Martin Walsh: Zyban and Therapy Helped Me Quit After 11 Years

I’ll be straight with you: I never thought I’d be the guy writing one of these. I’m thirty-four, I live in Boston, I work in IT for a financial services company, and up until twenty months ago, I smoked a pack of American Spirits every single day. I was the guy standing outside the office building in January, in a hoodie because I didn’t want to bother putting on a real coat, freezing my hands off on Devonshire Street because I couldn’t go ninety minutes without nicotine. I thought that was just who I was.

I was wrong.

Starting Young, Quitting Hard

I started at twenty-three, which I know isn’t that young, but it felt young because all my friends from college had already been smoking for years. I’d resisted through high school, resisted through four years at UMass Amherst, and then I moved to Boston for my first real job and started hanging out with a group of guys who all smoked. It was social. We’d go to the bars on Boylston Street and everyone would step outside for a smoke, and I didn’t want to sit alone at the table, so I bummed one. Then I bummed another. Then I bought my own pack and told myself it was just for weekends.

American Spirit yellows. I liked that they burned slower. I liked the little Native American logo on the pack. I told myself they were “natural” and “additive-free” like that somehow made them healthy. They’re not healthy. They’re cigarettes. But I was twenty-three and stupid and invincible.

By twenty-five I was fully hooked. A pack a day, sometimes more when I was out drinking. I smoked through my twenties like it was nothing. Smoked through two relationships, both of which ended partly because of smoking. My ex-girlfriend Claire told me point-blank, “I’m not going to watch you kill yourself.” I told her she was being dramatic. She left.

Three Failed Attempts

My first attempt was at twenty-eight. I tried cold turkey because I thought I was tough enough. I’d read all these articles about how nicotine leaves your system in three days and after that it’s just habit. What those articles don’t tell you is that three days of nicotine withdrawal feels like three weeks, and the “just habit” part after that is a relentless, grinding mental battle that never seems to let up. I lasted five days. I snapped at my boss in a meeting and nearly got written up, and I went outside and smoked two cigarettes back to back and felt the world click back into place. That relief, that instant calm, is the most insidious thing about nicotine. It creates the problem and then sells you the solution.

Second attempt, twenty-nine. I tried vaping with a SMOK device my buddy gave me. I went to one of those vape shops on Newbury Street and the guy behind the counter set me up with a 6mg juice. It was fine, I guess. I didn’t smoke cigarettes for about six weeks. But I was hitting the vape constantly, I mean constantly, and when the device broke one night and the vape shop was closed, I walked to the CVS on Cambridge Street and bought a pack of American Spirits without even hesitating. Back to square one.

Third attempt, thirty-one. Nicotine patches, Nicoderm CQ. These actually worked for the physical cravings, but nobody dealt with my head. The cravings would hit and I’d have the patch on, so my body was getting nicotine, but my hands didn’t know what to do. My mouth didn’t know what to do. The oral fixation, the ritual of stepping outside, the deep inhale, the patch doesn’t replace any of that. I made it three weeks before a particularly bad day at work sent me to the convenience store on my lunch break.

Each failure made the next attempt feel more pointless. By thirty-two, I’d accepted that I was a smoker. I’d be a smoker forever. That thought was actually sort of peaceful, in a dark way. I stopped fighting it and just smoked.

What Changed

In early 2025, my company switched health insurance plans and the new plan covered smoking cessation programs at 100%. No copay, no deductible. My new primary care doctor, Dr. Shin at Mass General, brought it up at my annual physical. She didn’t lecture me. She just said, “Your insurance now covers Zyban and six sessions of behavioral therapy with a cessation specialist. Would you like a referral?”

I don’t know why I said yes. Maybe because it was free and I figured I had nothing to lose. Maybe because I’d just turned thirty-four and the number hit me wrong. Maybe because I’d been getting winded walking up the stairs to my third-floor apartment in Somerville and I was thirty-four years old. Thirty-four-year-olds shouldn’t be winded by stairs.

Dr. Shin prescribed Zyban, which is bupropion, the same drug as the antidepressant Wellbutrin but marketed specifically for smoking cessation. You start taking it while you’re still smoking, which felt counterintuitive. She told me to pick a quit date two weeks out and keep smoking until then while the medication built up in my system.

The first week on Zyban, I felt a little off. Dry mouth, some trouble sleeping, a slight buzzy feeling in my head. Nothing severe. By the second week, something strange happened: cigarettes started tasting bad. Not metallic like people describe with Chantix, just sort of flat and unsatisfying. I’d light one and take two drags and think, “Why am I doing this?” That had never happened to me before.

The Therapist

Simultaneously, I started seeing a behavioral therapist named Cathy who specialized in addiction. I’ll be honest, I was skeptical. I’m a guy who works in IT. I troubleshoot servers and write scripts. The idea of sitting in an office talking about my feelings around cigarettes seemed ridiculous.

But Cathy wasn’t about feelings, not in the way I expected. She was practical. She had me map out every cigarette I smoked for a week: what time, where, what I was doing, what I was feeling. We identified my triggers. Mine were stress at work, boredom, and alcohol. She gave me specific replacement behaviors for each one. For stress: a two-minute breathing exercise that I could do at my desk. For boredom: keep a rubber band on my wrist and snap it, which sounds stupid but actually interrupts the craving pattern. For alcohol: switch to club soda with lime for the first three months, because alcohol lowers your inhibitions and makes it ten times harder to say no to a cigarette.

She also helped me understand something that none of my previous attempts had addressed: I smoked because it was my only coping mechanism. I’d never learned any other way to deal with stress or anxiety or even just the need for a break during the workday. The cigarette wasn’t just nicotine delivery. It was my excuse to step away, to breathe, to be alone for five minutes. Cathy helped me find other ways to get those things.

My Quit Day

I quit on August 15th, 2024. I’d been on Zyban for two weeks. I’d had four sessions with Cathy. I smoked my last cigarette the night before, on the fire escape of my apartment, looking out at the Somerville skyline. I didn’t make it ceremonial. I just smoked it, stubbed it out, and threw the rest of the pack in the dumpster behind my building.

The first three days were hard but not as hard as my cold turkey attempt. The Zyban was taking the edge off the physical withdrawal. The cravings came, but they were at maybe 60% intensity instead of 100%. And when they hit, I had Cathy’s techniques to use instead of just white-knuckling it.

The Hardest Moment

Day twelve. A Friday night. My buddy Kevin invited me out to a bar in Cambridge. I’d been avoiding social situations since quitting, but I figured twelve days was enough and I should test myself. I ordered a club soda. Kevin ordered a beer and went outside to smoke. I sat at the bar alone, and every cell in my body screamed at me to follow him outside and bum one. The smell of smoke drifting in from the patio was intoxicating. My mouth watered. I gripped the bar with both hands and counted to sixty. Then I counted to sixty again. Kevin came back inside and I must have looked terrible because he said, “You okay, man?” I said, “I need to leave.” And I left.

I called Cathy’s after-hours line from the sidewalk on Mass Ave. She talked me through it for ten minutes. She said something I still think about: “The craving is lying to you. It’s telling you that one cigarette will fix this feeling, but the only thing one cigarette will fix is your sobriety.” She was right.

The Turning Point

About six weeks in, I went for a run along the Charles River. I hadn’t tried running since my late twenties because it always made me cough and my chest would burn. But I ran a full mile without stopping. Just one mile, I know that’s not impressive, but for me it was everything. I stood there on the Esplanade, hands on my knees, breathing hard but breathing clean, and I thought: this is what my lungs are supposed to feel like.

I ran two miles the next week. Three miles the week after. By November I ran my first 5K, a Turkey Trot in Cambridge on Thanksgiving morning. I finished in thirty-one minutes, which is slow, but I finished. I called my mom afterward and she cried.

Life Now

It’s been twenty months. I finished the Zyban after twelve weeks, as prescribed. I completed all six therapy sessions with Cathy. I haven’t smoked a single cigarette since August 15th, 2024.

I run three times a week now. I did a 10K in April. I sleep better. My apartment doesn’t smell like smoke anymore. I can actually smell my neighbor’s cooking through the walls, which is sometimes good and sometimes not great, but the point is my nose works again. I’ve saved somewhere around $6,000, because American Spirits in Massachusetts are about $14 a pack. I used some of that money to buy a decent road bike and I ride the Minuteman Trail on weekends.

I’m dating someone new. Her name is Meg. She’s a nurse at Brigham and Women’s, and she told me on our second date that she would never date a smoker. I said, “Good, because I’m not one.” And I meant it.

To the Person Still Smoking

If you’ve tried and failed, the problem might not be willpower. It might be strategy. I failed three times using three different methods, and the fourth time worked because I combined medication with therapy. The Zyban handled the chemical part. Cathy handled the behavioral part. Together, they covered the gaps that each one alone couldn’t fill.

Talk to your doctor about Zyban or other prescription options. If your insurance covers therapy, use it. If it doesn’t, look into your state’s quit line. Massachusetts has one. Most states do. There are people trained to help you through this, and using that help isn’t weakness. It’s the smartest thing I ever did.

You don’t have to white-knuckle it. You don’t have to do it alone. And you don’t have to get it right on the first try, or the second, or the third.

You are not alone. I know because I sat in that therapist’s office feeling like the only person in the world who couldn’t kick this thing, and Cathy told me she’d helped hundreds of people just like me. Hundreds. All of them felt the same way I did. All of them thought they couldn’t do it. Most of them were wrong.

You might be wrong too. Give it another shot.

My name is Martin Walsh. I’m thirty-four, I live in Boston, and I don’t smoke anymore.