Have you ever quit smoking, only to slide back into the habit after having just one?

It is an absolute critical moment. For Peter, the stinging disappointment of that relapse didn't break him. It actually helped solidify his resolve to stay quit for good. He discovered that once he put some distance between himself and the habit, smoking simply no longer provided the comfort it used to.

It was a tough transition out of smoking but Peter shares what helped him get through the rough patch on this week’s episode of You Can Quit Smoking.

Jessi:
Hey everyone, welcome back. I'm here today with Peter. Peter, tell us a little bit about yourself.


Peter:
I'm 52. I'm a dad, a husband, and a busy professional. I stay as active as I can. I do a lot in the outdoors, a lot of walking, hiking, and paddling with my wife. We also have a rescue dog who is originally from Texas, but now lives with us in Canada and is weirdly fond of the snow and the cold.


Jessi:
[laughter] Well, sounds like a nice little life you have for yourself. I want to talk to you more about smoking. What's your story with smoking?


Peter:
My story with smoking started a long, long time ago. I don't even want to do the math on it because it would be horrifying.

But I probably wasn't even a teenager when I started to make the decision to smoke. I don't mean just having a puff off of somebody's cigarette. I mean actually going to source a pack of cigarettes on my own and smoking a couple. I was probably 10 or 11, so quite a long time ago.

Back in those days, it was easier for kids to get their hands on a pack of cigarettes. You know, just a quick cover story that I was buying them for somebody, and there I had them in my hands. I couldn't bring them home, though. I certainly wasn't allowed to smoke by my parents.

So, my typical pattern back in those early days was I'd buy a pack of cigarettes, smoke one, feel sick, and put the pack aside. I'd hide it somewhere outside where I knew where they were. And then I'd go back a couple of days later and they'd be gone, so I'd buy another pack. Cigarettes were very expensive for me, actually, come to think of it, back in those days. I was paying essentially the price of a full pack for a single cigarette in most cases.

That kind of continued on and off. But by the time I was 13, 14, 15, I was well and good into the habit. And at that point, I was out in the world as a smoker. My parents knew that I smoked by then. I was buying them on my own. And they weren't happy about it, but they were accepting.

I continued on that way for quite a number of years. Cigarettes were getting a little bit more expensive back then. There were times when it was a bit of a pinch to buy them. I live in Canada and the taxes on cigarettes can be pretty punitive; they put up the taxes as a means of encouraging people to stop smoking.

They were getting expensive, but I always somehow found the money to buy them. Even when it was difficult to find money to buy other things that I needed or wanted in my life, somehow the money was always there for the cigarettes.

And so that continued on through my 20s. I started working, and smoking became increasingly a part of my social life as well. My wife at the time, we're not together any longer, this is my son's mom, was also a smoker. We smoked in our own house, so there were always cigarettes around and there was always cigarette smoke around.

I would say that from 17 or 18 for the next maybe 12 or 13 years, until I was coming up in my 30s, I was pretty close to a pack a day, and sometimes more. Maybe just under a pack to a pack and a half a day, every single day without fail.

I can't honestly say that at the time I noticed a meaningful impact on my health. I certainly didn't have the cardio stamina that some of my friends might have had. But it's not like I was suffering or that my health was visibly failing because I was a cigarette smoker. I know that had I continued, I think I would be in a very, very different health condition now.

But at the time, when you're younger, you're immortal. Nothing's going to hurt you in the long run because you've got your whole life to live. It's only in the rearview mirror that you realize there's not all that long.

I did try to quit a couple of times through my 20s. Despite the fact that I had friends who were smokers, and it would change my social life with them. And despite the fact that my wife smoked and she didn't really seem to be motivated to quit at the time, there were a couple of times that I tried to quit just to kind of see how it would be. To see how easy it would be or how difficult it would be.

And I was unsuccessful every single time. Looking back on it, I think the reason I was unsuccessful is I didn't really have a strong motivation. I didn't really have a strong why at the time. As I said, it was kind of just to see if I could do it. In retrospect, that probably wasn't the right mindset to come at it with.

What really changed is that coming to the end of my 20s, my wife and I were talking about having kids. That's when my own why became a much stronger, much more tangible thing. The why for me was that I didn't want to be a smoking parent.

I say this without judgment to anyone who is a smoking parent. It was just a personal feeling that I had about the kind of parent that I wanted to be.

I didn't want to be smoking around my child. I didn't want to expose him to cigarette smoke. And I also didn't want to be the kind of parent that has to duck out on the back porch every now and then to have a cigarette, or hold a cigarette out the car window. I just didn't want to be that parent.

I envisioned being a different kind of parent.So, with that incentive, with that motivation that before I had kids, I was going to be free and clear, I set out to quit.

I did the thing that you're not supposed to do. At the time anyway, the logic back then was that you weren't supposed to quit as a New Year's resolution. It was putting too much pressure on yourself because if you try to quit on New Year's Eve and a couple of days later you fall off and have a cigarette, then you've kind of spoiled it for the whole year, right? Then you have to wait until next year's New Year's Eve to quit again.

But that's what I did. On New Year's Eve of whatever year it was, I told myself, "Okay, that's it. I'm done. I'm going to have my last couple of cigarettes tonight, and then that's it for me. I'm not going to be a smoker anymore."

I'd love to say that the motivation alone was enough for me, but it wasn't. I needed some help. The help that I enlisted at that point was nicotine patches. I got a pack of nicotine patches to help me through those initial tough days, the really tough early ones. And it stuck.

The first little bit was tough because the patches do a good job of taking care of the chemical addiction. They really do. It's a different delivery system, you're still getting nicotine obviously. But they take care of those cravings because your body's getting what it needs.

But the really, really difficult thing that can just knock you back if you're not prepared for it is the routines and the social aspects of the cigarettes.

For example, there are people at work that, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, you go outside and you have a cigarette break with them. That's a really, really important social connectivity thing. It's an important routine. All of a sudden, if you're not a smoker anymore, I mean, sure, you could go out and join them, but then you're going to be standing there really wanting a cigarette because that's part of your old routine.

The first thing in the morning cigarettes, the last thing at night cigarettes, the cigarettes with a coffee, the cigarettes with a meal or after a meal. In the first week, two weeks, three weeks, a month, those were the really, really hard, difficult moments to get over.

Even though my body was still getting a little bit of nicotine through the patch, all of those routines were changing. It's changing the psychology, the habits that you have in your brain, and changing the wiring of your brain.But again, it stuck. I persevered through those hard days and ultimately weaned myself down off of the patch.

I remember the first time that I tried a cigarette after having quit. It was probably maybe a year or a year and a half after that New Year's. It was such a strange moment because what I was expecting the cigarette to feel like, and what I was expecting it to taste like, it wasn't at all like that. It tasted awful and I felt horrible afterwards. It felt like I was a kid again at 11 or 12 smoking a cigarette and just about throwing up.

The question in my head at that point was, “How could I have ever found this an enjoyable thing? Because this is the furthest thing from enjoyable.” It was such a weird moment, and I think probably that is the moment, even more than the New Year's that I quit, that I realized, “Okay, I'm actually a non-smoker. I did it. I'm over that hump.”

Two decades later, my cardio health is probably better than it was at any time in my 20s. I go to the gym regularly with my wife and we work out. Some of the things that I enjoy most in life, I probably would not be able to enjoy quite as much if I was still smoking.


Jessi:
Thank you for sharing that story. I love that you talked about going back to it, trying it, and realizing, “This is not for me.” Because that's a really tough moment.

A lot of people find themselves sliding back into it where they're like, "Oh, I smoked once, so I might as well just give up and buy a pack." But if you can really tune into the way it feels and notice the difference when you've had some time feeling better without it, it can really be motivating to stay off.

So it can go either way depending on your mindset with it and just really noticing, “Does this feel good in my body? Does this feel right?”

I'm wondering what was going on for you more emotionally. You talked about how it was hard with these patterns and these habits. Did you have to go through an emotional experience with it, even with the patches?


Peter:
I did. I think for me, the way that I dealt with the emotional aspects of it was forming new routines.
If you've done something like quit smoking and your routines have been changed or taken away because of that decision, you have two choices. You can just sort of sit there and mope and mourn those old routines.

To a certain extent, I mean, that's part of it. You do have to mourn. You do have to grieve a little bit. But probably the best thing that you can do for yourself, the most helpful thing you can do for yourself in that situation, is to form new routines.

It doesn't mean necessarily going out and meeting a whole bunch of new friends who are non-smokers. It means maybe going out with that same friend, but at a time when they've agreed not to have a cigarette. And you're just having that social connection.

For that first thing in the morning, maybe instead of reaching for the cigarette and the lighters, you reach for a glass of orange juice or something that would just be completely incompatible with having a cigarette. If you can replace the old routines with new routines that are healthier for you, I think that's probably one of the best things that you can do to get over the emotional effect of changing those habits.


Jessi at midroll:
Before we get back to the rest of the story, I want to speak to the pregnant moms listening. If you are navigating the stress of pregnancy while trying to stay smoke-free, please know you don’t have to do it alone.

I created The Heart Within Sponsorship as a completely free, safe space for you to find emotional resources and community support. You can join us today by visiting honoryourheart.net.
Now, let's get back to today's show.

Jessi:
Yeah, that's really great advice, really practical. Moving a little bit more to the emotional side, you said that when you were smoking for that long period of time, you didn't have any physical effects that were bothering you too much. Or at least they weren't noticeable to you at the time. How did you feel about yourself emotionally?

Like you said, because you were curious, you were playing with that idea of quitting and trying it out? Was there something that was kind of pulling you, like, "Hey, I'm kind of tired of having to do this all the time." Or was there an inconvenience with it? Or was it not even a thought because it was such a big social aspect for you where it's like, "Hey, everyone's smoking, this is normal."

What was kind of going on there? Was it something that you felt good about doing, or was it something that made you feel otherwise?


Peter:
When I was young and first started smoking, I think cigarette smoking then had a level of acceptance in society, almost like a level of "cool" in society, that it didn't have later on.

When I was a kid, restaurants still had smoking sections. Airplanes still had smoking sections. Movie theaters, you could still smoke in a movie theater, and all those things just seem bizarre to me now. In the shopping malls, right next to the garbage cans, there were ashtrays because people would be walking down the hallways of a mall smoking cigarettes.

Smoking was kind of everywhere. It was still a time when it was either no big deal, or it was a sign that you were an adult and you were kind of grown up and doing something very mature.
Well, that changed, even over the 10 to 15 years that I smoked, to the point where later in that time, it wasn't as accepted anymore. People really were starting to push back. I think the laws were being passed around that time that made it illegal to smoke in any restaurant, meaning restaurants weren't allowed to have smoking sections at all.

So, I think the level of acceptance was a big part of it. And I think that for me, I did actually start to become aware of, frankly, the smell. You are a little bit nose-blind when you're a smoker. You can't necessarily tell if you smoke in your car or if you smoke in your home. You become pretty much jaded to the scent and you can't smell it anymore.

But through that time, as smoking became less and less ubiquitous, just everywhere, if you'd walk into a mall where the air smells fresh and clean, you'd realize that you're smelling cigarette smoke and it's actually coming from you. That it's your clothes that you're smelling. I do remember becoming aware of that, and it was almost like a reverse peer pressure thing that was happening at that point. The same kind of peer pressure that probably created the pull to smoking in the first place became a little bit of a reverse push to leave it.

The last thing that I'll say is even though looking back on it I say that I wasn't feeling any particular ill health effects, I got sick a lot more than friends of mine who didn't smoke. In an average winter, I'd come down with four, five, or six different flus and colds, and be hacking and coughing well into the spring through allergy season. It just seemed like everybody was healthier than I was. So, I say that I didn't have any health effects, but I mean, I probably did. I do remember being aware of that.


Jessi:
Yeah. It's a little bit like the smell, where you just get used to feeling not your best, and so that becomes your new normal.


Peter:
Exactly. Yeah.


Jessi:
So, what are some of the other gains that you've noticed since quitting? You mentioned your cardio strength and that you don't smell. Are there any other things that you've noticed?


Peter:
Oh my gosh, the money. I did do the math at one point and I was just absolutely gobsmacked at the amount of money that I spent over the years to smoke. I mean, I'd love to say that I socked it away and did something really special with it. I didn't. But just the impact that that makes on your budget on an ongoing basis is huge. So, definitely more spending money.

For me, being outdoors is a really, really important thing to me now. It wasn't necessarily through my teens and through my 20s, but it's huge now. It's not only for my physical health, but for my mental health, getting out there in the woods, hiking, finding a tall hill somewhere, paddling, and just all that kind of outdoor stuff. That's a really important part of my mental well-being.

And I know for an absolute fact that if I was wheezing and coughing through that the way that I would have been in my 20s, I would enjoy those things far less than I do. So that's a big deal for me because it's not only physical health, it's actually mental health as well.


Jessi:
This is kind of personal, and you don't have to necessarily answer this. But speaking on the mental health and the emotional health aspect, do you think it gave you some confidence going into fatherhood? Because you mentioned that was a big why for you. So, what was that like? Did you have an emotional change going into that big transition in life?


Peter:
I always knew that being a father was going to be a really important thing to me, and it was. My son is in his early 20s now. And I'm really proud to say that through his life, as he grew up, I was as active and prominent a part of his life as I wanted to be. He was pretty central to my life. Even though my career was important to me as well, he was front and center.

When I think about how even that experience of parenting would have been different if I was regularly excusing myself from him to go and have a cigarette. Or if I was trying to justify to him why he should make healthy choices when I wasn't making those same healthy choices. It would have been a really different experience being his parent.

I'm proud of the choices that I made, and I'm glad that I was able to be that parent for him. Whether it gave me more confidence going in at that point, I'm not sure. But in retrospect, I know I was the kind of dad that I wanted to be.


Jessi:
That's beautiful. Nothing can replace that.


Peter: Yeah.


Jessi:
So I'm wondering, for somebody that's in it right now. Maybe they've tried to quit and come back to it. They're not really in a place where they're feeling really great about themselves or the effort. They're having some doubt or some resistance, but they feel that call. They know they want to quit, but they're feeling stuck. What words of advice would you have for them?


Peter:
As cliché as it is: keep at it. It wasn't my first time when I quit. It almost makes it harder, I think, in some ways. If you quit and stay quit for even a week or two, and you get through those really, really difficult times and then you go back to it.

It can start to feel like it's just impossible. You think, “This is the way that my brain is wired and there's no other way that I can be.” But after repeatedly trying to quit myself, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for a day or two, sometimes for a week or two, in the end, I was successful.

That why is a big part of it for me. And so, 20 years on, I'm proof positive that it can be permanent. You can actually get to the point where you no longer want it. You no longer have any desire for it. And frankly, you kind of wonder why you ever got to that point in the first place.

The couple of things that I would say are: think about what your why might be. Maybe it's the money. Maybe it's your own health for your own personal reasons. Maybe it's your health for your family. Whatever motivation is going to be strongest for you and most personal for you. It may be very different than somebody else's. It might be something that's absolutely unique to you.

But if it's something that is strong enough to get you through those tough moments and remind you why you're doing it, that can be a really helpful thing. So think about the why, remember it, and keep track of it when you're going through the tough days.

The other thing that I would say is be forgiving of yourself when and if you slip. When and if you have that cigarette, it doesn't have to be the end. You've just veered off course.

The analogy that I've always liked for this kind of situation, and for everything else, is an airplane. If you look at an airplane's course from its origin to its destination, it looks like a straight line, or at least a smooth curve. But in reality, it's all sorts of little jagged corrections because the wind currents will shift it and it has to course correct. Something unforeseen comes up and they have to course correct again. So a plane's course is this constantly evolving, shifting little path.

What I've always liked about that analogy is that when you're on a particular path and you veer off of it for whatever reason, you're still on the way to your destination. You're still on the way to where you want to go. Just correct your course and get back to pointing towards the destination.


Jessi:
I love that. It's a really nice visual and it doesn't have to be a race, like you said. Just get back on course. Keep going, and you'll get there when it's time. I love that.


Peter:
Exactly. Yeah.


Jessi:
Well, thank you so much for coming on, for sharing your story, and for opening up to talk about it. It's something that a lot of people can shy away from, maybe they have some regret or some shame with it.

But it sounds like it's all part of your path that got you to where you want to be. You course corrected, found your way, and I'm just so happy for you. Thank you so much for being here.


Peter:
Thanks, Jessi.


Jessi:
All right, I'll see you next week, everyone. Take care.


End of Interview

As Peter talked about, entering parenthood is a major transition and an incredible motivation to move on from smoking for good.

Our guest from Episode 3, Joe, shared a very similar path. He walked through the painful experience of watching his own smoking parent fall ill, and ultimately used his writing and art to break that generational pattern when he stepped into fatherhood himself.

If Peter's story resonated with you today, go back and listen to Joe’s journey on Episode 3 of You Can Quit Smoking.