yeah, I just decided to make this podcast where I interview experts in various aspects of life to see what the real picture is behind the impact of the internet and technology on this thing. You can find it on basically any podcast platform. It's Ruined by the Internet? You can find it at ruinedbytheinternet.com.

And yeah, if anyone wants to contact me and ask anything about quitting smoking, you can just find my contact details through there. Or you can listen to an episode and hopefully it can help people like your show is helping people Jessi.


Jessi:

Yeah, I really really enjoyed the conversation that I listened to on your show. I think it ties so well into addiction. You know, I often find myself looking at my phone for something that I'm like, “What am I even doing? What am I trying to find here?” And that was kind of my experience with smoking. I was looking for something that it couldn't give me. And so I just thought it was very tied to this whole relationship of like ourselves and connection.


Gareth:

We're just creatures of habit, you know. Like we build patterns and that's what we assume is truth. But it's kind of just the comfort and ease for us. Like you said, the phone, we all do it. It's so easy just to get that little something from your phone. It's not really nourishing you in any way. It's just kind of alleviating a few moments of dead space.

So, yeah. again just habits, patterns to break and one of which is cigarettes. Hopefully all these stories that you share of people talking about how they've quit smoking is inspiring other people to quit smoking as well. Because then hopefully they reach that point where they, like we spoke about, realize, “Oh, I feel great now not smoking, which is awesome.”


Gareth:

And just learning about the different options because we all do have our own way with it. And you never know what's going to hit you in the right way. So I love getting the stories out here and I really appreciate you coming on and sharing yours.


Gareth:

No, thank you. And I think what you're doing with this is great. And yeah, like I say, hopefully it's helping a lot of people with their quit smoking journey.


Jessi:

Definitely. And listen to Gareth's podcast, guys. It's awesome.



Gareth:

Awesome. Thank you, Jessi. Great to talk to you.


Jessi:

Thank you. Take care, everyone. See you next week.




End of Interview


I hope today's story inspired you as much as it did me. When we hear stories like this, it’s a powerful reminder that change is possible. If you're ready to start taking those steps for yourself, I'd love to help.

I’ve put together a free minicourse called How to Survive a Craving to help you access tools to get through temporary cravings and holdfast to your true desire to quit smoking. This course is the stuff I wish I knew when I was practicing quitting and I’ve put what worked for me in one place for you. You can grab your copy right now by visiting honoryourheart.net/craving

Until next time, remember to treat yourself with kindness and to cherish the gifts of your heart. I'll talk to you soon.