After 34 Years and Five Failed Attempts, Zyban Finally Got Me Free

My name is Greg Norris. I’m 57 years old, I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I quit smoking sixteen months ago after thirty-four years and five failed attempts. The thing that finally worked was Zyban, which I’d never even heard of until attempt number six. I’m writing this because I spent years believing I was someone who simply could not quit, and I was wrong.

How It Started and How It Stuck

I was 23 when I became a real smoker. I’d messed around with cigarettes in high school, stealing my mom’s Virginia Slims, but I didn’t get hooked until I started working at a machine shop in Lawrenceville after trade school. The shop floor culture was simple: you worked, you broke, you smoked. Winston Reds were my brand from the start, and they stayed my brand until the end.

I married my wife Diane when I was 27. She smoked too, Marlboro Lights. We were a two-smoker household for fifteen years until she quit in 2007 using nicotine gum. She chewed that gum for about four months and then just stopped. Made it look easy. That was the first time I felt the gap between us on this. She was free and I was still chained to it.

At my peak, I was smoking a pack and a half a day. That’s thirty cigarettes. I’d do the math later and realize I was spending the equivalent of a car payment every month on Winstons. Over 34 years, adjusted for price increases, I spent somewhere north of $100,000 on cigarettes. That number is physically painful to write.

The Five Failures

Let me walk you through them because I think people need to hear that failure is part of the process, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Attempt one, 2003. Cold turkey. I lasted four days. Four miserable, angry, sleepless days. On the fifth morning, I woke up with my jaw clenched so tight I thought I’d cracked a molar. Diane was already quit by then, and my mood was so foul she started sleeping in the spare room. I bought a pack at the Sheetz on my way to work and smoked three before I got there. I felt defeated and relieved at the same time.

Attempt two, 2007. Nicotine patches. NicoDerm CQ, the full step-down program. I made it six weeks, which felt like a victory at the time. The patches controlled the physical withdrawal pretty well. But I was at a Steelers game, first game of the season, and the tailgate atmosphere got me. Standing in the parking lot at Heinz Field (it was still Heinz Field back then), the smell of charcoal and cigarette smoke everywhere. My buddy Paul offered me one and I took it. I told myself it was just one. It wasn’t.

Attempt three, 2011. Nicotine gum, same method Diane used. The gum made me hiccup constantly and gave me heartburn so bad I thought I was having cardiac problems. I stuck with it for three weeks before a bad day at work sent me to the gas station for a pack.

Attempt four, 2016. My doctor put me on Chantix. I took it for two weeks and developed such severe mood changes that Diane sat me down and told me she was scared. I wasn’t suicidal, nothing like that, but I was in this flat, emotionless fog where nothing mattered and nothing felt real. I stopped taking it on my own, which you’re not supposed to do, and went back to smoking.

Attempt five, 2019. Tried vaping as a bridge. Bought a JUUL, then switched to a refillable pod system. All I managed to do was become addicted to both. I’d vape inside and smoke outside. My nicotine intake actually went up. After about two months, I threw the vape in the trash and just kept the cigarettes. That was my lowest point. Five attempts over sixteen years, all failures. I decided I was just a smoker and that’s who I’d always be.

What Changed

In late 2024, I had my annual physical. My blood pressure was 158/95. My doctor, a no-nonsense woman named Dr. Patel, told me she was putting me on blood pressure medication but that the medication was a band-aid if I didn’t quit smoking. She said the combination of my age, my blood pressure, and thirty-plus years of smoking put me at serious risk for a heart attack or stroke.

She asked me about my previous quit attempts and I rattled them off, probably sounding bitter about it. When I mentioned the Chantix reaction, she nodded and said, “There’s another option we haven’t tried. Bupropion. It’s sold as Zyban for smoking cessation. Same drug as Wellbutrin, the antidepressant, but the purpose here is different.”

I’d genuinely never heard of it. All those years, all those attempts, and nobody had mentioned Zyban. She explained that it works on dopamine and norepinephrine, reducing cravings and the reinforcing effects of nicotine. It doesn’t contain nicotine at all. And the mood effects tend to be positive rather than flattening, which was the opposite of what I’d experienced on Chantix.

I figured at 56 years old, with five failures on the board, what did I have to lose?

Starting Zyban

I began the prescription in November 2024. Like Chantix, you start taking it before your quit date, giving the drug a week or two to build up in your system. My quit date was November 25th, the Monday before Thanksgiving. My doctor said picking a date right before a holiday was gutsy. I told her I was tired of waiting for the perfect time because there’s no such thing.

The side effects were mild. Dry mouth was the main one. I kept a water bottle with me constantly and it became a habit in itself, which actually helped because sipping water gave my hands something to do. I had some trouble sleeping the first week, so Dr. Patel had me take both doses earlier in the day, the last one no later than 3 p.m. That fixed it.

Here’s what surprised me: by my quit date, I was already smoking less without really trying. The Zyban was doing something to the craving cycle that I could feel. Cigarettes still tasted the same, but the pull toward them was weaker. The urgency was dialed down. When my quit date arrived, putting them down felt possible in a way it hadn’t before.

Thanksgiving

My quit date was a Monday. Thanksgiving was Thursday. My entire family was coming over. My brother-in-law Frank smokes. My nephew Joey smokes. I knew there would be cigarettes everywhere.

Diane was incredible. She went to Frank and Joey before dinner and told them there would be no smoking on the property that day. Not in the house, not on the porch, not in the driveway. If they needed a cigarette, they could walk to the end of the block. Frank gave me a look across the table like I was ruining his holiday, but he went along with it.

After dinner, I stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes and I could feel the craving building. Full stomach, family noise in the background, the exact scenario where I’d normally step outside for a smoke. I washed every dish by hand that night, even the ones that could have gone in the dishwasher. Diane came in and dried without saying a word. She knew what I was doing.

That Thanksgiving was the hardest day. Not because the craving was the most intense it had ever been, but because it was the first real test. The first proof that I could sit in a triggering situation and not cave. When everyone left that night and I still hadn’t smoked, I sat on the couch and Diane put her hand on my knee and said, “I’m proud of you.” I couldn’t speak for a minute because my throat was too tight.

The Months After

The Zyban made the first three months significantly more manageable than any of my previous attempts. I won’t say the cravings disappeared. They didn’t. But they were muted, like hearing music from another room instead of having it blast in your ear. I could acknowledge the craving and let it pass without it hijacking my entire brain.

I stayed on Zyban for twelve weeks, which is the standard course. When I tapered off in February 2025, I braced for the cravings to come roaring back. They did pick up a bit, but by then I had two months of momentum. I had new habits in place. My morning coffee happened at the kitchen table with the newspaper, not on the porch. My post-dinner routine was a walk around the neighborhood, not a smoke on the steps. I’d rewired enough of the behavioral side that the physical side was manageable.

Sixteen Months Out

I’m writing this in March 2026. I haven’t had a cigarette in sixteen months.

My blood pressure is down to 134/82. Still on the medication, but Dr. Patel says if the trend continues, we might be able to reduce it. My resting heart rate has dropped. The chronic morning cough I’d had for at least fifteen years is completely gone.

I can walk up the hill in Schenley Park without stopping. That might not sound like much, but there was a time when that incline would have me bent over gasping. I went to a Steelers game last fall and stood in the same tailgate lot where I’d relapsed in 2007, surrounded by the same smells, and felt nothing. No pull, no temptation. Just the smell of other people’s addiction.

Diane and I took a trip to the Laurel Highlands in October and hiked Ohiopyle Falls. Seven miles round trip. I made it without once feeling like my lungs were going to give out. She kept looking back at me on the trail with this expression, almost disbelief, like she was seeing someone she hadn’t seen in years. I think she was.

I’ve saved somewhere around $6,000 in sixteen months. The Zyban was covered by insurance except for a $30 copay. The return on investment is absurd when you think about it.

Why Zyban Worked When Everything Else Failed

I’ve thought about this a lot. Part of it is the medication itself. Zyban targets different brain chemistry than Chantix, and for whatever reason, my brain responded to it. The side effect profile was gentler. I didn’t get the emotional flattening or the severe nausea. It just quietly turned down the volume on the cravings.

But I also think I was finally ready. Not in the vague way I’d been “ready” before, but ready in the exhausted, cornered, no-more-excuses way. Five failures had stripped away all my illusions about how I’d quit. I knew cold turkey wouldn’t work for me. I knew patches alone wouldn’t hold. I knew vaping was a trap. Zyban was the right tool at the right time for the right version of me.

To Anyone Who’s Tried and Failed Multiple Times

I know what you’re feeling. You’re feeling like you’ve used up your chances, like you’re one of those people who just can’t quit, like the addiction is stronger than you are. I felt all of that. After five failures, I’d written myself off.

But here’s what I know now: every failure was data. Every relapse taught me something. I learned that cold turkey was too abrupt for me. I learned that patches alone didn’t address the behavioral side. I learned that Chantix didn’t agree with my brain chemistry. I learned that vaping was just a different cage. All of that information pointed me toward Zyban, which I wouldn’t have found if I’d given up after attempt three or four.

If you haven’t tried Zyban, ask your doctor about it. If you have tried it and it didn’t work, try something else. Combine methods. Add counseling. Change your environment. There are more options now than there have ever been.

You are not alone in this. There are people out there who failed five, six, seven times before it clicked. The number of failures doesn’t matter. Only the last attempt matters.

And you won’t know which attempt is the last one until you try again.