I lit my first cigarette in the woods behind my house when I was 12, sitting with a neighborhood friend who had swiped a pack of Salem Lights from her mother’s purse. We coughed through those first drags, trying hard to look as sophisticated as the actors on Dallas and Dynasty — the shows we secretly stayed up late to watch.
When I was young, smoking hardly raised an eyebrow — most adults did it, and my high school even had a designated smoking area. Later, waiting tables and bartending to pay for college, cigarettes felt like part of the uniform. They gave me a pause, a place to collect myself. By the late ’90s, smoking became less socially acceptable and I got better at hiding it. For decades, nicotine remained my dirty little secret.
From time to time, I’d try to quit. Every time I did, I’d swap cigarettes for something else — usually sugar. Late at night, I’d often find myself in the kitchen, bingeing on peanut M&Ms, Reese’s peanut butter cups, or those dangerously good salted caramel squares from Whole Foods. At the same time, I was so conscious of my weight that I often skipped meals during the day, which only created another set of problems.
The cycle was endless: nicotine out, sugar in, weight up, frustration high — until I picked up cigarettes again.
I told myself cigarettes calmed me down, but in reality, they made things worse. Nicotine is a stimulant. Instead of soothing me, it pushed my brain, already overactive for reasons I didn’t understand, into overdrive. It kept my body locked into fight-or-flight mode. In my early 50s, however, I finally was given language to explain what I’d been living with most of my life: complex PTSD and undiagnosed ADHD.
The combination explained so much. The constant hypervigilance of trauma layered on top of an ADHD brain meant my nervous system rarely rested. I was always scanning, always spinning, always bracing for what might come next. Smoking seemed to take the edge off. Every puff gave me a brief illusion of control, but underneath, it only made my brain race faster and my body crave another fix.
What finally worked to help me quit wasn’t another substitute. It was learning how to use my own body — through yoga, breath work, and cold plunging.
Yoga: Honoring My Craving for Stillness
I’d done yoga as a form of exercise for years. I’d go through the poses, off-balance, counting down the minutes, not understanding why so many people praised its benefits for mental, as well as physical, health.
When I slowed down and started practicing yoga with real intention, though, everything shifted.
In child’s pose, forehead pressed to the mat, I could feel my breath gently open up my entire back body. I realized I didn’t need to inhale and exhale cigarette smoke to create space. I could get the pause that I craved simply by being present in my body.
That kind of grounding was something I’d never learned as a child.
On the mat, I let my body lead instead of my thoughts. I came to realize that the craving for a cigarette was, oftentimes, really a craving for stillness. The more present I became in my body, the less I needed to find a hiding place to smoke.
Breath Work: Creating the Pause I Needed
For me, smoking had always been about the ritual of drawing something in (the inhale) and letting it go (the exhale). I thought it helped me find my calm. Then I discovered breath work. A few times a day, I stopped what I was doing and focused on taking steady, intentional breaths for a few minutes. At first my ADHD brain raced and looped, but over time, my nervous system began to follow my breath instead of running away with my thoughts.
Breath work gave me back the pause I’d been pursuing for decades — only this time, it was pure, and it was mine. This was the regulation I had been trying to manufacture with nicotine and sugar. I wasn’t chasing calm anymore. I was creating it.
Cold Plunging: Safe in Discomfort
The first time I tried a cold plunge, it was brutally uncomfortable. My whole system lit up with resistance. Still, I stayed put, breathing through the discomfort until my body caught up with my breath. I started with just 30 seconds, and with consistent practice worked my way up to eight minutes over a few months.
I became hooked on the benefits: better sleep, a calmer nervous system, and an overall sense of well-being. My therapist explained that each plunge was teaching my body something important — that I could be deeply uncomfortable and still be safe.
I started with cold plunges at my gym’s spa, but eventually I moved to Boulder Creek, which runs through Boulder Canyon with fresh water fed by the snowmelt of the Rocky Mountains. Immersing myself there deeply grounded me. The cold, rushing water, with small waterfalls flowing over my neck and head, felt powerful and restorative, as if nature itself was helping me to reset.
I never really learned how to self-soothe as a child and, consequently, I spent most of my life reaching outside myself — smoking, sugar, anything to settle my racing thoughts. In my mid-50s, though, I’ve discovered that what I was searching for was inside me all along.
Yoga, breath work, and cold plunging didn’t just help me quit smoking — they taught me how to regulate an ADHD/C-PTSD nervous system that had been running on overdrive for decades. They remind me that my body’s own rhythms know how to regulate me.
