Zyban on the Second Try: Felix Mason’s 32-Year Smoking Habit Broken

I’m Felix Mason. I’m fifty-five years old and I live in San Antonio, Texas, where I’ve worked as an electrician for the last twenty-six years. I smoked for thirty-two of my fifty-five years on this planet. Let that number sit with you for a second. Thirty-two years. That’s more than half my life spent inhaling burning tobacco into my lungs.

I quit thirteen months ago with the help of Zyban, which is a prescription medication. It wasn’t my first try with Zyban or my first try at quitting in general. It was my second run at Zyban and my fifth overall attempt at getting clean. But it worked. And I’m going to tell you everything, the good and the bad and the embarrassing parts, because someone reading this needs to hear that quitting can take multiple tries and still end in success.

Where It Started

I was twenty-three in 1994, fresh out of my apprenticeship, starting full-time work as a journeyman electrician. San Antonio in the nineties, every job site was full of smokers. There was no real stigma about it yet. We’d smoke in the truck, smoke on break, smoke while waiting for the inspector. My foreman handed me my first Camel Filter and said, “Here, kid, you look stressed.” And that was it.

Within a year I was buying a pack every day. Camels, then Winston, then I settled on Marlboro Golds for most of my career because they were consistently available everywhere. At my peak in my mid-forties I was doing almost two packs a day. On rough days, sometimes more. An electrician’s work involves a lot of waiting around between tasks, and every wait meant a cigarette.

I got married at thirty-one. My wife Laura smoked when we met but quit before our wedding. She wanted me to quit too, and we had that conversation probably two hundred times over the years. She was patient about it, more patient than I deserved. She never gave me ultimatums. She’d just say, “When you’re ready, I’ll support you,” and leave it alone.

The Failures

Attempt one: 2006. I tried Nicorette gum. The 4mg kind. I chewed it constantly and it gave me terrible heartburn. I’d wake up in the middle of the night with acid crawling up my throat. I also found that the gum satisfied the nicotine craving but not the hand-to-mouth habit, so I’d be chewing gum and still wanting to hold a cigarette. I went back to smoking after eleven days.

Attempt two: 2010. Cold turkey. This was the worst experience of my life up to that point. Three days of migraines so bad I couldn’t work. I called in sick, which I never do. By day four the migraine eased but was replaced by a fog so thick I felt drunk. Couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t hold a conversation, couldn’t read a wiring diagram. On day six I was on a job and almost wired a 240V circuit wrong because I couldn’t focus. That scared me more than anything. An electrician who can’t concentrate is a dead electrician. I went back to smoking and told myself it was a safety decision.

Attempt three: 2015. Patches. NicoDerm CQ Step 1. These worked better than the gum because they provided a steady baseline of nicotine. I made it three weeks, my longest streak at that point. Then Laura’s mother died and we flew to Houston for the funeral and I was standing outside the church and somebody offered me a cigarette and I took it. Grief and stress and the weight of the day crushed every ounce of resolve I had. I was back to a pack a day within the week.

Attempt four: 2020. First try with Zyban. My doctor, Dr. Kaur at Brooke Army Medical Center (I have VA healthcare from a short stint in the Army Reserves in my twenties), prescribed it. Zyban is bupropion, the same drug as Wellbutrin, which is an antidepressant. For smoking cessation it’s marketed as Zyban and the idea is that it reduces cravings and withdrawal symptoms by acting on dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain.

I started the medication and was supposed to keep smoking for the first week while it built up in my system, then quit on day eight. The problem was the timing. I started during the pandemic, working on essential infrastructure projects, stressed out of my mind about the virus and about Laura’s health because she has asthma. By the time quit day came, I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t add another stressor. I kept smoking and stopped taking the Zyban after two weeks. My doctor didn’t judge me. She just said, “We’ll try again when you’re ready.”

The Second Run

In January 2025, I had a pulmonary function test as part of a routine checkup. Dr. Kaur showed me the results. My lung function was about 72% of what it should be for a man my age and size. She showed me a graph comparing my results to a healthy non-smoker and to average predicted decline if I kept smoking. The line dropped fast.

She also showed me a different graph: predicted lung function recovery after quitting. Not full recovery, she was honest about that. Some of the damage at my age and duration was permanent. But significant improvement was still possible. The earlier I quit, the more I’d recover.

I looked at those graphs and thought about the next twenty years. Did I want to spend them with increasingly labored breathing, possibly dragging an oxygen tank around? Or did I want to give my lungs the best shot at recovery they could get?

I told Dr. Kaur I wanted to try Zyban again. She prescribed the same regimen: 150mg once daily for three days, then 150mg twice daily. Quit date set for day eight, which fell on February 1, 2025.

This time was different. I was in a better headspace. The pandemic stress had eased. Laura was healthy. Work was steady but not overwhelming. I also told my crew at work that I was quitting, which I hadn’t done before. My foreman, a guy named Dave who’d quit chewing tobacco five years earlier, said he’d hold me accountable.

The Quit

February 1. I woke up and didn’t smoke. The Zyban had been building in my system for a week and I noticed the difference immediately compared to cold turkey. The craving was there, but it was muffled, like hearing music through a wall instead of standing next to the speaker. I still wanted a cigarette. But the wanting was bearable.

The first week was still uncomfortable. Insomnia hit hard. I’d lie in bed at 11 PM, exhausted, but my brain wouldn’t shut off. I’d finally fall asleep around 1 AM and then wake up at 4 AM and stare at the ceiling. Dr. Kaur told me insomnia is a common Zyban side effect and suggested I take the second dose earlier in the day, no later than 3 PM. That helped some.

My mouth was dry constantly. I carried a water bottle everywhere and went through four or five refills a day. I also had some loss of appetite for the first couple weeks, which was actually fine because most people gain weight when they quit and I could stand to lose a few pounds.

The behavioral cravings were tougher than the chemical ones. The Zyban handled the nicotine need fairly well, but it couldn’t erase thirty-two years of habit. Every time I got in my truck, my hand reached for the pack that wasn’t on the dashboard anymore. Every break at work, I’d walk outside and then remember there was nothing to smoke. I started bringing a bag of beef jerky to job sites because chewing on something helped, and Dave gave me grief about it but in a supportive way.

The Hardest Moment

Week five. A Saturday afternoon. Laura and I were at her sister’s house for a barbecue and nearly everyone there smoked. Her brother-in-law, her sister’s neighbor, a couple of their friends. The backyard looked like a tobacco convention.

I tried to stay inside but the food was outside and the conversation was outside and I couldn’t hide in the kitchen all afternoon without being weird about it. So I went out there and sat at the picnic table surrounded by smoke.

For about twenty minutes I was fine. The Zyban was doing its job, keeping the chemical craving at a low hum. But then Laura’s brother-in-law Rafael lit a fresh Marlboro right next to me and the first drag, that first exhale of smoke, the smell was so familiar that something broke open inside me. It wasn’t even a craving exactly. It was grief. I missed smoking. I missed the ritual, the comfort, the simplicity of it. Light, inhale, exhale, feel okay for a few minutes.

I excused myself and went to the front yard and sat on the porch steps. Laura followed me out and sat next to me without saying anything. I told her I missed it. She said, “I know. But you’re doing it.” We sat there for maybe ten minutes until the feeling faded, and then we went back to the barbecue.

I didn’t smoke. But I won’t pretend it was easy.

Coming Off the Medication

I was on Zyban for twelve weeks, the standard course. Dr. Kaur and I discussed whether to extend it, but my cravings had reduced significantly and I was handling them well, so we agreed to stop on schedule.

The transition off the medication wasn’t dramatic. I tapered for a few days, dropping back to one dose a day, and then stopped. There was a mild increase in cravings for about a week, but nothing approaching those early cold turkey attempts from years before. By this point I was four months into not smoking. The new habits were solid.

I’d replaced the cigarette breaks with short walks around whatever job site I was on. I drank more water than I ever had in my life. I chewed through an embarrassing amount of sunflower seeds and jerky. But I wasn’t smoking.

Thirteen Months

It’s March 2026 now. Over a year since my last cigarette. Here’s where I am.

My follow-up pulmonary function test showed improvement. Not huge, but measurable. My lung function went from 72% to about 79% of predicted. Dr. Kaur said continued improvement is likely over the next year or two. After that, the focus shifts to slowing age-related decline rather than recovering lost function. But 79% feels a whole lot better than the downward trajectory I was on.

I breathe easier. The wheeze that used to keep Laura awake at night is almost gone. I can climb a ladder on a job site without stopping halfway to catch my breath. Small things that add up to a fundamentally different quality of life.

The money is significant. At San Antonio prices, I was spending about $300 a month on Marlboros. Thirteen months times $300 is nearly $4,000. Laura and I used some of that for a trip to Big Bend National Park last fall, which is something I couldn’t have fully enjoyed as a smoker because of all the hiking.

I’ve also noticed my sense of smell has returned, sometimes uncomfortably. I can smell when someone on the crew has been smoking in the work truck and it’s not a pleasant smell anymore. That shift surprised me. I thought tobacco smoke would always smell appealing. It doesn’t. It smells stale and harsh.

Dave at work quit chewing tobacco on his own, partly inspired by watching me quit, which I find incredibly humbling. We’re the two clean ones on the crew now. It’s not much of a club but I’m proud of it.

For Those Still In It

Five attempts. That’s how many it took me. Five tries over nineteen years. If you’re on attempt two or three or seven, please don’t think that means you can’t do it. It means you haven’t found the right combination of timing, method, and support yet.

What made my fifth attempt work when the others didn’t? Three things. First, the Zyban actually functioned this time because I started it when my life was stable enough to handle the process. Timing matters. Second, I told people at work, which created accountability I’d never had before. Third, I had those lung function test results staring me in the face with cold, objective numbers showing exactly what smoking was doing to me.

If you’ve tried Zyban or Chantix or patches or gum and they didn’t work the first time, try again when your circumstances are better. The medication didn’t fail. The timing wasn’t right.

If you’ve never tried medication, talk to your doctor. I spent fourteen years trying to quit through willpower and patches and gum before a prescription drug gave me the edge I needed. There’s no shame in that. If you had an infection, you’d take an antibiotic. Nicotine addiction is a medical condition and there’s medical treatment for it.

You are not alone in this. Every person who’s quit after decades of smoking had a moment when they thought it was impossible. I had that moment multiple times. And yet here I am, thirteen months clean, breathing easier, smelling the world for the first time in thirty-two years.

You can get here too. It might not happen on the first try. It might not happen on the fourth. But it can happen. I’m living proof.