Was smoking a way for you to cope with that tough time in adolescence when you wanted to belong and you were overwhelmed emotionally?

That’s how Kimberly picked up smoking too.

Kimberly walks us through her physical and emotional reactions to quitting and how she was able to stay on her path though self reflection and redirection. Enjoy her story here on the You Can Quit Smoking podcast.

Jessi:

Hey everyone, welcome back. I'm so excited to be here with you today and with Kimberly. Kimberly, can you introduce yourself to the audience?


Kimberly:

My name is Kimberly Conte. I am a first-time author of a memoir. I'm also a cold turkey quitter from smoking.


Jessi:

Right on. Talk to us about your experience. What was smoking like for you? What's your story with smoking?


Kimberly:

Gosh, I started smoking I think when I was probably 11 or 12 maybe. My mom was a smoker and she smoked ultra lights I think for most of my life. She still smokes now to this day. So she's been smoking for a long time.

And I started smoking just because she said it relieves stress. My parents had just gotten divorced and I didn't fit in anywhere at school. I was being bullied and things like that.

So I'd go home and I'd steal her cigarettes and just start smoking them to see if what she said was true. Instead of it being true, it kind of just became a habit and a cool thing to do. I noticed it was getting attention. So I just kept doing it.

Then I got pregnant really young with my son at 18, and I quit briefly while I was pregnant. Then as soon as I had my son, I started smoking again. I felt like if I could smoke, I could get away.

When I had my son, he was young, and my mom and I weren't really getting along. I think that it was a mental thing for me more than anything else. Having it my whole life around me, it was something that was normal. So when you grow up with something normal, it's really hard to try to change your brain.

The only reason I quit smoking cold turkey when I was pregnant is because I was pregnant and I had a reason to. After I had my son, I didn't have a reason to.

Probably it was 10 or 15 years ago, I think, and I was making my bed. I got winded. I bent down to do the hospital corners on my bed and I got winded and I was like, "Oh, hell no. What?"

I went and I talked to my husband. I was like, "I'm getting winded. Is that normal? I am 30 years old, and it's not right. You shouldn't be getting winded.” He's like, "I don't know," because he was a smoker, too.

My main concern…and this is going to sound really stupid, really shallow. But my main concern with quitting smoking was big weight gain. Because most people when they quit, they gain weight.

If you're a female, we already have enough issues as it is with weight and with how we look. We don't need anything else contributing to it. So that was one of the major reasons I didn't want to quit for a long time. I was afraid I was going to gain the weight.

I'm not a small person, but I'm not huge. They call it “sporty". I played softball and stuff when I was a kid. So I grew up with the athletic type figure and broad shoulders, really broad shoulders. So anytime I put weight on, my shoulders would get real big and I'd look like a linebacker.

I had a real hard time, like I said, in school being made fun of and stuff. So that was my biggest concern, my weight gain.But when I got winded, I'll tell you what.

I remember it. It was December 28th and I told my husband. Every year we make one New Year's resolution. People make 10 or 15 and they never work. You got to make one. He was like, "What are you going to do?" And I said, "Well, you know what? I can't do this anymore. I'm getting winded making the bed. I'm getting winded going down the hallway." Our house is two bedrooms, it wasn't huge. I was like, "I can't do this. And if that's not what the problem is, then I'll go back to smoking."

That was my New Year's resolution. He was supposed to quit with me. Of course, women always do things first. He didn't do it until 10 years later. But at 11:58, I lit my last cigarette on December 31st. As soon as 12:00 hit, I handed it to my husband and I was done.

For a lot of people, holding the cigarette is what the addiction is for them. It's having something in their hand. For me, it was more that I had gotten comfortable with it because it was always what I went to when I felt alone or when I was scared. When I needed comfort, I went to smoke. That's just what I did.

I did gain weight. But by the same token, I'm one of those people where I am stubborn just because of how my parents were when I was growing up. I learned how to take that stubbornness and turn it into productivity. Instead of saying, "I'm not going to do it," I put it into, "I am going to do it." I learned to be stubborn the opposite way.

I have ADHD and dyslexia, so I have a very short attention span. But I turned it around and said, "I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna show them." Nobody thought I could do it because who thinks you're actually going to quit? Everybody says, "I'm gonna quit smoking," but nobody ever really does. I was like, "No, I'm gonna be the first one. Watch me do this."

I was tempted once, two weeks after I quit, to smoke. My husband actually handed me a cigarette and said, "Light this for me," not even thinking I'd quit. He didn't even remember that I didn't smoke anymore because everybody we knew smoked. I went to go do it and I stopped and thought, "Wait, no, I can't do it. My god, because if I do that, I’ve got to start all over."

I think the only reason it didn't bother me so much is because I knew I had started chewing gum. Don't start chewing gum because it is bad for your teeth. But that's what I started doing to try to figure out how I was addicted to it and why I wanted to go back to it.

The urge was still there. I still wanted to do it, but I'm so stubborn that I told myself, "I'm not going to do it. I'm going to prove these people wrong."For me, it was just about mentally retraining my brain. I had to be okay with fitting in and accepting myself as I was.

Because I did gain 20 or 25 pounds, and then it went a little bit more. Once you hit 30, and then you get to 35, it doesn't matter what you do for a lot of women. It just kind of creeps up on you, and smoking doesn't help.

By the time the weight gain started with a couple more pounds, I had already gotten myself comfortable. I could breathe. I will tell you, after about 3 months, I wasn't winded anymore. It took a while for my body to physically adjust.


Jessi:

Definitely. Yes. To catch up with it.


Kimberly:

To catch up with it. My husband quit cold turkey 2 years ago and he still says after he eats, "I want a cigarette." I don't even have that temptation or that craving anymore. I think it's because there were different reasons behind why he smoked and why I smoked. For me, it was more like, "Dude, I'm 30-something years old and I can't breathe. No, it's not going to happen."


Jessi:

Yep.


Kimberly:

I don't know how that works for you, but I started chewing gum and I started tapping. Every time I want to smoke, I tap on something, or I tap on a pad or something like that. It drives my husband crazy. I still do it.

I don't have the cravings anymore. But every once in a while, something will happen and the thought is just in the back of your head. It is always there.

You said you did it cold turkey. That is the best way to do it, as hard as it may be. They say it takes basically 30 days for you to retrain your brain, to break a habit and form a new one. It takes 30 days. That's true. If you can do that, if you can tell yourself each day, "Just today," and go day by day, it makes it a lot easier.

If you go from smoking to the gum, like Nicorette or something like that, it's the same thing. All you're doing is just not blowing out smoke. You're still putting the same stuff in your body. You're still going to have the same issues. It's just you're not being rude and blowing smoke into somebody's face, and they're not inhaling your second-hand smoke.

So those alternatives don't work in my opinion. It's just more damage to your body. The point of quitting smoking is to get healthier, not to change one dependency for another.

I think everybody falls down. Luckily, I did not. I literally quit and I was done. But a lot of people stop, start, stop, start. I think it's just a matter of retraining your brain. To retrain it, you take it one thing at a time.

If your issue with smoking is you've got to have something in your hands, you find a replacement. My husband used those little spinners and he'd spin it. For me, it was a pen, or I'd just start tapping my nail.

I can tell you that I'm really glad I did quit smoking. I'm healthier now. I can't say that it didn't cause any long-term damage because we just don't know that. But it changes your personality, though not a drastic change. I don't know if yours changed at all, but things feel easier. Things are easier to process.

That's what has kept me from going back, the realization of how those traits changed. There is a clarity to it when you don't have that cloud of smoke above your head.

My son didn't smoke. He tried it once. I have a firm way of handling children with this. If somebody had come up to me when I was a kid and said, "You want to smoke? Here's a pack of cigarettes, smoke the whole thing," I probably never would have done it because smoking one after the other makes you sick. That's what I made my son do. He said, "I want to do it," and I said, "Okay, here you go. Here's what your lungs look like."

Those commercials like, "Just say no to drugs," they don't work. They are using kids, but the target audience doesn't relate to that. Each person is different, each person's chemical balance is different, and the reasons for why they are doing it are different. You've got to attack quitting and youth prevention with that same understanding.

I don't like hypocrites, so when I quit, I was done. My mom is 75 and she started smoking when she was like 21. She has been smoking for over 50 years with not a breathing problem in the world, not a cough, nothing. Whereas someone else I know died of emphysema from smoking. They drank too, but they ended up with cirrhosis and emphysema, and that killed them. Being around that changes you.

Regarding the day-to-day struggles you were saying earlier, if anybody needs to talk, sometimes it's good. They have the buddy system for women to check on each other, and I think they need it for smokers. I know it sounds stupid, but AA has their own groups, NA has their groups.

I don't think anybody realizes how serious smoking is. They talk about it, but I don't think they realize how serious it is. It's so serious that they found an alternative way for people to continue smoking, which is vaping. Vaping is smoking. It's just electronic. It's the same thing.

I think that the easiest way to not do it is to talk, to have a buddy or a system where you can reach out and ask, "Hey, what can I do?" It doesn't necessarily mean you have to go for a run or read books. It just means picking up a phone and calling your friend for 10 minutes to talk it through, or watching TV for half an hour. Just get your mind to focus on something else. It's easier most definitely when you have somebody to help you with it.


Jessi at midroll:

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

If you are listening to these stories and feeling like your own journey is stuck in a loop of broken promises, please know that you do not have to do this alone. I currently have some spots available for one-on-one coaching.

I work with people to help them move out of the cycle of smoking and into a life where they finally feel in control. We use a heart-led framework to address the deeper patterns so your success is actually sustainable.

If you are ready to commit to the work, apply now at honoryourheart.net/application. I would love to support you on your way to reconnecting to yourself and moving past smoking. Now, back to the story.


Kimberly:

But you can't do it expecting to not fall. I think that's where a lot of people struggle. You said you had tried a couple of times as well because you had a hard time seeing it through. Did you go into it expecting to just be done with it?


Jessi:

Probably in the beginning, and then I started getting to the point where I didn't even think I could do it. I was just kind of going through the motions. And then I got to the point like, "Oh, I'm definitely doing this." And I did. So, yep.


Kimberly:

See, and that's good. But I think a lot of people go into it with the expectation that they're not going to fail. They need to expect to fail. That is the biggest misconception. People say, "Oh, no, you want to do this." No, you don't want to go into it saying, "I am going to do it perfectly." You need to go in expecting to struggle, expecting to fall, and expecting to have to try again. Because nobody's perfect.

Nicotine is a drug. It is addicting, and you can't expect to just stop it and everything is suddenly okay. Your body is going to go through withdrawals, and for some people it's worse than others.

For me, I coughed up a lot of stuff for 30 days. I was hacking stuff up, it was just gross. And I gained weight. My husband didn't cough and he didn't gain weight, he just quit. I was like, "Oh, lucky you." It messed with him mentally, whereas for me, I didn't realize how serious it was until I started coughing up stuff.

Once you get past the first seven days, I don't know if it was that way for you, you start to feel a little better. I was totally dragging the first week, but literally after the first week or so, I started to feel a little bit better little by little.

It is mental. But if you're competitive, the best way to do it is to look around you and tell yourself, "You know what, if I do it, I'm getting the gold. I'm number one. Beat me." That's how I looked at it. I played softball, so I was competitive. I'm like, "For once, I'm not going to come in second. I'm going to come in first." That's how I pushed myself to the end of it because it was hard.

It was difficult because everybody in my life smokes. Even now, everybody smokes except for me and my husband. All our friends still do. And it's not just the quitting, it's the being able to be around it after you do it and not want to do it. That was where I struggled.

See, the quitting wasn't the problem. It was being around people that were doing it and not wanting to take the cigarette out of their hand and smoke it. That's where the problem came in with me. It's a social thing, and it's about wanting to fit in.

I was bullied a lot as a kid, which is why I started smoking. I am a redhead. I moved to Arizona when I was nine and started in third grade. I was the only kid in the school with red hair. Of course, my mother at that time thought Pippi Longstocking was the show to watch when you got home from school. Since I had red hair, she sends me to school in braids. I had kids come up behind me holding my hair up, and I'd go home crying. So, having cigarettes was my way to kind of fit in and be one of the cool kids. I would take them from my mom, and that was my thing.

The hardest thing for me was to just be okay with not fitting in. It is hard, most definitely. But it is a physical thing, too, because your body gets accustomed to routines. If you tell yourself your leg hurts a thousand times, when you stand up, your leg is going to hurt. That's the mental part of it.

But the physical part of it is that every time you breathe that smoke in, every single fiber in your body holds on to it, and when it doesn't have it, it sucks.

But after the smoke clears, so to speak, there is an overall relaxing feeling. You process things differently. Being high-strung is a symptom of the drug you're doing, which is nicotine. It's most definitely hard.

I have listened to your show quite a few times, actually. I do like it. If you've been around 10 or 15 years ago, it would have been so much easier.


Jessi:

Yeah.


Kimberly:

But I think if you can figure out why you started smoking, you can trace it back. Because it's just like everything else. You can't quit until you're ready. I don't think anybody can quit if they don't know why they started, and that can take a lot of reflection.

It's in the book I wrote, too, about my journey through bullying, the partying, and all that stuff I did. You have to go back to the root of what caused it in order for you to be able to just be done with it and not do it again.


Jessi:

Yeah, I think it's part of meeting our needs, because if we don't know what we need, then it's hard to go without turning to smoking to meet that need, or at least thinking it does.

So, I'm curious about the comfort. You mentioned that when you're feeling lonely or on the outs, it's something that you would turn to to comfort and soothe yourself. What have you done to replace that? How do you meet that need now?


Kimberly:

Well, funny you should ask. I have dogs.


Jessi:

Nice.


Kimberly:

I always loved animals, but I just substituted dogs. I have six. I'm not saying go out and get a bunch of dogs by any means, but that's what I did to comfort myself.

If you go back to the reason that you started and work backward through the reason that made you start in the first place, you won't need to worry about that external comfort as much. Because you will have figured out what made you do that.

I had to go back to the original reason I started, which was for attention and because my mother said it relieves stress. So I had thought, "Okay, well, if it makes her feel good and she's not stressed, then maybe it works for me."

Then it became about when I would get upset at school, I would come home, go out back, steal my mom's cigarettes, and smoke a cigarette or two to see if it would work. Then kids at school would say, "You smoke, you smell." And then it became about making friends with the ones who thought it was cool. I had to go all the way back there in my head and figure out what triggered me to start it in the first place.

Once I did that, I realized that it was just a pattern I didn't need anymore. I am a good person. I am smart. I am pretty. And I've got a son and a husband. Why would I do something like that?

If I'd known then what I was going to walk into and what kind of life I would have, I wouldn't have done it. I did it because I was scared I wasn't going to have all that, and that I wasn't good enough to have it.


Jessi:

Yeah, and I think it helps us forgive ourselves, too, like you said. I used to do that all the time. I used to be angry with myself for making that choice, which is really silly. Because you have a choice every time you light up right now, not back when you were 12.

Going back and understanding why we did it can help us have compassionate understanding for a younger version of ourselves who didn't know what she was doing. You can forgive that part of yourself so that you can move on from that thought loop. I was stuck there forever, with that narrative of, "Oh, poor me, I made this bad choice." I was able to finally move on from that. So, I think that's really powerful to go back to that pain and work through it.


Kimberly:

It is. At the beginning, a lot of people say that they don't want to quit because they don't want to gain the weight. Well, if you can gain it, you can lose it. A lot of people say, "Oh, well, it's a habit, I'm used to it." Okay, well, it takes 30 days to start a habit and to break a habit. Go walk a block. It's just little things like that.

By no means am I saying go put down a cigarette and pick up a bottle. No way. I'm saying give yourself a couple of days when you first quit because you're going to feel like you're just sludging around. You're going to be irritated, angry, and short-tempered because your body is detoxing from a chemical.

But once those couple of days are up, chew gum, suck on candy, or go walk around the block. There are other things you can pick up if you have to satisfy that habit to teach your head to just not think of the smoking.


Jessi:

Absolutely. Yep.


Kimberly:

And girl, I tell you what, I'm not walking around no block. [laughter]


Jessi:

[laughter] Uh-huh, I always wanted to be a runner, but I had to give that up. That wasn't changing.


Kimberly:

Yep, I'm like, "I'm not walking around no block."

The older you get, the easier it gets, too. I chewed gum when I first quit all the time, always gnawing on the gum. Somebody told me, "Don't do that, that looks horrible," so I spit it out and started tapping.

I realized as you get older, you just start thinking, "I could be doing this instead of that." Once you quit smoking and your body actually clears, the more productive side of your brain starts working more because smoking affects that side of your brain. A doctor told me that it affects a certain part of your brain.


Jessi:

And the creativity, too.


Kimberly:

Yes, it does. When you can have a creative thought, you're just like, "What?" when you haven't been able to put a whole one together before.

The first creative thought I had was to decorate something. And it didn't work out well, but I had a thought. I hadn't had a thought like that for 20 years.

It's not easy. Anybody that quits might down themselves if they fall off that train. If they fall down, they think, "I failed." That is the wrong way to go into quitting.

Don't set yourself up to fail, but set yourself up to know you might stumble at least once or twice. Especially with smoking, because it's one of the more serious addictions out there. Very few people do it the first time and are completely done.

The smoke goes away. You quit for 30 days, wash your clothes, and the smoke goes away. Then you'll start to be able to smell it.

When I could smell it after about 2 months, the first time I smelled smoke when I walked into my house, I almost threw up. I was like, "This is what people walked into every time they came over? Oh my god. This is what my clothes smelled like?" I didn't realize how bad it smelled until after I quit. They say it takes 60 or 90 days before your body can actually recognize the smell accurately.


Jessi:

Yeah. Keeps up that motivation for sure. That's some great advice in there about being real with yourself about what to expect when you quit, and being okay with it taking some practice, taking some work, and having to keep at it.

I just want to thank you so much for sharing your story. I'm wondering, can you talk to us more about your book and how people can get in touch with you?


Kimberly:

Sure. The name of my book is Who Am I Really? Do you know? It's about growing up, being bullied, and how I got through it. Because I spent a lot of years alone in my room without many friends. Kids can be cruel.

I wrote it because I was watching the entertainment news one night, and there was a child actor who had taken his own life at 18 or 19. They said it was because he was depressed from being made fun of on set, and I just started bawling. That should never be a road anybody goes down, let alone a child or a young adult. As hard as it gets, you've got to remember that there's always somebody who has been there and who will be able to help you.

That's the reason I wrote it, so that people know that. Even though I don't have a lot of money and I don't live in a huge house, I've been there. I've done that. And I made it through.

If I could do it, anybody can do it. If it helps one person, then that's all I can ask for. You can get it on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble online for ebooks.


Jessi:

Well, thank you so much, Kimberly, for coming on and for sharing your story with us. I really appreciate you being open and talking about some of the struggle you went through and how you found solutions. Just want to thank you for being here with us.


Kimberly:

You're welcome. Thank you for having me.


Jessi:

Take care, everyone. See you next week.


End of Interview

A lot of us like Kimberly had a hard time as young people trying to navigate the transition out of childhood into adulthood.

That was part of Meridee’s story as well. Meridee went on to work on her emotional healing in conjunction with cold laser therapy to quit smoking for good and find purpose in helping others out of addiction.

Listen to Meridee’s story on Episode 16 of You Can Quit Smoking.