Ann’s Story

Recovery Triumph: Cigarettes

I started smoking when I was 15. I smoked a pack a day through college and pregnancy with my daughter. I tried to quit many times, but there was always a “crisis” that would start me smoking again.

Then one day, when my husband, daughter, and I were living in Amsterdam, we saw a man strung out on drugs. He frightened my daughter. But she was at a wonderful age at which she was curious about everything. She wanted to know all about the drugs he was taking. How did they differ from the drugs she took as an asthmatic? As we pulled into our garage, she suddenly whipped around, looked me square in the eye, and asked, “Mommy, how are the drugs he’s taking different from the cigarettes you smoke?” My husband, who doesn’t smoke, nearly crashed the car waiting for my answer. At that moment I admitted I was an addict and that I didn’t want to be one.

I had tried to quit smoking before, so I knew what could set me back. I started a plan without any deadline in mind. I would put off for one hour the time when I could have my first cigarette. When I was ready, I would push it one hour later. No matter what happened during that time, no matter what crisis occurred, I couldn’t smoke. In the beginning it was eight in the morning, then nine, then ten.

During one crisis, just as I was leaving for a drive from Hartford, Connecticut, to Washington, DC, I caught my bumper in the automatic door track of our garage. It wasn’t enough damage to cancel the trip, but it was still upsetting. I was facing an eight-hour car trip and I couldn’t smoke until five that evening! But I made it without a cigarette.

The end came when it was nine in the evening before I could smoke. At that point, I had only three cigarettes left. I decided I would smoke those, and that would be it. I wasn’t going to buy another pack. And I never have. That was 30 years ago.

Today it’s hard to imagine that I ever smoked. I’m so thankful my daughter asked me the question she did, because that’s what started me on my road to recovery.

—Ann H.