12-step group helps smokers overcome nicotine addiction

“Smoking was my first love,” says Laura Marie, who lit her first cigarette at age 15. Despite seeing the effects of smoking up close — her grandmother died of emphysema, and her sister died of lung cancer — Laura Marie just couldn’t quit. She tried hypnosis and patches, then switched to vaping, thinking it would be healthier. But things only got worse.

She says vaping “took on its own life.” With low odor and no flame, Laura Marie was able to vape in more places and more frequently than she would have with cigarettes. She says it got to the point where she couldn’t even go to the bathroom without a smoke. “It scared me that I was that dependent on it,” she admits.

Laura Marie says vaping soon started to consume her thought process. Do I have enough? Do I need to get more? she regularly asked herself.

She had been smoking for 40 years, four of those spent vaping, when a friend, El, “tricked” her into going to Asheville Quits — a 12-step recovery meeting for nicotine addiction.

(In keeping with the ethos of the recovery community, Xpress is using people’s first names only.)

With support from El and others in the group, Laura Marie set a quit date of Aug. 14. She says she used a friend’s expired, leftover patches for the first five days to help curb the cravings and has been nicotine-free ever since. “I’m going to crave it whether I do it or not,” she says of smoking. For her health — both mental and physical — she’d much rather not.

Asheville Quits

Like Laura Marie, El started smoking as a teen. She was just 13 years old. She began by sneaking cigarettes from her mother and father; she liked the way smoking made her feel. “I got a little buzzed off of them in the beginning,” she explains. Back then, cigarettes were only $1.29 a pack, and El found it easy enough to scrape together her allowance to buy a supply.

Smoking became a 50-year habit for El. She says she tried a variety of methods to quit: acupuncture, hypnosis, patches and the prescription drug Wellbutrin. But nothing worked. “It was just horrible. I just couldn’t put them down, and I really needed to,” recalls El. As a result of her pack-a-day habit, she suffered frequent bouts of bronchitis, and she couldn’t even lie down to sleep because her coughing was so bad.

El, who had been involved in other 12-step recovery groups, wondered if there was one for smoking. A Google search turned up a host of online meetings. She quickly joined one and set a quit date of Feb. 2, 2022 — 2-2-22. She found an accountability buddy in one of the meetings, and both quit the same day and helped each other stay “smober” (sober from smoking) through daily text messages.

While the virtual groups were helpful, El craved the community that comes with in-person meetings. She’d had a taste of them in April 2022, when she drove to Little Rock, Ark., to attend the Nicotine Anonymous World Service Conference, and then again last April, when the annual conference was held in Asheville. With years of sobriety under her belt, she established Asheville Quits in August. The group meets every Thursday at 4:30 p.m. at the Asheville 12 Step Recovery Club in a row of nondescript commercial spaces at 1 Kenilworth Knolls.

Asheville Quits is a Nicotine Anonymous (NicA, pronounced Nick-ay) meeting adapted from the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The steps are designed to be worked in order — acknowledging powerlessness over nicotine addiction, accepting a higher power, admitting wrongdoings, making amends and sharing the work with others. While the group’s literature refers to the higher power as God, El says members can rely on anything bigger than themselves. Some choose nature as their higher power, while others depend on the group itself. In fact, it’s community that members point to again and again as the motivation for staying smober.

In it together

“Without this room, I would be dead,” says Joseph, a member of Asheville Quits who attends additional 12-step meetings at Asheville Recovery Club. After 26 years of smoking, Joseph has been nicotine-free for the past month. He says it’s the camaraderie that has kept him smober. When a craving comes, help is always just a phone call, text or meeting away. “Somebody is here for somebody every time,” he says.

Colleen, who has been attending Asheville Quits meetings since September, agrees. “The support I get from these guys is huge. And it works,” she adds.

Colleen was a smoker for 50 years. After so long, she says, “You get to the point where you think, ‘I’m just going to die from it [smoking.]’ And you give in.” But seeing El, who also smoked for 50 years, quit and stay smober gave her hope.

Colleen chose Sept. 24 as her quit date and was quickly put to the test when Tropical Storm Helene hit a few days later. But she’d made a commitment to the group and to herself. “I thought, what the heck am I doing? This is nuts. But I just kept going,” Colleen recalls. “If I can do it during a devastating hurricane, then I have it.”

Despite the cravings, those who quit saw positive changes within weeks. Members say their lungs feel stronger and they have less difficulty breathing during activities. They’re more present, no longer planning their days around when to smoke or where to buy more. El’s cough has gone away, and she’s able to sleep lying down again. Her hair has gotten thicker and her nails stronger. And without the numbing effect of nicotine, she’s more in tune with her emotions. “This is me,” says El. “This is the real me.”

 Small but mighty

On a Thursday night in November, about 10 people attended the Asheville Quits meeting, a handful of them regulars. Each group begins with a reading of the 12 steps and an excerpt from the available literature, for example, a brightly colored NicA pamphlet or Nicotine Anonymous: The Book. Next, El invites attendees to share either something related to the day’s reading or a check-in about their recent experiences with smoking or sobriety. The group ends with everyone joining hands and reciting the Serenity Prayer, an oft-quoted prayer attributed to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.

Going forward, El hopes group attendance will continue to grow. Marian, based in the Netherlands, is the chair for the Nicotine Anonymous worldwide fellowship. She says that although larger groups can be more sustainable, allowing meetings to continue even as members come and go, small groups like Asheville Quits can be just as successful. “A small group could be very strong because there is lots of responsibility if members know each other, and if they’re not there, they will ask, ‘Hey, where have you been?’ So people can get very committed.”

El believes membership has been low because so few people realize there’s a 12-step program for nicotine addiction. Marian agrees that NicA meetings are less well-known compared with programs like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. Many don’t realize nicotine can be just as addictive and sometimes harder to quit than alcohol or drugs.

“I thought other substances were the real addiction and that quitting smoking was just easy … and I was very wrong,” Marian explains. “Nicotine for me has been the most difficult one, and when I look around me in meetings, I hear more often that nicotine is the last substance that people let go of.”

This sentiment has been true for many members of Asheville Quits who became sober from drugs and/or alcohol before going smober.

El, who has been nicotine-free for nearly three years, says she still experiences cravings and still thinks about going back to smoking. “But then I think of all my friends. I think of my husband, I think of my quit buddy. I think of the people on Thursday afternoon who have thanked me and, oh, man, I don’t want to do it.”

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