Selena Coomer, director of health services at the Healing Place in Louisville, describes how she quit smoking and the freedom she has found as a non-smoker.
Coomer, who is in long-term recovery, says she began smoking at age 12 and quit at 28, several months after she stopped using drugs and alcohol. Smoking “consumed my thoughts, my energy, my time, and it took me away from my life.” She hasn’t smoked in seven and a half years.
Completing the 12-step recovery program led Coomer to realize that, even though she had overcome drug and alcohol use, her addiction to cigarettes that remained was just as strong. “For me to still be a slave to the cigarette, I thought, this wasn’t right. I had to do something about it,” she says.
Coomer received a prescription for Chantix from her doctor and, despite some tough early days, overcame her habit. “There are times that, I’m around people, and I think, ‘Oh, it would be nice to have a cigarette because everybody’s smoking.’ But then I think, I’m a puff away from a pack a day. And I don’t want that any more.”
This KET content is part of the 2017 Smoking and Health Initiative, funded in part by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.
