I smoked my first cigarette when I was 10. My parents gave me permission to smoke when I was 13. And I’m pretty certain that I was hooked before I was 15.
I quit for the first time when I was 20, but I relapsed pretty quickly, and spent the next 25 years quitting and relapsing more times than I can count.
I was diagnosed with an advanced case of emphysema at 45.
At that point, I’d already lost a third of both of my lungs to the disease, putting an end to my music career: I no longer had the lung capacity to sing or play trombone at a professional level.
That was my wake-up call. I knew I had to figure out how to quit and stay quit for good, or I’d face a slow, painful death.
When I got home from the doctor’s office after hearing that diagnosis, I googled “emphysema.” I wanted to know everything I could about this disease that would kill me if I let it.
One of the first results was the American Lung Association’s website, I clicked through, and while reading about emphysema, I noticed a link to their Freedom From Smoking Online program.