June 20, 2026
For the first time in 43 years, I woke up on June 20, 2016 knowing that it would be the first day of my life without tobacco in it. I had made the choice, “once and for all,” many times before, but this time was different—I actually meant it.
As a pack-a-day smoker for 43 years, I knew it was either them or me and was now worried that I’d, perhaps, already waited too long.
Despite annual attempts to quit, life’s stresses and my learned response to them—lighting another cigarette—kept bringing me back. Each time I failed, I’d light up with my head hung low, guilt riding high in my chest and my self-worth on the chopping block after succumbing to their wicked enticement yet again.
I was sick and tired of trying and failing. I was sick and tired of smoking and smelling like a stale ashtray all the time. I was scared of dying an untimely, horrible death—gasping for air while my heart gave out.
The last time I smoked, I sat on the low patio wall outside the garage of the house I’d just moved into and inhaled what I hoped would be my final cigarette. I felt like an automaton serving his master, satisfying a craving that had become more annoying than pleasurable. I inhaled and exhaled that toxic smoke telling myself that this was the last time, but with more conviction than ever.
Sitting on that hard cement wall, I smelled the off-gas from a two-liter bottle one-third full of cigarette butts swirling in liquified ash-water. It looked like lung cancer in a bottle and smelled like death itself. Iconic of things that were still to come lest I pay attention to the warning right in front of my nose.
It was more than time to quit.
My first day tobacco free day was Father’s day, June 20, 2016. That day, I gave myself the gift of health and longevity and I’ve never looked back.
It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
I already knew what I was in for. I’d already tried so many times, I was intimate with the pangs of withdrawal from nicotine 30 hours into stopping.
The first week was the worst. Initially, it was hour by hour. Then it became morning, afternoon, and evening—manageable blocks of time. giving myself pep-talks along the way about how strong I was and how I could do this. I kept focusing on the fact that I wasn’t a smoker when I was born, and the knowledge that smoking would shorten my life–and already had.
So, I continued taking baby steps making small, achievable goals that became easier to reach. When that happened, I’d extend the next goal a little farther.
I had done all of these things before, apparently without the necessary conviction because this time it worked.
I knew from experience that I couldn’t allow myself even a single drag. Every single time I’d done that before, it had yielded the same result: me staying a smoker or going back to smoking if I’d been trying to quit.
After all the nicotine patches of different doses for weeks at a time, nicotine lozenges that made me lose my voice or made my voice sound like Marlon Brando in the Godfather, all the attempts to cut back, allocating only so many cigarettes for the day, leaving the rest of the pack at home and all the other gimmicks to quit. In the end, COLD TURKEY WAS THE WAY FOR ME.
Looking back, I believe that if a person is truly ready to quit nicotine, then they must “pay the piper” for passing across the bridge to the non-addicted side. It’s simply the price one must pay, like a rite of passage. If you are strong enough to manage yourself even through withdrawal from a powerfully addictive drug without caving in, then it’s time. You have conquered your own demon. You have slayed your dragon.
Over the years, I’ve encountered challenges: people testing me by offering me a cigarette or smoking a lot around me, making sure to leave the pack sitting right there on the table in front of me—all by people who knew me already and knew that I was trying to quit.
I can no longer recall exactly when I knew I’d quit for good, but I do remember it was when a car drove by my house while I was gardening. I was a solid fifty feet back from the road but after a delay of about 15 seconds, I smelled the cigarette smoke and it smelled so awful that I couldn’t believe I had once enjoyed it.
Now, I can’t stand the smell of cigars, cigarettes, or even pipe smoke, which I formerly enjoyed.
My health has improved tremendously. I can recover from oxygen deprivation or high demand much faster now, and being able to breathe so much easier and deeply gives me a lot more energy.
Having a lot more energy became the springboard to working out with weight machines and doing abdominal core strengthening and a lot more exercising than I used to do. Today, at 67 years old, I’ve lost 40 pounds and am in the best shape and health of my life.
Ten years later, I still remember that final cigarette, the smell of that bottle full of soggy cigarette butts, and the fear that if I didn’t stop, tobacco would eventually win.
It didn’t.
I’m still here.
And that’s exactly the point.
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