How I Used Nicotine Gum at My Office Job Without Anyone Knowing

I’m Sarah Kim. I’m 29 years old and I live in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. I work at a tech startup in Culver City as a product designer. I quit smoking nine months ago using nicotine gum, and to this day, most of the people I work with have no idea I was ever a smoker. That was by design. And I want to explain why the discretion of nicotine gum was just as important to me as the nicotine itself.

I wasn’t always a smoker. That’s important context. I grew up in Irvine in a Korean American household where smoking was basically the worst thing you could do. My mom is a retired nurse. My dad has never smoked a day in his life. If they had ever found out I was smoking, the disappointment would have been nuclear. I’m not exaggerating. It would have been a family crisis.

I started smoking during COVID. Specifically, during the second lockdown in the winter of 2020-2021. I was 24, living alone in a studio apartment in Koreatown, working remotely for a different company at the time. I was lonely and anxious and honestly a little depressed. One of my friends, this girl Emma I knew from college, was a smoker. She came over one night and we were sitting on my tiny balcony drinking wine and she offered me one. American Spirit yellow. I took it because I was bored and a little drunk and thought, why not. I’m an adult. I can have one cigarette.

You can probably guess what happened next. One became two. Two became “only when I’m drinking.” “Only when I’m drinking” became “only when I’m stressed.” “Only when I’m stressed” became every day, multiple times a day. By 2022, I was smoking about half a pack a day of American Spirit yellows. Not as heavy as some people, but enough that it was a real addiction. Enough that I’d get antsy and irritable if I went more than a few hours without one. Enough that I was spending $15 a day on cigarettes in LA, which adds up fast when you’re also paying $1,800 a month in rent.

Here’s the part that made my smoking different from a lot of people’s stories. I was deeply, profoundly ashamed of it. Not ashamed in a vague, I-know-this-is-bad-for-me way. Ashamed in a visceral, gut-level way that shaped how I hid it. I never smoked in front of coworkers. I never smoked in front of my parents. I barely smoked in front of friends unless they were smokers too. I was a closet smoker. I’d go to my car on my lunch break and smoke in the parking structure with the windows cracked. I’d smoke on my balcony at home, always with the door closed. I carried a mini bottle of Bath and Body Works hand sanitizer and a travel-size Febreze in my purse at all times.

The shame was complicated. Part of it was cultural. In my family, in my community, smoking was associated with failure, with lack of discipline. My mom would have been heartbroken. Part of it was generational. I’m a millennial, almost Gen Z. My generation grew up with the anti-smoking campaigns. We were the D.A.R.E. generation, the Truth campaign generation. We were supposed to be the ones who knew better. Smoking in your late twenties in 2025 felt like showing up to work with a flip phone. People didn’t understand it.

And part of it was professional. I work in tech. In the LA tech scene. My coworkers do yoga at lunch. They drink oat milk lattes and take adaptogenic supplements and talk about their Peloton stats. The idea of going outside and lighting a cigarette would have been so out of place in that environment. I wasn’t worried about getting fired or anything. I was worried about the judgment. The subtle shift in how people perceive you. I’d seen it happen. A girl at my previous company was a smoker and people talked about it behind her back. Not meanly, but in that pitying way. “I can’t believe she smokes.” I didn’t want to be that person.

So when I decided to quit, discretion was everything. I needed a method that I could use at my desk, in meetings, at company events, without anyone knowing. The patch was an option, but it shows. I wear short sleeves and tank tops most of the year in LA. A nicotine patch on my arm would have been visible. Vaping was out of the question. Way too conspicuous. Prescription drugs like Chantix felt like overkill for my level of smoking, and I’d read about the side effects and wasn’t comfortable.

Nicotine gum was perfect. Everyone chews gum. It’s the most normal, invisible habit in the world. Nobody looks at someone chewing gum and thinks, “Oh, they must be quitting smoking.” They think nothing. It’s gum.

I started with Nicorette 2mg, the coated cinnamon surge flavor. My doctor said 2mg was probably fine since I was at about half a pack a day. She walked me through the chew and park technique, which I practiced at home before I brought it to work. Chew a few times, then park it between your cheek and gum. The key was not to sit there chomping on it like a cow, which would draw attention. You chew it a little, park it, let it sit. From the outside, it looks like you don’t even have gum in your mouth.

My quit date was June 15th, 2025. A Sunday. I spent the weekend at home, getting used to the gum, letting myself adjust before I had to function at work. By Monday, I had the technique down well enough to be subtle about it.

That first week at work was surreal. I was sitting at my desk, laptop open, Slack messages coming in, a piece of Nicorette parked in my cheek, and nobody knew I was in the middle of quitting smoking. My hands were a little shaky sometimes. I was more irritable than usual. But I could play it off as being tired or having too much coffee. The gum was working behind the scenes, slowly releasing nicotine through my cheek, keeping the worst of the cravings at bay.

The hardest part of the workday was after lunch. I used to leave the building and smoke in the parking structure between 1 and 1:30 every day. That was my post-lunch cigarette, and it was one of the most satisfying ones of the day. Something about a full stomach and a cigarette together. On my first Monday without it, I went to the parking structure out of pure muscle memory. Got in my car. Sat there. Then I realized I didn’t have cigarettes and I wasn’t going to buy any. I popped a piece of gum, sat in my car for ten minutes, and went back inside. I did that for the first two weeks. Went to my car, sat there, chewed gum. Eventually I stopped needing to go to the car at all. I’d just have a piece at my desk and keep working.

There were a few close calls with people at work. Once, my manager Dylan was standing behind me when I opened my desk drawer and he saw the box of Nicorette. He didn’t say anything, but I saw him glance at it. I was mortified. For about an hour I was convinced he was going to bring it up. He never did. Maybe he didn’t register what it was. Maybe he did and was respectful enough not to mention it. Either way, after that I started keeping the gum in a small zipper pouch in my purse instead of in my desk. Less visible.

Another time, I was in a meeting and had a piece parked in my cheek and someone asked me a direct question. I had to talk with the gum in there. I managed it fine, but for a second I was paranoid that my words sounded slightly off, like when you talk with food in your mouth. Nobody reacted. I was probably overthinking it. But that’s what being a secret smoker turned secret quitter is like. You’re always monitoring how you appear to other people.

The social aspects of work were tricky. My company does these happy hours every other Thursday at a bar near the office. There’s a patio. People drink. And in LA, there’s always that one person who pulls out a cigarette at a bar, even in 2025. The smell would hit me and the craving would surge. I’d excuse myself to the bathroom, chew a fresh piece of gum in a stall, collect myself, and go back. It sounds pathetic when I write it out. But it worked.

My closest friend at work is this girl Priya. She’s on the engineering team. We eat lunch together most days. Around month two, I told her. Not because she asked, but because I needed one person at work to know. I needed someone to cover for me if I was having a bad day, or to understand if I was extra snappy. Her reaction was exactly what I was afraid of from everyone else. Her eyes went wide and she said, “You smoke? I mean, you smoked?” The past tense was telling. She immediately reframed it as something I used to do rather than something I am. That was generous of her. She’s been great about it since. She knows about the gum and she’s never brought it up to anyone.

The gum itself. Let me talk about the experience of it. The Cinnamon Surge flavor is strong at first, almost spicy. It hits your tongue and there’s a definite tingle, which is the nicotine. You chew it slowly, maybe five or six chews, and then park it. The tingle moves to wherever you park it, which is weird the first few times. Like a mild burning sensation on your gums. Not painful, just noticeable. After a few days, you stop noticing it. The flavor lasts about 30 minutes if you chew and park correctly, which was usually enough to get me through a craving.

I was going through about 10 pieces a day in the first month. By month two, about 7. By month four, I was down to 4 or 5, mostly tied to specific triggers. Morning coffee, after lunch, late afternoon slump, and evening after dinner. By month six, I was at 2 a day. By month eight, I was using maybe one piece every other day, more out of habit than need.

The cost was significant. A box of Nicorette 2mg cinnamon, 100 pieces, was about $45 at Target. In the first two months, I was going through about one box every ten days. It was actually comparable to what I’d been spending on American Spirits. But as I tapered, the cost dropped. By month five or six, a single box was lasting me almost a month.

The physical improvements came gradually. My skin got better. I’ve always been meticulous about skincare, which was part of the cognitive dissonance of being a smoker. I’d do a ten-step routine at night and then go smoke a cigarette on the balcony. The hypocrisy was not lost on me. After quitting, my skin had this glow that no serum could replicate. My aesthetician noticed at my next facial and I just said, “New vitamin C serum.” I wasn’t ready to tell her the truth either.

My cardio improved. I go to Barry’s Bootcamp twice a week and for years I’d been struggling with the treadmill portions. I’d attributed it to just not being a runner. Turns out, my lungs were compromised from smoking. By month three of being smoke-free, I was keeping up with the treadmill in a way I never had before. My instructor commented on it. I shrugged and said I’d been working on my endurance. Technically true.

My sense of smell came back with a vengeance. LA smells like a lot of things. Jasmine, exhaust, tacos from the truck on my corner, the ocean when the wind blows right. I’d been numbing all of that for years. Getting it back was like getting a new sense. It was overwhelming at first, especially the bad smells. The guy in the elevator at my building who wears too much cologne. The dumpster behind the office. But the good smells made it worth it. My morning coffee smelled richer. My girlfriend’s perfume smelled different, better, more layered.

I should mention that. My girlfriend, Naomi. She never knew I smoked. We started dating about three months before I quit, and by that point I was so good at hiding it that she had no idea. The hand sanitizer, the gum (even before Nicorette, I was always chewing gum to mask the smell), the Febreze. She didn’t know. I quit partly for her, because I knew if the relationship got more serious she’d eventually find out, and I didn’t want that conversation. I still haven’t told her I used to smoke. I know I probably should. But the window for that revelation feels like it’s closed. We’ve been together over a year now. Telling her now would raise more questions than it answers.

To anyone out there who is a closet smoker, who is ashamed of their habit and doesn’t want the world to know, nicotine gum is your friend. It works. It’s invisible. You can use it at your desk, in a meeting, at a party, on a date, and nobody will know unless you tell them. The discretion isn’t just a nice bonus. For people like me, it was essential. It was the reason I chose gum over every other method, and it’s the reason I was able to quit without turning my quitting into a public spectacle.

I’m Sarah Kim. I’m 29. I’m nine months without a cigarette. Most people in my life don’t know I ever smoked. Nicotine gum let me quit on my own terms, on my own timeline, without anyone’s pity or judgment. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.