Uncle G’s Biggest Triumphs – Quitting Cigarettes (2025)

16 November 2025
Topic: Quitting Cigarettes

By Gary “Uncle G” Brown
E-Mail: GaryBrown@garyunclegbrownarchives.com

Wow! Wow! Wow!

I would have never imagined being capable of going a day without a cigarette. I’ve given up hope of ever quitting, but I did, just that. For those keeping score, it’s almost my 18th anniversary. How did that happen?

I loved smoking cigarettes. Started at an early age. Some of you readers who know me personally would have memories of me as a cigarette smoker. If it were the year 2007, or before that. I was a heavy smoker! From the time I woke up till the time I crashed at night. I smoked for every reason, then some. Before sex, after sex, and sometimes during sex. A few ladies over the decades would ask me if I would not mind if they smoked while I ate. Never bothered me. Along those lines, there is a classic TV Show filmed here in America called The Honeymooners. In one episode, Norton asks Ralph, while being handcuffed to him, if he would mind if he smoked. Ralph’s reply was: “I don’t care if you burn”.

My average was a pack and a half to 3 packs a day. I had some driving jobs. Free to smoke at any time, and I did. I quit in 2007. The last cigarette I smoked was a Doral Ultra-Light 100 (something like that). It was three dollars and whatever cents, a pack. The Governor of Texas, who was Rick Perry then, had just added a dollar sin tax to cigarettes. I had a costly habit.

Way back in the day, I smoked Marlboro, Newport, and Kool cigarettes. Toward the end of my nicotine-smoking career, I dropped the menthol and eventually headed toward the lighter nicotine brands. I smoked 100s because I felt I got more drags than a regular-sized smoke. I’d puff on them, pretty much to the filter. If I were drinking booze, I’d chain-smoke. After over 30 years of this habit, I realized my health would suffer. I decided to change my path. With the counseling from medical professionals and using nicotine patches, I completely stopped buying cigarettes. This crucial decision was made possible due to MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, Texas. To this day, I am still amazed by my steadfast actions. Grateful I quit. Thankfully, the program was available when it was. MD Anderson Hospital rocks! I saw an ad in the newspaper. The timing was just right! Back in 2007, I loved cigarettes more than life itself. I couldn’t think of myself as a non-smoker. I also knew, as time went by, that the over 3-decade habit would eventually lead to my demise.

Photo: Gary “Uncle G” Brown in October or November of 2007.

A Little More Detail

I started smoking cigarettes, inhaling, when I was 12 years old. I’m not bragging. I lacked adult supervision at the time. My parents, by this time, were both dead. My Mom was an alcoholic. She died a miserable death at age 49. Was a professional musician. Whiskey got the best of her. Probably smoked cigarettes during her pregnancy with me. I had surgery on my heart when I was 22 months old. I have an eardrum that never fully formed. No real problems with that I was aware of, till I got older. Due to the defect, I have always been unable to hear certain sounds. Back in the early 1960s, cigarettes were said to help with stress and anxiety. Doctors would recommend it to their patients. Anyway, I was an only child. Little Orphan Gary (insert sad face emoji).

My Dad died four years after my Mom. I lived with relatives at first, but that didn’t work out, and I was kicked to the curb. My belongings were packed into whatever boxes were available. They were piled up and left out on the front porch for me to pick up. I’m a typical young teenage boy. Around the ages of 13 and 14 years old. This occurred in part because of my cigarette smoking. I was disciplined before this, or shall I say, beaten up, by a younger, bigger-than-me, adult cousin, whom I would not trust myself to be in the same room with today. I became a runaway. The first criminal charges that I ever received. That and not giving a good account of myself. Once removed from that situation, a series of foster homes followed.

Photo: Gary Brown and Gregory Zyskowski, both enjoying a smoke. It’s 1974-1975 at the Manasquan Train Station, in New Jersey. Greg’s mother took the photo.

My first real foster home, unfortunately, didn’t last long. At least I got to finish my freshman year of high school. I went to Manasquan High School. The same school that actor Jack Nicholson graduated from in 1954. I heard he was voted, class clown. He’s achieved great success.

The second foster home, I was thrown out, and the people pressed charges. I was relocated from the town I lived in for the past four years to another town, which was over 30 miles away. Didn’t know anybody. I had gotten in trouble with the law before. Nothing too serious. Detention centers were now a part of my life. I was arrested and spent time in several jail cells, up and down the Jersey shore. I stood up, being sentenced, in front of several judges. For a while there, certain people labeled me a juvenile delinquent. They were usually authoritative figures.

At age 14, I was living in yet another foster home, and again in a town that was strange to me, which I accepted and learned to cope with. It’s weird living with strangers. I remember one year for Christmas, they gave me a carton of Marlboro smokes. It was considered a practical gift, since I was buying them anyway. Retail value was around the $10 area. A lot of money back then. This is back in the 1970s.

Getting cigarettes, as a teenager at that time, was no problem. I would simply walk up to the 7-Eleven counter in Manasquan, New Jersey, asking for a pack, and they would sell it to me. Time and time again. Until I moved, in which I never had a problem buying smokes because of my age, anywhere on the Jersey shore. They also sold me porn. Lots of it. Magazines like Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler. I was a horny teenager. Who wasn’t?

At age 16, I got my GED, and I had a full-time, forty-hour-a-week, adult job washing dishes and doing kitchen prep for a luncheon called Gab n’ Eat. This was after a short-lived career at McDonald’s. Because of these achievements, the great state of New Jersey decided that I was capable of living on my own. At age 16. Lord only knows what they were thinking. I didn’t do well. A cop knocked on my door one day to arrest me. That was a rude awakening. The prior night, I tried to outdrink a friend’s dad. Woke up with vomit on the pillow. My whole life, I would be plagued with serious acid reflux and stomach issues. Every time I went to jail, I would not be allowed to smoke cigarettes. Withdraws suck! Some cool guards, every blue moon, would give you a cigarette. I would pick up the habit again, first thing after being released.

Scared Straight

One of the punishments that the New Jersey courts handed down to me was to participate in the Scared Straight program. Ended up being an award-winning documentary, narrated by the late Peter Falk. Along with my probation officer (yes, I had one) and a small group of other wayward teenagers, we drove to Rahway. This was where the state prison was located. Thank God, I was there ONE WEEK after they filmed the popular documentary. Didn’t work for me. I was arrested one more time. My social worker (I had a series of these) told me to bring a toothbrush with me when we went to court. Funny guy! I was sentenced to two and a half years, which was suspended, with the catch that if I was arrested again, not only would I do the time for whatever it was, but the 2 and a half years would be added to that. My days of judges being lenient with me due to being an orphan (Little Orphan Gary) were over. They did add more probation time. I quickly matured after that. The beginning stages of me trying to pull my head out of my ass.

Good or bad, I survived everything up to that point, and at age 18, I got married. I worked a full-time job during the week and a part-time gig on the weekends, selling leather belts and whatnot at flea markets. I smoked cigarettes all through this. I was up to 3 packs a day.

Towards the end of the 1980s, I managed to quit smoking, cold turkey. I had bronchitis. Spent days in bed. I was so sick, I was really incapable of smoking. This break from cigarettes lasted about 3 years, from around 1987 to 1990. Until the day I told my then-wife that I wanted a divorce. We were foster parents then. Full circle for me! The wife and I were having fits with our foster kid. who was a young teenage girl, about cigarette smoking. She picked up the habit. Drinking booze as well. That was her downfall. Dead at age 42. I understand that her ashes are on someone’s shelf. Seeing a pack of her smokes on a table, I grabbed one. Within a week, I was back to my several-packs-a-day habit. I would stay hopelessly addicted until the year 2007. What happened, then you ask.

Living in Houston, Texas, I saw an ad in a free newspaper by a local hospital seeking cigarette smokers who wished they would stop. By now, I have been inhaling cigarette smoke for over three decades. I was hopelessly addicted to nicotine. There just was no getting around that.

For six weeks before my quit date, I got counseling, which was videotaped, by a few ladies. Would hate to view that now. Or maybe I would? After all, I managed to succeed at the assigned task. At the time, I was freaking out. Worried that I will fail. I listened to their suggestions. Some was a replacement for the oral fixation. I did a lot of Altoids and sucked on Dum-Dums Lollipops. I quit other things in my life. I was a heavy drinker. I shot cocaine. Strange, but sex was never a problem. I found ladies who enjoyed it as much as I did. It has been a problem as well. I did beat Hepatitis C. That is automatically thought of as a souvenir of a raunchy time. No telling how I got it. I found out I had Hep C in 2008. I did the almost year-long treatment in 2009. I found out I was cured in 2010. I can’t give blood, ever. Smoking cigarettes at that time would have had a negative effect. The drugs didn’t work for everyone. Hep C treatment(s) are much better nowadays. I’m glad! It was difficult, at best.

The First Day

My quit date is November 25, 2007. I had my ceremonial last cigarette in my garage, a few minutes before midnight. in the middle of the night. The next day was a Sunday. I used nicotine patches to help quit. The hospital gave them to me for free. There were three different stages, starting with the strongest dose and then lowering that until you don’t need it anymore. My experiences using the patches were good, except for the weird dreams I would get. They were usually of a sexual nature and very intense. I recommend, if you can handle it, not wearing these things when it’s bedtime. But have one nearby so you can put it on, first thing when you get up.

Rewards

Every week that went by, and I didn’t smoke any cigarettes, I’d give myself something nice for the accomplishment. I was saving a ton of money, not buying packs of cigarettes anymore. I liked music, so I would a lot of times get a music CD, or something on VHS/DVD. I have a couple of thousand CDs and a rather large movie/TV show collection.

People who knew me noticed I wasn’t smoking cigarettes anymore. It never dawned on me how irritating someone’s smoking is to others. I remarried and was doing my cigarette smoking when home, outside in the two-car garage we had. My second wife, of almost 22 years, ended up having heart problems. Better for her that I didn’t exhale smoke in her face. Second-hand smoke kills. That’s what I’ve been told.

Here’s something nice. A longtime friend of mine, Kevin Landreneau, sent me a porcelain Roger Dean coffee cup for successfully completing the MD Anderson quit-smoking cigarette program. Brother from another mother. Too cool!

Honestly, I am alive today due to my quitting cigarette smoking. I first inhaled in 1973. Today, I am nicotine-free. If nearby, and we’re hanging out, be forewarned that I do vape cannabis. It’s my business. Many were worried that if I smoked cannabis again, the smoking would lead me back to cigarettes. That’s not true. After a seventeen-year break, I went back to smoking weed. It was during my Hep C treatment in ’09 that I decided to smoke pot again. Suggested by ex-wife number two. She was right, that it helped me get through that. The woman had her moments. Today, I vape more for medical reasons than recreational. Before a movie is still cool. To each their own. We all know our own strengths and weaknesses.

I hope folks get something out of this write-up. Hopefully, it entertained while being enlightening. What motivated me to type this article was that I saw a lady smoking a cigarette recently. I’m in Las Vegas, driving around doing errands. I’d be what the locals call a damn tourist. I arrived in 2019 and never left. I like it here. Anyway, I’m sitting at a red light and look over to see a lady in the next lane, casually puffing on a cigarette. Middle-aged Caucasian. Pleasant looking, at least what I saw. I noticed the cigarette more than I did her. I tried to hide the fact that I was staring. I’m bored. The traffic lights in Sin City are long. I’m a good driver, looking all around me to make sure things stay safe. That cigarette sure looked good. The attractive woman, as she smoked, would take long drags. Appeared so satisfying. I missed that! Almost eighteen years, and I’m drooling over a cigarette. We both drove away in our separate ways, and that was that. A fleeting moment. No worries as you read this. I’m not compelled to start up again. But for a moment in time, I was that lady in the automobile. I’m holding her lit cigarette. Flicking ashes in the ashtray. And then, being a woman while doing so, looked down and realized what swell-looking boobs I had.

The fact of the matter is, if I continued to puff on those cancer sticks the way I was, there would be a snowball’s chance in Hell of …fuck! Send in the clowns. The show’s over. Right now, I’d be dead!

Photo: Gary “Uncle G” Brown – Grand Canyon West (27 Sept 2025) – Photo Credit: Kevin Landreneau.

End of Article

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