I Was Doing DoorDash at 10pm to Pay for Cigarettes. I Didn't Know That's What I Was Doing.
Chris V.
34, warehouse supervisor, former smoker, former DoorDasher. Phoenix, AZ.
Published February 5, 2026
For about three years I was DoorDashing three nights a week. After my regular shift, Iād come home, eat something, then go back out in my car until ten or eleven delivering food to people who didnāt want to leave their houses.
I told myself it was responsible. Extra money. Building savings. Getting ahead.
About eight months ago I figured out what was actually going on. I was not building savings. I was not getting ahead. I was doing DoorDash to fund a $500-a-month cigarette habit, and I had done the mental math so slowly, over so many years, that I never once added it up.
The Numbers I Didnāt Want to Look At
I smoked about a pack and a half a day. In Phoenix, a pack runs anywhere from $9 to $13 depending on where you buy it. I was buying from gas stations, which meant the expensive end. Call it $11 average.
Pack and a half times $11 is $16.50 a day.
$16.50 times 30 days is $495 a month.
$495 times 12 months is $5,940 a year.
I had never done that math. Three years of DoorDash and I had never sat down and looked at those numbers. I was working an extra job, three nights a week, giving up my evenings, eating fast food in my car between deliveries, wearing down my car. And the money was evaporating so completely that I thought I was just bad at saving.
I wasnāt bad at saving. I was paying almost $6,000 a year for cigarettes, on top of what I made at my regular job, then working a second job to cover it.
How I Quit
Cold turkey. I know thatās not what most people want to hear. I know the statistics. Lower success rates than NRT, higher relapse risk in the first week. All of it.
Once I did the math, I couldnāt unknow it. I sat in my car after a delivery at 10:45pm on a Tuesday night and did the calculation on my phone. Looked at the number. Thought: I am delivering burritos at 11pm for cigarette money. I am choosing this. Every day I smoke I am choosing to give up my evenings to fund it.
I didnāt smoke the next morning. Or the next day. Or after that.
The first week was rough. I wonāt lie about that. Days three and four I was irritable in a way I apologized for later. Chewed a lot of regular gum. Went to bed early because staying up gave me too many hours to think about cigarettes. Drank a lot of water. Called my buddy twice just to have something to do that wasnāt smoking.
But I didnāt smoke.
What the Other Side Looks Like
I stopped DoorDashing. Just stopped. After about six weeks I realized I hadnāt gone out to deliver in over a month and hadnāt noticed the money missing. Because the money wasnāt missing. I was just not spending $500 a month on cigarettes anymore.
I have a savings account now. An actual savings account, not a checking account I tell myself Iām saving in. End of each month I transfer $400 into it and let it sit. Done that for seven months. $2,800 in there that Iāve never had before. Used $600 of it to pay off a credit card that had been sitting at the same balance for two years. The rest is just there.
The credit card thing is the one that gets me. Iād been carrying that balance forever. Making the minimum payment, not really thinking about it. Meanwhile I was spending five times that amount every year on cigarettes. A debt I wasnāt paying off because I had a habit I didnāt realize I was prioritizing above it.
Paid it off in one payment. That was a feeling Iād never had before.
What I Think About Now
I donāt miss the cigarettes. Genuinely donāt. I miss the ritual of them sometimes. Something to do with my hands, a reason to step outside, the punctuation at the end of a long shift. But I donāt miss the cigarettes themselves.
The math is what I keep coming back to. Three years of DoorDash. Every night I drove I earned somewhere between $80 and $120. Over three years, thatās easily $25,000 in earnings. Driving in the dark, delivering food in a city that hits 110 degrees in summer. Most of it went to cigarettes.
I donāt know what I would have done with $25,000. Bought a better car. Taken a vacation. Built an actual emergency fund. Paid down my car loan. Something that wasnāt smoke.
Not doing DoorDash anymore. Iām home in the evenings. Watching TV with my girlfriend instead of driving around Phoenix at 10pm. Savings account has $2,800 in it, credit card is paid off, and my lungs donāt feel like theyāve been sandpapered.
I was working a second job to pay for something that was slowly killing me. I didnāt know thatās what I was doing. Now I do.
ā Chris V., Phoenix, AZ
Chris sent us his story in early 2026. We share these because the real math of smoking is something most people never sit down and calculate. Share your story.