Bobby's Interview

I started smoking in high school. Smoking was more of a way of fitting in. Me and my friends, we’d walk on school grounds, smoke a cigarette, we thought we looked tough, thought we looked cool. After a while, it wasn’t even about being cool. I would smoke a cigarette by myself. It just felt like I relieved stress. It just felt like I get away from everybody so it wasn’t even about fitting in after that. And then a couple months I just realized I was addicted. The main reason I stopped is because I saw the effect it had on my family, especially my father. He thought highly of me, and when he caught me smoking a few times it caused a big divide between us and I didn’t like that at all. After quitting smoking, this is probably the best I’ve ever felt about myself. I knew smoking would be hard to stop, but I didn’t realize that this is the toughest obstacle I’ve ever overcome. And it was all basically a mental game. It was just mind over matter. And after realizing that if I just put my mind to something that I can do anything, it was like in the future I just know whatever’s in my path won’t stop me, and I’m just very proud of myself. I’ve never been so proud of myself. When I quit smoking, it brought back the relationship I had between me and my family, especially my father. When he found out I was smoking, I was lying. We had just a complete divide between each other. And once he realized that I quit we reconnected, and now everything is back to normal. I mean, we go out. We go camping. We can actually sit in the car and have a nice talk like we used to. And everything is back to normal and it just feels great.

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