When Was the Last Time You Did Something for the First Time (In Recovery)?

August 09, 2022

GOING THE DISTANCE…Did you ever start training for a marathon just over two weeks after your last cigarette? Yeah…that’s not easy. But let’s back it up a bit…

After abstaining from alcohol, marijuana, and any other substance that might take my mind on a road trip, it started to bother me that I was still a smoker. And let’s be clear, I wasn’t just a smoker…I was a hard-core, chain-smoking, can’t make it 30 minutes, everyone is waiting outside the front door because I’m having a smoke before we go inside this building, kind of smoker. Indeed, it was incredible how sharply my transition from nonsmoker to smoker transpired. I watched (and second-hand inhaled) my grandmother’s addiction with disdain throughout my childhood. When she moved from an apartment to an assisted living facility, my mom and I cleaned her apartment.

I can distinctly remember being horrified by the thick coating of tar that encased every exposed surface. How could someone put that nastiness in their lungs? Fast forward to my sophomore year of college. I adored my theory professor (he was that super gay but refined and hip dude that you just knew had his life totally together). I would work on homework at the coffee shop and regularly get distracted watching him take a clove out of a fancy little tin and light it with nonchalant flair. One day, without much thought or care, I found my feet taking me to the local corner shop and asking for a pack of cigarettes. “What kind?” they asked. “I don’t care,” I mustered with as much confidence and authority as I could extract (not at all understanding that an actual smoker did care, she would care very much about getting her usual brand). He pushed a pack of Kamel Red Lights across the counter and charged me whatever they cost on that day in New York (somewhere in the $3 range…I know, right?!)

I didn’t understand the consequences of my noncommittal request at the time, but now I can imagine he chose the most expensive pack he had in stock. When I walked outside, I didn’t shove the pack into my purse to save for a private experimental moment later in the day. I didn’t pocket it and fantasized about the following social situation when I could sneakily pull it out and display my newly acquired hipster persona. I plopped clumsily on the curb and removed a cigarette with fervent desperation that eerily foreshadowed days with alcohol. (Disclaimer: that professor would be horrified to know that he was a part of the story that led to my first cigarette purchase – but youth are impressionable people – don’t kid yourselves!)

I don’t know how I went from a middle school nerd who was disgusted by my grandmother’s foul habits to a young woman (still a nerd) who thought it would be a good idea to try a smoke. What I do know… As soon as those chemicals hit my lungs, I was hooked. No coughing or sputtering. No spitting or smacking my lips with repulsion at the taste. I finished that cigarette like a pro and promptly lit another. I polished off that pack that day (I’m not joking) and went back to buy another in the morning. I was a pack-a-day smoker from the first day I tried a cigarette.

So, one – two – skip a few – I’m 35 years old, have been sober from alcohol for 5 years, and cannot seem to stop the smokes. Support systems often encourage you to continue smoking when you’re in early recovery. Part of this is cultural, born of the fact that early mutual aid groups evolved in an era when the health consequences of smoking were barely understood and not household knowledge.

Another factor is the palpable fear of new recoverees that they literally can’t survive if you take away ALL of their vices at once. This has been proven to be hogwash, with evidence supporting that people have the most success in BOTH substance and cigarette abstinence when they quit both at the same time (Cigarette Smoking Increases the Likelihood of Drug Use Relapse | National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) (nih.gov)). But I got swept up in the malarky with the rest of them. I huddled outside with my smoking clique before and after 12-step meetings, happily clinging to the chemical coping tool, and the ready-made social subgroup that being a smoker offered. That was early in the journey, though.

As time passed, an internal conflict arose – one where questions began tearing at my conscience with irritating persistence. Am I sober if I’m using cigarettes to avoid my feelings? Does recovery mean abstinence from alcohol, or is it more a path to uncover and resolve the underlying issue from whence the symptomatic behavior originated? “Old-timers” in recovery prodded these thoughts with their philosophical musings. “The disease is a dis-ease with life.” The concept that recovery is a perpetual game of whack-a-mole, forever slamming down the most destructive behavior to discover a new or returning behavior right at its heels, is a popular one (which I have personally experienced, have observed in countless others, and fully endorse).

The other maddening part of being a smoker was the internal shame fanned by the external judgment associated with being a mother. Nothing is more unbearable than the conflict between a most instinctual calling to protect your child and the utter powerlessness of a destructive and harmful addiction. In the beginning, I tried; God knows I tried to have my cake and eat it too. Have a smoke, change clothes, feed the baby, have a smoke, change clothes, diaper swap, have a smoke, change clothes…rinse, wash, repeat. Eventually, it’s too impractical -and even the wails of a hungry baby cannot outcry the beckoning of addiction. Even though cigarettes were winning the battle hourly and daily, logic was lurking somewhere in the deep bowels of my brain. My baby wasn’t going anywhere, and the constant angst was untenable; something had to give.

Over the next several years, I went through phases of attempting to quit and then resigning myself to living as a smoker, over and over and over again. My quit attempts were unscientific, reasonably spontaneous, and predictably disastrous.

Presenting…my unabashed list of completely non-evidence-based forms of tobacco cessation:

  1. Cold turkey

  2. With medication (actually, this one IS evidence-based)

  3. Medicated turkey (smoking while on the patch – pretty useless)

  4. Chewing on Toothpicks

  5. Sucking on mints or hard candy (to this day, I keep Werther’s in my purse like a grandmother)

  6. Throwing the pack out the car window (horrible for the environment and I’d stop at the next gas station for another pack anyway…thus, relatively expensive to boot).

  7. Throwing the pack away at night and swearing them off forever (I inevitably fished them out in the morning, even if covered in coffee grounds or raw egg).

  8. Throwing the pack away at night, tying up the bag and tossing it in the garbage dumpster, and swearing them off forever (this resulted in dumpster diving, even if covered in other people’s coffee grounds and raw egg).

  9. Soaking the pack in water, throwing it away, tying up the bag, tossing the bag in the dumpster, and swearing them off forever (most unpleasant frantic arousals at 5am and panicked drives to the closest gas station to buy a pack).

  10. Electronic cigarettes, but only outside.

  11. Electronic cigarettes, ok inside, but no tobacco.

  12. Ok tobacco too, but only outside, and electronic cigarettes inside (which was basically nonstop nicotine and the most I had ever inhaled in my life).

  13. Booking a hermitage in a nunnery for my birthday weekend, having family drop me off without tobacco or nicotine in any form, and spending 48 hours praying, meditating, and journaling about my desire and need to quit (I’ve had plenty of people relate to many of my quit attempts, but I have yet to hear someone match this one).

  14. Any conceivable combination of any number of the above methods.

You get the picture…  Sometimes I couldn’t make it past that morning withdrawal-induced desperation. Other times I held on for a few days before a trigger sent me sailing back into the comfort of the Kamel.  In the autumn of 2013, I was enjoying a few days of abstinence when the desire to get more spiritually involved struck me hard. I decided to visit three churches on one Sunday to give them a ‘try-out,’ as it were (they all had different service times). The last one on my schedule was a bit outside my comfort zone and not the type of church I grew up attending, but I gave it a shot. Whether it was the incredibly sweet voice of the music minister, whose acoustic accompaniment to a grand piano reminded me of my deceased father’s baritone crooning…. or my sloppy wave of emotions that spilled into my lap without chemical Band-Aids like the inexorable slosh of a toddler’s sippy cup, I found myself silently crying in the corner of the church. The tears were both hard and soft. Aching and relieving. I went back to that church the following week and the next.

On the third Sunday, I sat in my seat perusing the program before the opening of worship (by now sitting on the main floor instead of hiding in the upper corner). A group of folks with orange jerseys on the opposite side of the Sanctuary caught my eye. When worship began, the orange bunch were called up and introduced as a group of regular members who ran marathons and raised funds for clean water in third-world countries. As I half-listened to their little speech (which was not intended for me), a loud and clear male voice behind me spoke directly into my ear, “YOU WILL DO THAT.” I whipped my head around but found no one in the row behind me or the row behind that one. Now, people, that voice was speaking RIGHT into my ear (and NO, I wasn’t using any hallucinogens).

I will do what? Run a marathon? I’m pretty sure I laughed out loud. What an absurd thought! I hadn’t run anything in my life. Sure, I played sports when I was a kid, but I was the clean-up batter, the center in basketball only because I was the gawkily tall girl who could win the opening tip (and then I watched everyone else madly run after the ball). I. Did. Not. Run. I sat during the rest of the service, disturbed by whatever had just happened to me. After the service was over, I got up to leave and, with my head down in thought, began shuffling out. But instead of finding myself outside near my car, I picked my head up and found myself surrounded by that athletic Oompa-Loompas in the Sanctuary! I had mindlessly walked over to them. Now I was signing a piece of paper they handed me! What am I doing?! Stop it, Megan! I swear my body had a mind of its own.

I spent the next 15 minutes sitting and listening to how I was going to train 3-4 days per week on my own, slowly increasing the intensity of my runs and attending a weekend long runs with the group. Full-tilt training would begin in the spring, and we would run the Chicago Marathon in 2014. While we trained, we would raise funds and bring awareness to the issue of clean water in other nations. Somehow, I began to accept what I was doing and even own this goal. Having an ‘alcoholic’ mindset (or, in more clinically acceptable terms nowadays – the tendency to compensate for my under-developed self-worth through achievement and recognition) didn’t hurt either. I went home and promptly told my husband (at the time) that I was going to run the Chicago Marathon. To his credit, I don’t believe he laughed out loud. I remember him encouraging me to start with a more realistic goal, to which I probably said something like, “eh, I can do it.”

Remember now; I didn’t run. I mean it too. I started my ‘training’ by walking on a treadmill for 2 minutes and “running” (insert awkwardly jogging) for 30 seconds. I could manage this trade-off for about a 12-minute set in the beginning. I won’t bore you with the details of the training calendar from there on out. I will tell you that it was hard, very hard. When I couldn’t imagine running another 5 seconds, I reminded myself how far I had come. When I had a craving for a cigarette, I realized how crushed I would be for ruining mygoal and letting down the rest of the team. During this period, I fundraised, posted on social media, and talked about the marathon with others – not only did it help bring clean water to people in need, but there was concrete accountability in the fact that everyone I knew (and didn’t know) was aware of my goal.

October 12, 2014, came, and so did the Chicago Marathon. I didn’t know what was going to happen on the course, but I knew two things as of that morning – I had done the very best with what I had, and I had not had a cigarette in over ten months – already two monumental achievements that couldn’t be taken away from me. I hopped on the bus at 4 am with the rest of my team, and off we rode to Lake Shore Drive.

The experience is indescribable. Thousands of people lining the streets to watch as their family, friends, coworkers, church fellows, neighbors, and the world’s most impressive athletes crowded into the closed traffic lanes (shutting down Chicago’s traffic along the lake is some miracle unto itself). Of course, I was in the very back, waiting my turn in one of the slowest starting corrals, but it gave me time to soak in the wonder of it all. It also gave me time to thank myself for the blessing I had received and didn’t understand why. What made me sign my name on that sheet in church back in December? Why did I cry, yell, suffer, plead, and fail to quit smoking for 10-plus years….and then day, one attempt stuck? I didn’t know the answers (I still don’t know the answers).

Finally, my group was walking forward. Then we were briskly walking, realizing it must be our turn to go. Then our feet were lifting off, and we were jogging. Then I was running a marathon—my God, people. I, Megan, the woman who at one point was passing out onto the garage floor after drinking a fifth of vodka and chain-smoking cigarettes for hours, was running the mother-loving Chicago Marathon! I ran 15 entire miles before I slowed to a walking break. I had never gone that far without walking before. I ran by my mom and sister on the north side, giving them daily hugs and smiles.

I ran through the excitement wearing off, and the neighborhoods where crowds thinned and boredom crept in. I ran through the chafing, swelling, and constant anxiety of balancing the need for fuel against the fear of gastrointestinal outbursts. I ran while my husband was in the budding phase of an affair with another woman (apparently, I had become too healthy in my recovery, and he needed another mentally sick partner to feed his need to feel like a protector or whatever). I ran to the finish line, and when I approached the nameless announcer who would say my name into the microphone. In contrast, some other nameless dude pointed a camera at me so his nameless photography company could sting me with over-priced memoirs of my achievement; I threw my arms in the air with utter pride and joy.

That evening, my family, friends, and I dined on all the carbs in the universe at our favorite Greektown restaurant…and my journey of celebrating health and wholeness in recovery took a Neil Armstrong-sized to leap forward. It wasn’t long until I discovered the awesomeness of Tough Mudders, but that, my fine friends, is a story for another day.

Want to check out some of the world’s coolest marathons?  Check out this list: The world’s best marathons: 10 great races over 26.2 miles | Advnture

Looking for resources to help you on your tobacco/nicotine recovery journey? Here are some decent ones…

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