How Running Helped a Border Patrol Agent Quit After 22 Years

My name is Tony Morales. I’m forty-five years old. I’ve been a Border Patrol agent in El Paso, Texas, for twenty years. And for twenty-two years, from the time I was twenty-three until about a year ago, I smoked Marlboro Golds every single day. I quit cold turkey and started running, and those two things together pulled me out of a hole I didn’t think I could climb out of.

I need to be honest from the start. I didn’t quit because I had some inspirational awakening. I quit because I couldn’t pass my physical fitness test. In Border Patrol, you have to meet fitness standards. They test you regularly. Running, push-ups, sit-ups. The standards aren’t extreme, but they’re real, and if you can’t meet them, you’ve got a problem. At forty-four, after twenty-two years of smoking, my 1.5-mile run time was getting dangerously close to failing. I was finishing at the absolute limit, wheezing, seeing spots, convinced I was going to collapse in front of my supervisors. The guys in their twenties would finish and barely be breathing hard. I’d finish and have to put my hands on my knees for five minutes.

That’s a humbling thing for a man who used to be in shape. When I came into the Border Patrol at twenty-five, I was fit. I’d played baseball in high school, worked construction through my early twenties, and passed the academy physical with no issues. But I was already smoking by then. I’d started at twenty-three, working a summer job at a feedlot outside Las Cruces, New Mexico. Brutal work. Hot, dirty, long hours. The older guys all smoked and I picked it up the way everybody picks it up: somebody offers you one and you take it and your brain says, “Oh. That’s nice.”

Marlboro Golds, which used to be Marlboro Lights. A pack a day within six months. I smoked through the Border Patrol Academy, sneaking cigarettes behind the barracks. I smoked at every duty station I’ve worked: El Paso sector, mostly, with some time in the Tucson sector. I smoked in my truck on the way to work, on breaks between shifts, after foot patrols in the desert, sitting in my vehicle on sensor watch at 2 AM in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the radio and the stars and a Marlboro between my fingers.

In this job, smoking fills a specific need. You’re dealing with high stress, long hours, situations that can turn dangerous fast, and stretches of absolute boredom in between. The desert is quiet. A sensor watch shift can be eight hours of sitting in your vehicle waiting for something to happen. A cigarette breaks up the monotony. It gives you something to do with your hands, something to focus on when your mind starts wandering to places you don’t want it to go. A lot of agents smoke. A lot more than the general population.

I tried quitting four times before the one that stuck. The first time was at thirty, when my wife Elena was pregnant with our daughter, Lucia. I used nicotine lozenges. They gave me heartburn so bad I thought I had an ulcer. Made it nine days. Relapsed when I got home from a particularly bad shift and Elena was asleep and there was nobody to be accountable to except myself, and apparently I wasn’t enough.

Second time, thirty-five. Tried patches. NicoDerm CQ 21mg. They worked okay but I kept “forgetting” to put them on. Funny how that works. I’d “forget” the patch and then conveniently have a cigarette because I didn’t have the patch. I saw through my own excuse but couldn’t stop doing it. Two and a half weeks that time.

Third time, thirty-eight. Cold turkey after reading some articles online about lung health. Lasted five days. The withdrawal was brutal. I was on duty and the irritability was so bad that my partner, a guy named Ochoa, asked if I was okay. I told him I was quitting smoking. He said, “Good luck, man.” He said it the way you say good luck to someone who’s about to do something obviously doomed.

Fourth time, forty-one. I bought a Vuse e-cigarette. Used it for about two months. It helped with the nicotine cravings but it felt like cheating, like I was just rearranging the addiction instead of addressing it. I went back to Marlboros.

The fitness test failure, or near-failure, happened in March 2025. I didn’t technically fail. I made the time by four seconds. Four seconds. My supervisor, Agent Gutierrez, pulled me aside after and said, “Tony, you’ve got maybe one more test in you at this pace. You need to figure something out.” He wasn’t threatening me. He was being straight with me, the way you are with someone you respect enough to tell the truth.

I sat in my truck in the parking lot after that conversation and looked at my pack of Marlboros on the center console. I thought about all the things I’d lose if I couldn’t pass the fitness test. My career. My pension, which I was five years from collecting. My health insurance. The identity I’d built over twenty years. I was a Border Patrol agent. It’s not just what I did; it was who I was. And a pack of cigarettes was about to take it from me.

I threw the pack out the window of my truck. I know, littering. I picked it up later. But in the moment, I needed the physical act of getting them away from me. I drove home, told Elena I was done, and she said, “I’ve heard that before.” I said, “I know. But this time I’m going to run.”

That was the difference. Every other time I’d tried to quit, I’d focused on what I was giving up. This time, I was going to add something. I was going to start running, not the forced, miserable running of a fitness test, but real running. The kind where you choose to do it.

The first run was embarrassing. I went out after dinner, wearing old basketball shorts and a cotton T-shirt, and tried to jog around my neighborhood near the Franklin Mountains. I made it about a quarter mile before I stopped, bent over, hands on knees, gasping. My lungs felt like they’d been packed with sand. My heart rate was through the roof. A woman walking her dog passed me and said, “You okay?” I waved her off.

But I went back the next day. And the next. For the first two weeks, I alternated between jogging and walking. Run for a minute, walk for two. Run for ninety seconds, walk for two. I used a Couch to 5K app on my phone, the one that gives you audio cues for when to run and when to walk. It’s designed for people who can’t run at all, which described me perfectly despite being a federal law enforcement officer who was supposed to be fit.

The withdrawal from cigarettes hit at the same time I was trying to build a running habit, and the combination was miserable. I was dealing with headaches, cravings, insomnia, and irritability while also asking my battered lungs to do something they hadn’t done voluntarily in twenty years. The first week, I ran three times and wanted a cigarette after every single run. The physical exertion triggered the craving hard. My body was used to rewarding effort with nicotine, and when the nicotine didn’t come, the craving spiked.

I dealt with it by walking. When a craving hit during a run, I’d stop running and walk fast until it passed. When a craving hit at home, I’d put on my shoes and walk around the block. When a craving hit at work, I’d walk the perimeter of the station. I walked so much that first month that Elena said I was going to wear a groove in the sidewalk.

The hardest moment came in week three. I was working a night shift, sitting in my vehicle on a remote stretch near the river east of El Paso. It was dark, quiet, and I was alone. The exact conditions that had always meant a cigarette. I could picture it so clearly I could almost smell the smoke. My hands were shaking. I wanted one with every fiber of my being. I picked up my phone and called Ochoa, my partner, who was posted about two miles south. I said, “I’m struggling.” He said, “With the smoking?” I said yeah. He talked to me for about twenty minutes about absolutely nothing. His kid’s baseball game. A truck he was thinking about buying. Just regular stuff, filling the silence, keeping me company through the worst of the craving. When we hung up, it had passed.

The running got better slowly. By week four, I could jog a full mile without stopping. My pace was slow, maybe thirteen minutes, but I didn’t care. A mile without stopping felt like an Olympic achievement. By week six, I was doing two miles. By week eight, I ran three miles for the first time in probably fifteen years. I came home and told Elena and she hugged me and said, “Your lungs are healing.” She was right. I could feel it. Each week, the air went a little deeper, the breathing came a little easier, the recovery after a run was a little faster.

The cravings diminished on a curve that roughly followed my running improvements. As my lungs got stronger, the urge to fill them with smoke got weaker. I don’t know if that’s a medical correlation or a psychological one, but it was real. Running gave me something smoking used to give me: a break from stress, a physical sensation to focus on, a few minutes where I was just in my body instead of in my head. The endorphins from a three-mile run aren’t the same as a nicotine hit, but they’re in the same neighborhood.

The turning point was a run in June, about two months after I quit. I was on a trail in the Franklin Mountains, early morning before the heat hit. The sun was coming up over the desert and the light was turning everything gold and pink. I was at about mile two and I felt this looseness in my chest that I hadn’t felt since I was in my twenties. My breathing was rhythmic, easy, unlabored. I wasn’t thinking about cigarettes. I wasn’t thinking about cravings. I was just running in the desert at sunrise and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. I got back to my truck and sat on the tailgate and felt something I can only describe as gratitude, which isn’t a word I use often.

A year now. Here’s what the numbers look like. My 1.5-mile run time has dropped by over two minutes. I passed my last fitness test with time to spare. Agent Gutierrez said, “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.” I said, “I quit smoking and started running.” He said, “Which one’s harder?” I said, “Quitting smoking. By a lot.”

I ran my first 5K race in October, a charity run in downtown El Paso. Finished in twenty-eight minutes. Not fast, but I finished, and I wasn’t wheezing at the end. Lucia, my daughter, ran it with me. She’s nine years old and she kept yelling, “Come on, Daddy!” and sprinting ahead and then waiting for me. Best race of my life.

My weight hasn’t changed much, which I credit to the running. A lot of people gain weight when they quit. I gained maybe five pounds in the first month, then lost it as the mileage increased. I eat more than I used to, but I’m burning it off.

My relationship with Elena is better. Not just because I don’t smell like smoke, though that helps. Because I’m present in a way I wasn’t before. Smoking isolated me. I was always stepping outside, always disappearing for five minutes, always subtly absent. Now I’m in the house, in the kitchen, on the couch, at the table. Just here. She told me a couple months ago that it feels like she got more of me when I quit. That hit hard.

I’ve saved about three thousand dollars. Marlboros in Texas are about eight dollars a pack. That money’s going toward a family trip to the beach in South Padre this summer. Lucia has never been to the ocean. I’m going to watch my daughter see the ocean for the first time, and I’m going to be breathing clearly when I do it.

If you’re reading this and you’re in a high-stress job and you think smoking is the only thing keeping you sane, I understand. I spent twenty years feeling the same way. But smoking isn’t keeping you sane. It’s making you think you need it to stay sane. There’s a difference. What actually keeps you sane is moving your body, talking to people, being present for the people who matter. Cigarettes just fill the gap so you don’t have to figure that out.

Start running, or walking, or biking, or whatever gets you moving. Replace the habit with something that builds you up instead of tearing you down. The first run will be embarrassing. The second will be worse. The tenth will be a little better. The fiftieth will feel like flying.

You are not alone. There’s a whole community of people who traded their pack for a pair of running shoes. We’re out there on trails and sidewalks and tracks, breathing in the air we used to fill with smoke. There’s room for you too. Lace up.