A Father's Calling to Quit Smoking for His Family-Jeremy Bamford, EP5

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. I'm here today with Jeremy. Jeremy, do you want to introduce yourself?



Jeremy:

Hi there. My name is Jeremy. I am a former smoker. It's nice to be able to say that. I'm forty-two years old. I have four children, which feels like about forty children sometimes. And I'm here to tell my story about that.



Jessi:

Awesome. Thank you for being here. Go ahead and just launch in. Tell us where it started and how you ended up quitting.



Jeremy:

Alright. Officially, I started at eighteen, smoking, but unofficially it was closer to thirteen. Both my parents were smokers. My mother quit when I was, I want to say early teens, but my dad ended up just smoking until it killed him. I remember when I was about thirteen, my dad had a habit of lighting a cigarette and then he would set it down, and then go to the bathroom or go make a coffee. And one time I just picked it up and took a puff, and I didn't get sick. I didn't cough or anything. I just thought, "Oh, this is kind of nice." So, I will preface my story with saying that I never wanted to quit smoking, which is why it was so hard. I loved it. I love the taste of it and the smell of it. The way some people will get into wine, that's kind of how I was with cigarettes–different brands, all that stuff. I was a connoisseur, if you will.


When I met my wife, she didn't like it, but she didn't really say too much until we started having kids. And then the pressure was on a little bit. I never smoked around the kids and never in the car, never in the house, anything like that. I mean, every smoker knows deep down that it's poison, even though I loved it.


I had some failed attempts at quitting. There was a medicine back in the day, Chantix, I think that's what it was. I tried that. It made me absolutely crazy. I was having anxiety attacks and terrible nightmares. I tried the fake cigarettes. It looked like a little plastic tampon, which that alone maybe made me not want to use it.


Eventually, I just had to quit. And what prompted that was when my oldest son, who is twelve now, was about three. I had went out in the backyard to have a cigarette. And I didn't realize he had snuck out there with me. And I was just enjoying nature, as it were. And I turned around and he had the pack in his hand. And he said, "Daddy, me try, me try!" And he was just so excited. And it just broke my heart. And it was just right then I said, "Okay, I'm done." And almost an entire pack got flushed down the toilet.


We didn't have a whole lot of money at the time, but I told my wife, I was like, “I gotta go get the patches. I have to stop.” And she was an absolute saint, because I was not fun to be around for probably a good three months. It was very difficult because the patches help with the physical craving. So I wouldn't get the headaches or the shakes that some people get, but psychological cravings, you know, that's all on you. That was the hardest part because for so long, decades, was such a part of my life that it was hard. I'm not going to compare it to something like losing a limb or anything, but it's a very big adjustment. It's like all of a sudden becoming allergic to corn or something where you have to just readjust how you live, you know? I knew I was doing it for the right reasons, but it was just very, very hard.


I still tell people it's the hardest thing I've ever done. It's harder than parenthood. It's harder than marriage. It's harder than crappy jobs. That right there was the hardest thing I've ever done, and it took a long time. So for anyone out there that is struggling with it, my heart goes out to you. There is no easy way. Some people can use the chewing gum or the lozenges or whatever it takes, chew on carrot sticks. You got to keep trying because it will kill you.


It killed my dad. He was sixty-one when he passed away in 2011 and he looked closer to eighty-one,, just from, I mean he was a two-pack-a-day smoker since before I was born. So you can imagine all of that damage to your body, and if you keep it up you will get COPD. I mean, it's called the smoker's disease for a reason. And that's what eventually killed him. His body just became too weak to fight off. And then in his final hours, he didn't even crave it anymore. His body was just so weak. He passed away before any of my kids were born. So he never got to meet any of his grandkids.


And I didn't want that to be me. Not that I'm worried about grandkids right now, but I want to have a nice long life. And you know, that was the first step to getting my health back. And it's a huge step because you can eat right and exercise, but if you're still puffing away, it's going to get you. It did take a long time. There was a lot of hard days, a lot of hard nights. There was tears. There was arguments. I had a good support system, which was crucial. I mean, I can't imagine trying to do that alone. My family has been great, very supportive.


And even now, maybe once a year or so, I'll get a hardcore craving. And it seems to come out of nowhere. Maybe I'll be standing in a gas station and I'll see that wall of cigarettes and all of a sudden it's like, "Man, I want one so bad." And then it passes after a couple of minutes. But now, thankfully, when I smell it, it kind of smells gross. But for a while, especially that first year, I would smell it and it would be like when you're starving and somebody walks by with French fries. It does get easier. But it is not easy. That's really the best way I can describe it.



Jessi:

Wow. What an incredible story that you were able to break that cycle. Like you said, with you being young and experimenting, and you could see that coming ahead and were able to to change it. It's so powerful, and really hard to watch that happen to your dad. I imagine that's got to be really, really rough. So I'm just kind of wondering how you were able to get through some of that emotional part. You said that you had the patches that helped the physical cravings you had, but what were some of the emotions that you were having that would trigger cravings? And then, were you able to find another way to regulate those emotions or to have a different way to cope instead of smoking? How did you make that transition?



Jeremy:

Well, like most former smokers, unfortunately, it started with food. Because when you're smoking, everything tastes like a cigarette. And then when you stop, all of a sudden, food tastes amazing. So I went that route. I'm diabetic, so that didn't help. I gained a bunch of weight. My A1C ended up in like the twelve to thirteen range, which is not good if you're a diabetic. The stress of life in general–because I was so used to having that crutch, so parenting difficulties, job difficulties–when you're used to being able to say, “Okay, I need a minute. I'm going to go outside and have a cigarette.”


I had to force myself to get into other hobbies. My biggest hobby now: I'm into pens and notebooks and fountain pens. I even started a whole podcast about it. So I would try to redirect that need for it because sometimes stress would trigger it, and it's like, “Oh man, today's rough. I really need to have a cigarette.” Other times it would be boredom. Other times it would be just habit. It's like, “Oh, now is about the time of day where I go outside,” and instead I have to say, “Okay, let's go play with the kids, let's go try to have a non-junk food snack,” things like that. So it was difficult to get into a routine that didn't involve the routine of smoking. It took a while to just try whatever I could to try distracting myself: reading books, video games, anything to take my mind off of it. Let's go outside and run around with the kids. The weather's hot, go swimming or something like that, just to be in a place where I couldn't smoke, because even when I was smoking, I never did it in front of the kids, never in the car or the house. So, if they were with me, if they were right next to me, it's like, “Okay, I can't smoke because the kids are right here. I'm inside the house, so I can't smoke.” Things like that.


It did help that after years, all the restaurants got rid of it, the planes got rid of it. So, you couldn't really–options were limited. So, just developing different distraction methods is what eventually worked for me to get my mind in a different place.



Jessi:

Yeah, it sounded like you said that you loved it. And I'm curious about what parts you loved. Maybe that break, getting to step outside, getting away from people. Sometimes it's keeping your hands busy. Sometimes it's the deep breath. So, I think that's really cool that you were able to take hobbies and replace some of those things that you did like about smoking and still have that joy, and use joy to redirect. Because that's the hardest thing, when we get so much pleasure from it, to find other things, pleasure in other things. It takes that creativity and that imagination because you just go on autopilot. You're so used to doing something over and over again.


I smoked for fifteen years myself, so it was really tough for me to rewire my brain to go back to things that I used to enjoy before I smoked, and try new things that I wasn't even able to try because I smoked, like hiking and being active and things like that. So, I think that's really, really powerful.


I'm curious, what is one of the major changes? You said that you got your taste back, that maybe you were having a little bit too much fun with that. I can relate to that, too. But what would you say is a big difference, especially the psychological, the emotional stuff, because that's what makes quitting so hard.



Jeremy:

Yeah, it started with the physical changes. I got more energy. I didn't get winded. Because I smoked for so long, I didn't realize that I was getting winded all the time. I just thought, “That's just what it was.” I go up a flight of stairs and it looked like I was jumping rope for a half an hour. And so at first, when I started to feel better physically, I started to feel better emotionally. I started to say, “I got over this hill.” I would not necessarily coach people, but I would hear about people struggling with it. I would try to maybe give some advice and say, "Listen, you got to just keep trying. I had so many false quitting attempts. Eventually, one of them will stick.” And being able to start to feel better physically, then realizing, “Man, I've gained like thirty pounds. Let's try to take care of that now.” (Laughs.) And then having the energy to take care of that. Before, when I was just kind of a couch potato, sitting around, eating to try to make up for the– what do they call it?–the oral fixation.


It's almost like it started with the food. You can kind of get that zest back. It's like, "Alright, food tastes great. The air actually smells like flowers and plants and trees and not just tobacco." It's like going from black-and-white to color TV. It's a nice change that you didn't realize that you needed.



Jessi:

You said it was one of the hardest, or the hardest thing you've been through. So, do you feel differently about yourself, having been through something so difficult?



Jeremy:

A little bit. I know that I have an addictive personality that runs in my family in multiple branches. That's why I've always been careful around painkillers. My dad was also an alcoholic. I do want to preface that with saying: he was always a good dad. He just had his addictions. He was never abusive or anything like that, but he, you know, it was almost like his uniform: cigarette in one hand, Old Milwaukee in the other. Which is a tragedy, because it's not even really a good beer. (Laughs.)


So yeah, usually it became easier to recognize when I would start to have a problem. So, now it's like I have, I don't know, maybe five alcoholic drinks a year, just because I know myself. I used to also enjoy cigars; maybe once a month with my friends, I’d have a cigar. You don't even really inhale those. At least I didn't. You just kind of puff on it for the flavor. But I knew that once I quit smoking, I would take one puff of a cigar and I would be right back to it. I just–I know myself. As much as I missed that also, because that was more of a social thing. But yes, I just took it all off the table.



Jessi:

So I kind of have a lot of that going on for myself too. And what I've been able to notice is that when I'm feeling a certain way and certain things are going on for me, that's when I tend to have the addictive tendencies. And mostly it's–for me–an avoidance thing. It's like, I don't want to deal with an emotion I'm having. And so I'll go to avoidance. And I'm wondering, have you noticed anything in yourself where you're like, “Okay, I know this is a common trigger for me. So I've developed different ways to handle it.”


Jeremy:

Yeah. I was also, years ago, diagnosed with bipolar type two, which is a major depressive disorder. So it was one of those things, constantly having to keep an eye on my moods, therapy, medication, things like that. I would definitely avoid. I would see the stress coming and it's like, “Okay, I need to find a way to get rid of that.” So it was an adjustment, realizing, “These are the things I need to survive. I need to be on medication. I need to be in therapy.” And admitting that to yourself can be very difficult.



Jessi:

Yeah, but it's also very empowering, because once you know yourself, then it takes some of that mystery out of it. I just remember beating myself up so hard when I was a smoker, just like, “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this?” And when you know why, and can see the pattern, you're able to break it. But it's not easy, like you said. You really have to face some of the harder things–or at least I did–within myself to get through it. Did you have any last takeaways you wanted to leave with smokers or anyone listening?



Jeremy:

If you're struggling with any kind of addiction–I know nicotine is a big one, there are plenty of other things to get addicted to–you have to take that first step to say, “I want to stop. I need to stop with this addiction.” That was the hardest part, was admitting that I needed to stop, because I didn't want to. So, for anyone out there that's really struggling to try to quit: (it takes) as many times as it takes, ask for help, rant and rave about it on the internet if you want to scream into the void, “This is so hard!” Because it is hard. Once you can take a step back and say, “Okay, I'm not alone in this. This isn't the end of the world. It's difficult, but I can get through it.” You got to just keep trying. That's my advice there.



Jessi:

Yes, that's great advice. And so, how can people get in touch with you and listen to your podcast?



Jeremy:

The podcast is called The Unfinished Notebook. I have a co-host named Samantha. We also talk about a lot of mental health stuff, but it's mostly stationary and stationary related topics. We are @unfinishednotebook.bsky.social on Bluesky. That's mostly our only real social media presence, because we just got irritated with Facebook. (Laughs.) But we can be found there, pretty much anywhere you get your podcasts. We do it for fun; we don't charge anything for it or anything. So, that's where I'm at now.



Jessi:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. I really appreciate your vulnerability in it. Sounds like you've been through the ringer and you've come out the other side. Of course, we're still working all the time. (Laughs.)



Jeremy:

Yes. Yeah, it is a process.



Jessi:

Thank you so much for coming on.



Jeremy:

Of course.



Jessi:

Thank you everyone. See you next Tuesday.