LaShaun had no idea that he had a heart condition when he picked up smoking as a teenager and continued smoking into his thirties until - he had a heart attack alone in the middle of the night.

While his condition is irreversible, LaShaun found his way to a healthy lifestyle where he is feeling well and has found purpose in sharing his wisdom with others.

Enjoy LaShaun’s story here on the You Can Quit Smoking podcast.

Jessi:
Hey everyone, welcome back. How's it going? I am so happy to be joined by LaShaun today. Can you introduce yourself to the audience, LaShaun?

LaShaun:
Absolutely. My name is LaShaun Pryor from right here in Edmond Deer Creek area of Oklahoma.
I have a normal adult job. I sell flooring. I'm boring. But for the last decade, I've had both of my feet, I guess, in kind of two worlds.

The other world is broadcasting. I’ve done everything from calling high school football games, color commentator, as a physical on-air personality on the drive home radio show.

And I have done television. I used to work for Major League Baseball. I've done television for the OKC Dodgers as the TV in-game host on FanDuel Network. Keeping people entertained and having a good time.

Jessi:
Awesome. Well, thank you for being here today. I'm so excited to hear more of your story. I got to hear a little bit and I am interested. What's your story with smoking?

LaShaun:
Yeah. Well, you know, I guess to tell the story, I guess I kind of have to start at the beginning.

So, I'm from Chicago, Illinois originally. I lived the first like 17 years of my life there. And my mom was a smoker. But she would like hide it and I would like smell it. And she'd be like, "Nah, I don't smoke. I don't smoke." I knew she was.

I wouldn't say that that made me want to smoke, but it made me feel like, "Okay, so this is pretty acceptable, right? I mean, like, if my mom could do it, this is pretty chill."

So, I moved to Oklahoma in like 1999, the year of that big May 3rd tornado. I met this guy, his name was David. We moved into the Wedgewood Village Apartments. It was a nice little place back then.

God, I was like 17. David was probably 17, maybe 16. And after I've known him for a couple of weeks, he always kind of smelled like smokes. But I just figured just because his parents smoke.

So, I have to tell this quick piece. Wedgewood, the apartment complex, was actually an amusement park back in the 70s that got turned into an apartment complex. If you can literally imagine this; So, there's like a fence in the back where like all the old rides were like stashed at. Okay, this is the craziest thing in the world. And then on the grounds where all of the rides were, they just built like apartment buildings. There was a Olympic size swimming pool that was part of like the lazy pool that was there. They left that there as an amenity. It was pretty sweet. So we used to run all over this apartment complex hanging out, having a good time.

And there was this bank that was in front. It was a gated community. There was this bank that was in front of it. And one day David's like, "Hey, let's go through the gates. Let's go out here." And we go out there and we go to the bank and David is digging snipes out of the ashtray at the bank.

And I was like, "Bro, what are you doing?" And he's like, "Oh, I didn't tell you I smoke." You know, his voice wasn't like that, but that's the best I got right now. And he's like, "Yeah." He's like, "I smoke." And I'm like, "Shut up. What?" You know, so he pulls out all these snipes and some of them are long and some of them are like kind of long. And I'm like, "This is nuts."

We go back to this bridge. There's a bridge where people used to ride their swans through like a little love thing. Of course that's all gone. It's just a creek at this point. And we went up underneath the bridge and hanging out. That's the first time I smoked a cigarette.
I wouldn't call it smoking. I’d call it [coughing]. Like I wasn't inhaling worth a darn. But that's also where my introduction to, “Hey, this is doable.” Like it was terrible, but I was like, "Yeah, I could do this." And that's how I got started smoking.

We'll fast forward a bit. I smoked pretty consistently. I was a two pack a day smoker. If you caught me on the right day, I could smoke two and a half packs. Man, crazy.

We'll fast forward up to my career in football. I became an arena football player and I was in my 30s. I was probably like 35, 36 years old. I'd been playing football for some years. Probably a little bit too old to be playing, but I was still playing. At this point, I had slacked off of the smoking obviously. But you know, I wasn't about to quit.

Well, unfortunately, in the middle of the night one night, I'm asleep. I'm a single guy. I'm inside of my apartment. And I thought I was getting robbed, right? So, I felt this pressure. I'm like, "This cat has his knee on my chest. I'm all alone." And yo, I start swinging, you know? I'm swinging with everything I got so I can get this cat off me.

If you remember that song by the Geto Boys, “Mind is Playing Tricks on Me”, and he's like punching the concrete. That's me. There's nothing there. And I realized something's wrong because the pressure is there.

And at this point, I'm sitting up. Crawl up to like my living room. I thought about calling 911, but then I was like, “I'm just going to take a nap.” And like a fool, I decided to sleep on the floor in the living room. I get up the next day. I go to the hospital and I find out that I had my first heart attack.

This heart attack is brought on because I have congestive heart failure. I have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is a fancy way of saying that I have an enlarged heart. I also have scarring around my heart. I have AFib.

All this stuff is unbeknownst to me, so I should have died playing football if I'm keeping it one hundred. About a day later, I was in the Cath lab having my cardiac ablation surgery. As I sit here talking to you and everybody, I have an implant inside of my chest.

That was when the discussion was had with my cardiologist. She kept it really one hundred. And she said, “A lot of the damage that's been done, some of this unfortunately is hereditary.” My mom's waiting on a heart transplant. So some of it is hereditary. A lot of it is damage from heavy smoking from the age of 17 up until in my 30s.

And so I got faced with a choice of, “Are you going to quit smoking? Are you going to keep smoking? How do you want to handle this?”

I will tell you for full disclosure, I had my second heart attack in the dugout at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in between TV hits where I just didn't feel that great. I wasn't smoking anymore. That was in 2023. So that's just three years ago.

I wasn't smoking, but again, damage has been done and I had my second heart attack there. But it was a mild heart attack. I was able to finish the TV hit and make it back to the dugout where they sent me home. And the same me sits in front of you here today.

Hence why I don't work there anymore. Me and Major League Baseball made the decision that if you're going to have heart attacks in our dugouts, you might want to stay home.

Jessi:
[laughter] No kidding. That is wild.

LaShaun:
It is. It is. But it's been something that I've been able to turn into a very special journey in the sense that I have been able to … I emcee a lot of events with my business. And so I emcee events for the American Heart Association. I do TV commercials for the Oklahoma Tobacco Helpline.

And I get to travel around talking to young people, especially former athletes, about taking care of their bodies, listening to their bodies, and how smoking and having a hereditary heart condition that you're not aware of can be a ticking time bomb inside of you.

Jessi:
Yeah. So, did you quit then when you had that first heart attack?

LaShaun:
I absolutely did. It was not easy when I quit. It's funny. So, they offer you lozenges and gum and all that good stuff, you know. And I started with that. I'll keep it one hundred. That's not what made me quit. And that's not to take anything away from the helpline.

It was Chantix. The nightmares that I was having were like, "Oh my gosh." But I noticed that if I didn't smoke, I didn't have the nightmares. And so it's kind of a trade-off, I guess. That medication makes you make these choices. I could have these vivid horrible dreams and nightmares. Or I could sleep soundly. And the more you smoke, the worse they seem to get, at least for me. But I saw other people on the internet who said the same. So yeah, I actually have not smoked since that happened. And I believe that was 2016.

Jessi:
You said it was difficult. What was part of that difficulty for you with quitting? Just getting used to not doing it at certain times, transitions. What part do you think was the biggest struggle?

LaShaun:
Yo, I will say to anybody out there, I am a big back. I was a lineman. I love to eat.

And there is nothing like that feeling after you get yourself a nice full belly, “Man. Let me hit the smoke right quick, man. Let me step outside and just... “ That was probably one of the hardest parts was that feeling of settling your food, which I think is probably just baked into your mind. But that was probably one of the worst.

And then I don't know if you can call it an oral fixation because it's more visceral, but seeing the smoke. It's like cause and effect like, “Oh I went [inhale], look there goes some smoke. So not doing that and getting that I think that was one of the hardest parts.

Jessi:
So speaking on food, did you notice any difference in taste?

LaShaun:
I noticed that I got fat.

Jessi:
[laughter]

LaShaun:
I'll tell you that. I started... I could eat. Yo, yes there was a difference in taste. It took some time. A lot of people made it sound like it happened in like a week. I feel like after I got done coughing up a half of a lung, which I assume was years of uh of the walls of my lungs being coated, I started eating like crazy. Because yes, food did taste better. Some food didn't taste as good and then I wondered, “Why am I eating this?” But yes, I would definitely say so.

Jessi:
Did that continue or were you able to kind of curb that? What changed with that? Was it just with time? With intention?

LaShaun:
Hmmm…I still eat a lot. I don't know.

Jessi:
[laughter] Okay.

LaShaun:
I don't know. I like to eat. That didn't change.

But no, no, no, no, no. Honestly, I will say that it did get better and a lot of that was just taking control. I think, you know, it was a crutch from my teenage years. So, I think it had just become that it was just such a part of my identity that it was hard for me to let that go. But yeah, with time it got a lot easier.

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:
Right on. Yeah.

Just wondering if anything changed with you emotionally or like you talked about identity, like the way you saw yourself. So compare what it was like when you were a smoker, how you felt about yourself, how you saw yourself, and what changed after quitting.

LaShaun:
An ignorant confidence. And this is just my opinion, but an ignorant confidence. I get around people that smoke now, and I'm not trying to sound like judgmental. But you know, you can smell like the smoke, like you could smell it all. I never questioned or thought about the fact that I smelled like that, that my breath smelled like that. I was just totally fine with it.

As a non-smoker, I want to tell you right now, if you're working on quitting, you will be able to smell a cigarette from like a block away. Like, somebody will light that thing and you'll be like, "Ooh, they smoking." You know, it will just hit you. And so, I would say that that would be the biggest confidence and change is that I know that I don't smell like an ash tray.

Jessi:
Yeah. It's so freeing. I don't know if you were like covering yourself and all that kind of stuff. I used to do that. It was like, I don't know, a 5 minute, 10 minute thing to wash my hands.

LaShaun:
Yeah. I didn't do anything. No, I just walked around just…

Jessi:

Just rocking it? [laughter]

LaShaun:
But you know what? I don't think I was cognizant. You know how people say and I say this to people all the time, “It's like that 5,000 foot view. Like when you're in it, when you're boots on the ground, you don't see it.” You have to be up above it to be able to see it.

Once you quit and you're looking at yourself from that sense, I think you have a better ability to be able to kind of take stock. But when it's you, you're there, it's your normal. It's your every day. You don't see anything wrong with it. So, yeah, I didn't. I was fine with it.

Jessi:
Yeah. And did you see any effects socially? Was it like part of your social connection? Were your friends smokers? Did you have anything different with that? Or was it more just a solo thing for you?

LaShaun:
Tell you the most ironic thing: from my ex-wife to most of my friends, they were non-smokers. They didn't smoke. Can you believe that? I was constantly the only person in 90 percent of the groups that I was in who was smoking.

Jessi:
So, does that feel different than being more like them, not having that barrier?

LaShaun:
Yeah. You know what? I almost find it to be more rare that people smoke in general from strangers all the way down.

Like when I smell I live here in Oklahoma, right? And marijuana is legal. And while I don't partake, it is nothing to have your windows down on a nice cool morning and smell weed like penetrating from vehicles all around you on the street.

I smell that more than I smell the smell of cigarettes because it seems like so much fewer people smoke cigarettes now than what I experienced from anything else. So yeah, it's really strange.

Jessi:
Yeah. That's good marketing. [laughter]

LaShaun:
Right.

Jessi:
So you said you used Chantix. You didn't do any of the vaping or any of the... Speaking of like substitutes, like some people they'll quit cigarettes and go to smoking pot. They'll go to vaping. Did you have any interest in that?.

LaShaun:
I didn't think to because I was afraid because of the Chantix. It had me terrified but no I didn't. I didn't, which was a good thing I think in a case like mine and that's what I always tell people.
It's not that I couldn't have done that. But I think with my heart condition, with it being something. I just had this conversation with somebody just the other day because they were asking me about having congestive heart failure. And they're like, “Well it'll get better.”

And I said, “The doctor told us….” So I've changed doctors and I see the heart failure team now. I have a whole team of doctors that I see for the telemetry, which is, you know, the thing in my heart and all the other stuff. They take care of me.

And I feel like I'm at a point at 45 years old. I was telling somebody, I said, "There isn't technically a cure for congestive heart failure." As I talked with the doctor, “It goes A, B, C, D” There's four stages. I am out of B and I'm starting C at 45 years old. And so the point I guess would be that sometime, if I make it to like 75 years old, 80 years old. If I'm like on oxygen, whatever, I'm making it. But I'm going to be a very tired man. That's going to be a good full life with this.

So for me, I kind of looked at it as, “I have the opportunity. I have the chance that I have now to do the right thing and make good with it.” And some of the other vices, while they are easy to fall into, it's probably not in my best interest.

Jessi:
Yeah, you want to support that healing or reduce the damage. And I can relate to that, too. Sometimes we can't go back and reverse what we've done, but we don't need to make it worse. We don't need to double down. We don't need to go all in.

And so I think that's really powerful. That's like, “I can live out what I've been dealt, but I'm not going to run this myself into the ground here. I'm going to do what I can.” It's very empowering.

LaShaun:
True.

Jessi:
What kind of other gains have you seen? We talked about some of them that you don't have that barrier socially and that you don't smell…

LaShaun:
No. Hey, I got some other stuff. Absolutely. So, hanging in my bedroom is this big collection of medals.

So, one of the things that I wanted to do is I wanted to like walk a 5K when this was over. Because I felt like there was this big freeing thing of like, “Okay.” At the time I probably lost, I don't know, 80, 90 pounds. I quit smoking. All of that because I was scared.

And it took me a few years before I got to the point where everything was ready. And I said, I as a big guy, as a former football lineman, I'm like, “I want to start running 5Ks.” This is crazy ambitious. This sounds ignorant as heck. I even became a firefighter, a volunteer firefighter. And I'm like, “I can do this.”

I can tell you it started with me in my full bunker gear doing the Oklahoma City Memorial Half Marathon. While I was miserable, I completed it. And I said, “Well, if I can do that with all this gear on, I guess I can probably just do this just fine now.” And I'm not a firefighter anymore.

I probably trot/run five 5ks a year now, if not more. I have this huge collection of medals up there. And that's been one of my greatest, most freeing things is the fact that when I wasn't running before, and I could tell you as a two and a half a pack a day smoker, I wasn't going to run anything but my mouth. The fact that I can do this now is truly a blessing.

And that's why I mentioned the American Heart Association. Like I say, I emcee a ton of events every year absolutely for free. I show up and I emcee their big event here in Oklahoma City. And it gives me a chance to tell my story to thousands of people.

They have a bunch of people who they say, “We’re the survivors.” Which I always feel is like weird and cliche because I'm like, “I didn't do anything. All I did was not die like you know. I'm not special. I just didn't die.”

But it gives me a chance to talk to like stroke and heart attack people that have been through this and the families. To talk about, “You can make it through this. There's light at the end of the tunnel.” And that caps off with a 5k where there are people that are running. There are people that are walking. There are people that will go like four blocks but they just had a transplant. It's a very freeing kind of thing where everybody gets to come together.

And I love to tell people your heart is an endangered species, right? It's the only one that you technically get without a transplant. It is a very special opportunity to be able to be a part of that, to be able to see that and to be able to tell my story. And allow other people to be wrapped in their stories and have the fellowship and the love that we didn't die.

Jessi:
Yeah, that's absolutely incredible. I'm just amazed at the resilience that you and so many others have. Like I I talked about like you can't go back, but you don't give up on yourself. You push yourself and you open up new possibilities that you never would have imagined.

So, I think that's just a beautiful picture of what could be possible for people that aren't living their most healthy life. And you know, it really can turn around and it's never too late. Even if you have to go through something as hard as that. So, I think that's really inspiring.

Someone that's in it, they're really struggling. Maybe they tried to quit and they've come back. And they're not feeling that they are capable of doing it even though they really want to. What words of encouragement or advice would you have for someone that's in that position?

LaShaun:
Forgive yourself because I didn't quit the first time either, right? This isn't something where you just wake up today, “I'm going to quit smoking.” You didn't pick up smoking in like five minutes. You're not going to quit in five minutes.

Forgive yourself. Love yourself. You are still an endangered species. You are not less of a person because you smoke and you're smoking does not define who you are. With that said, do not give up on yourself. Right? It takes time.

I'm 45 years old. It took me 45 years to be 45 years old. You may have smoked for 20 years. I'm not saying it's going to take you 20 years to quit. It may take you 10 tries over the course of 5 years. I don't know.

But forgive yourself. Because the harder on yourself you are, the more that you look in that mirror and you say, "I'm a failure and this and that." You smoke that cigarette with tears in your eyes because you messed up. You're making it harder on yourself. You can do it. There is support. There are services. It's whatever it takes. But this is your journey.

I love motorcycles. I ride bikes. And people always used to tell me when I first started when I would ride in groups, they'd say, "Ride your ride. Don't try to keep up with the guy next to you. Do not try to ride wheel-to-wheel with him. You ride your dang ride. That's how you get hurt."

Same thing, folks. That's how you hurt yourself emotionally is trying to keep up with the Jones, is trying to force yourself to quit. Trying to make yourself do whatever it is. Set your goal. Push it out. Be mobile. Be nimble with it, but be forgiving. There's a lot worse things that can happen to you. Look, you want to quit, you're going to quit. But forgive yourself because if you don't, you never will.

Jessi:
That's really touching and got me a little teary-eyed. So, thank you for that. That's so inspiring. And it's a really hard place to be. You know, you've been there. I've been there. And I just think that brings a lot of hope and encouragement. So, thank you so much for sharing those words.

And I'm wondering, can you talk more about how people can get in touch with you, your podcast where people can find you?

LaShaun:
Absolutely. So, my podcast is Pryor to the Snap. We are a sports podcast. We have a ton of fun. We have a guy that's a former roughneck from the University of Oklahoma. You guys know my stor. And of course my wife, she is a former softball player and volleyball player. She is a psycho for Nebraska football. We have a ton of fun. We'd love for you guys to stream us, listen, Google us. We are on literally every major streaming platform.

And as far as me myself, I have a blue check. My name is LaShaun Pryor. There's about 20,000 crazy people that follow me personally. I post sports content all the time. Also, flip over to Pryor to the Snap. As I mentioned earlier, there's about 20-some thousand folks over there that put up with our crazy. All three of us are over there. We have a ton of fun.

We try to be inspiring. I post up videos about I mentioned earlier, I do motivational speaking for young people. I post videos often on my personal page where they're basically just a morning affirmation of like, “Look, you woke up, you showered, and you got dressed. For some of you, if you're dealing with depression, anxiety, and sadness, that may be all you do today. But take the win. That's a good thing. All the way up to having a better day up at work.”

So, like I say, it's a crazy place, but I invite you guys to come hang out. Also, look up LaShaun Pryor Tobacco on YouTube. You'll find all of the television commercials that I've done. I don't say that to brag. I say that because that will put you in touch with resources to be able to get what you need.
And if you don't live in the same state of Oklahoma as me, many of your states have the exact same thing under the blank, whatever state, tobacco helpline. You'll be able to get those same resources. So, it's a good deal.

Jessi:
Well, thank you so much for coming on here, sharing your story with us, talking about what you've been through, the hardships, what you found on the other side. I really just appreciate your time and your wisdom.

LaShaun:
Hey, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to have been on here with you. Thank you so much.

Jessi:
All right, take care everyone. See you next week.


End of Interview

Are you thinking more about your physical health and the effects of smoking on your heart? Check out Dr. Bill’s story where he had absolutely no thought about quitting smoking until he found himself facing a major heart surgery. You can hear his tips to quit smoking in Episode 29.