I Only Smoked for 3 Years But Quitting Was Still One of the Hardest Things I’ve Done

People say things like “Oh, you only smoked for three years? That’s nothing.” Or “At least you caught it early.” And yeah, they’re right that it’s better to quit at 24 than at 54. But I want to be clear about something: three years was enough for nicotine to get its hooks deep into me, and pulling them out was genuinely awful. I’m Ryan Cooper, I’m 24, I live in Denver, and I’ve been smoke-free for eight months thanks to Nicorette gum and a lot of stubborn refusal to go back.

How a Non-Smoker Becomes a Smoker

I didn’t smoke in high school. I was a skier, I played lacrosse, I was into fitness. The idea of smoking was gross to me. My parents didn’t smoke. None of my close friends smoked. It wasn’t part of my world.

Then I went to CU Boulder. Freshman year was fine. Sophomore year I moved off campus, started going to more parties, and fell in with a group of people who smoked socially. They’d pass around cigarettes on the back patio at house parties. Someone would hand me one after a few beers and I’d think, why not? I’m young. I’m healthy. I can handle a few cigarettes at a party.

That’s how it starts. Not with a decision to become a smoker. Just a series of small yeses. Yes at this party. Yes at this bar. Yes during this study session. Yes on this stressful day before finals.

By the end of sophomore year, I was buying my own packs. American Spirit Light Blues. I told myself they were “natural” and therefore not as bad. I told myself I was a “social smoker” even though I was smoking alone in my apartment on Tuesday afternoons. I told myself I could quit whenever I wanted.

Junior year I was at half a pack a day. By the time I graduated and moved to Denver for a marketing job, I was at a full pack. Twenty cigarettes a day. I was 23 years old, I’d been a serious smoker for about two and a half years, and I was already planning my day around smoke breaks.

Realizing I Had a Problem

The wake-up call wasn’t dramatic. There was no health scare, no intervention. I was just running one morning on the Cherry Creek Trail, which I’d been doing since I moved to Denver. I used to run five miles easy. That morning I had to stop after two because I was wheezing. Not just out of breath. Wheezing. A whistling sound in my chest that I’d never heard before.

I stood there on the trail with my hands on my knees, listening to my own lungs struggle, and I thought: I’m 23 years old. This shouldn’t be happening. I was a high school athlete two years ago. What am I doing to myself?

That was June 2025. I told myself I’d quit by the end of the month. I didn’t.

The First Attempt

I tried cold turkey on July 1st. I picked the date because it felt clean and symbolic. New month, new start. I threw away my pack and my lighter and told myself this was it.

By 2 PM that first day, I was crawling out of my skin. I know that sounds dramatic for someone who’d only been smoking three years, but nicotine addiction doesn’t care about your timeline. My body wanted nicotine and it wanted it now. I was shaky, unfocused, and irrationally angry. My roommate asked me if I wanted to order food and I nearly bit his head off.

I made it three days. On the evening of day three, I was sitting at my desk trying to work on a project for a client, and I couldn’t form a coherent thought. My brain felt like it was wrapped in gauze. I walked to the gas station on Colfax, bought a pack of American Spirits, and smoked two in a row in the parking lot. The relief was instant and devastating. Instant because my body calmed down. Devastating because I’d failed in less than 72 hours.

Trying the Gum

After that failure, I did something I should’ve done from the start: I researched nicotine replacement therapy. I’d always associated NRT with older smokers, people who’d been at it for decades. I figured my three years of smoking didn’t warrant “medical intervention.” That was ego talking. The truth is, addiction is addiction. The nicotine receptors in my brain didn’t care that I was young.

I bought a box of Nicorette 4mg gum at the Walgreens on Broadway. Mint flavor. I read the instructions carefully this time. The “chew and park” method: chew slowly until you feel a tingling in your mouth, then park the gum between your cheek and gum for a minute or two. Repeat. Don’t chew it like regular gum or you’ll swallow the nicotine and get hiccups and nausea.

My new quit date was August 15th, 2025. I smoked my last cigarette the night before, sitting on the balcony of my apartment with the view of the Rockies going pink with sunset. I won’t pretend it wasn’t a little dramatic. I was 23. Everything felt dramatic.

The gum made the first few days bearable. Not easy, bearable. The physical withdrawal was dialed down significantly. I wasn’t shaking. I could think clearly. I could talk to my roommate without wanting to fight him. But the habit part, the behavioral part, was still there in full force.

I missed the act of smoking. Holding something between my fingers. Stepping outside. Taking a deep inhale. The gum couldn’t replace any of that. For the first week, I’d catch myself walking toward the balcony out of pure muscle memory, then standing there with nothing to do. I started bringing my coffee out there instead and just sitting. No phone, no cigarette, just sitting and drinking coffee and watching the mountains. It felt wrong at first. Then it started to feel okay.

The hardest part of quitting at 24 was the social element. My friend group still smoked. Not all of them, but enough that every outing involved cigarettes. Happy hour at a bar on Larimer? There’d be a group outside smoking. House party? Someone would be passing around a pack. Even just hanging out at a friend’s apartment, there’d be ashtrays on the balcony.

I had to make a conscious decision about how to handle this. Some people say you should avoid smokers entirely when you’re quitting. That might work if you’re older and your social circle is more settled. At 24, my entire social life revolved around situations where smoking happened. I couldn’t just drop everyone.

So I told my friends I was quitting and asked them not to offer me cigarettes. Most of them were cool about it. My buddy Jake, who’d been the one to hand me my first cigarette at a party sophomore year, actually felt guilty about it and became my biggest supporter. He’d text me every few days to check in. He even quit smoking himself about two months after I did, partly because watching me go through it made him think about his own habit.

But there were a few people who weren’t great about it. One guy, Chris, kept saying things like “Just have one, it’s not a big deal” or “You’re not really addicted, you barely smoked.” That kind of minimizing was dangerous because part of my brain wanted to believe it. Part of me wanted to think I could have “just one.” I distanced myself from Chris. Not permanently, but I stopped going to things where it would just be me and him. I couldn’t afford to be around that attitude.

The Craving at the Concert

My hardest moment was about three weeks in. I went to a show at Red Rocks with a group of friends. If you’ve never been to Red Rocks, it’s this incredible outdoor amphitheater built into the foothills west of Denver. Open air, red sandstone, stars overhead. It’s beautiful. It’s also the place where I’d smoked some of my most enjoyable cigarettes. Cool mountain air, live music, a cigarette between your fingers. It was where smoking felt the most like a movie.

We were between sets, standing on the steps, and the girl next to me lit a Camel. The smell hit me and I got what I can only describe as a full-body memory. Not just a craving. My whole body remembered what it felt like to smoke in that exact setting. My fingers twitched. My mouth watered. My chest ached.

I popped a piece of Nicorette and chewed it aggressively, way too fast, and got nauseous. I had to sit down on the steps for a few minutes. Jake asked me if I was okay. I said, “Yeah, just a craving.” He nodded and sat with me until it passed. He didn’t say anything motivational. He just sat there. Sometimes that’s enough.

Stepping Down

I started on the 4mg Nicorette and used it for about six weeks. I was going through roughly 10 to 12 pieces a day at first. By the end of six weeks, I was down to about 6.

Then I switched to the 2mg gum. The drop was noticeable for the first two days, but after that my body adjusted. I used the 2mg for another four weeks, gradually cutting down from 6 pieces a day to 3, then 2.

By early November 2025, I was chewing maybe one piece of 2mg gum a day, usually in the morning. I decided to just stop. I didn’t make a big deal of it. I just didn’t reach for the gum one morning and saw how the day went. It was fine. Mildly uncomfortable, a few passing thoughts about cigarettes, but nothing like the raw withdrawal of cold turkey.

November 9th, 2025, was my last piece of Nicorette. I’ve been completely nicotine-free since then.

What I’ve Noticed

My lungs bounced back fast. I think being young and having only smoked for three years helped. Within a month of quitting I could run my five miles on the Cherry Creek Trail again. No wheezing. Within two months I was running farther than I had before I started smoking. I did a 10K in January and finished with a time I was actually proud of.

My skin cleared up. I didn’t even realize smoking was affecting my skin until it started looking better. I had this dull, slightly grayish undertone that I thought was just winter in Colorado. Turns out it was cigarettes.

My sense of taste improved. Coffee tastes richer. Food has more depth. I ordered the same burrito from the same place I’d been going to for two years, and I swear it tasted completely different. Better. Like I’d been eating with a film over my tongue and someone peeled it off.

I’ve saved about $3,000 in eight months. That’s not nothing for someone making an entry-level marketing salary. I used some of it to buy new ski gear.

For Young People Who Think They Can Handle It

I know you. I was you. You think you’re different. You think you can smoke casually, at parties, on weekends, whenever you feel like it, and then put it down when it stops being fun. Maybe you can. Some people genuinely can. But I thought I could too, and I was wrong.

Nicotine addiction isn’t about willpower or character. It’s chemistry. It changes your brain. It creates pathways that scream for more, and those pathways don’t care that you’re young or healthy or smart or in control of every other part of your life.

If you’re already smoking regularly and you’re thinking about quitting, do it now. Don’t wait. Every month you keep smoking makes the habit deeper and the quit harder. I smoked for three years and it was still brutal. I can’t imagine what it’s like after ten or twenty.

And don’t be too proud for help. The gum isn’t a crutch. It’s a tool. I wouldn’t try to build a shelf without a level just to prove I could do it freehand. Use the tools that exist.

If you try and fail, that doesn’t mean you’re stuck. I failed once and succeeded on my second try. Failure is data. It teaches you something about yourself and your triggers. Use that information for the next attempt.

You are not alone. There are a lot of us in our twenties who picked up smoking in college or right after and found ourselves hooked before we realized what was happening. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a trap that’s designed to catch you. But you can get out. I promise you can get out.