How I slayed the nicotine addiction monster

When Ruth Mwongeli first smoked, it appeared innocent to her, or at least she thought so. It was cool. Her friends were doing it as well.

At 20, she had never smoked before unlike her friends who introduced her to the habit during a trip they took after they had written their high school exams. She is now in her late thirties. 

“All my friends smoked cigarettes. Although they were my age mates, they had started earlier. I felt intimidated and I wanted to fit into the group,” she says.

Among those she credits with pushing her into the habit was her then-boyfriend, whom she reveals smokes to date.

That same night, itching to save herself from embarrassment for the next time she would be with them, Ruth took home a cigarette. Naïve to the fact that it would expel a trail of stale odour, she lit it inside the house.

One puff later, she was choking and coughing. In the living room, her sister asked nonchalantly what the smell was and brushed it off. Ruth thought she had escaped being caught, only to learn years later that her sister had known from this first day, and through all the time she smoked while living with her.

She believes that had it been a parent, they might have investigated further or punished her.

Smoked for fun

She smoked for fun, learning how to do it without choking or coughing and then she wanted more and more of it. She had sunk into addiction.

Addiction can be defined in four ways, according to Dr Waweru Munyu, a pulmonologist at Agha Khan Hospital, Nairobi. 

“When a person wants to quit and fails to; when one continues to smoke despite having conditions that smoking would worsen; when one avoids activities out of fear of being found out and when a person has financial problems but continues to buy cigarettes,” says Dr Waweru, that person is addicted. 

Having lost her parents at a very young age, Ruth was under the guardianship of her elder sister who she says “had become our ‘parent’ when she had no idea of how to go about parenting.”

“My sister was not old enough when she had to take care of the three of us who were still in school.”

This lack of parental figure(s), Ruth says, partly contributed to her sinking into the habit of smoking cigarettes.

Her sister, who was then 24, knew that she was smoking, but never, at any point, approached her about it or mentioned to her that what she was doing was wrong. 

“One time one of my brothers opened up and told me that my sister used to complain that I was disturbing her. Yet she never mentioned it,” laments Ruth.

But even with a sister who did not reprimand her for smoking, she never felt free to smoke at home. Ruth spent most of her time with friends - a group she needed to fit in to stay with.

As time went by, her boyfriend introduced her to other drugs.

“I found myself abusing other substances including miraa, muguka, beer and kuber.”

However, her drug of choice remained nicotine. 

“I would go out with my friends to smoke,” she says. “I would smoke my last cigarette just before heading back home. I am sure people would smell it on me although they said nothing.”

As to how she was able to buy cigarettes daily, smoking up to a pack a day, —even though she was not in stable employment—Ruth says that smokers and those who are addicted to alcohol will do anything to get the cigarette or bottle of beer.

After writing her exams in 1999, she hopped from one odd job to another until 2002, when she did a Kenya Accounting Technicians Certificate after which she worked in a salon. In 2005, she got a job at the Export Processing Zone.

“I would ensure that I had the money for the next day’s cigarette, and mostly, I depended on my boyfriend who would get money from his parents.”

Ruth estimates that each day, she spent 60 shillings on cigarettes. 

While it made her calmer and cleared her head, she reveals that she hated smoking as she felt it was a controlling habit. 

“I could not stay for three hours without wanting to smoke. I spent some time thinking about why I was doing it to myself. I would stop but the craving pulled me back. I could not think straight without smoking. After a puff, my head would clear up,” she recalls.

Anyone who did not like her habit quickly became an enemy. Even to date her, one had to tolerate her smoking, and she would make it clear early enough.

“They would get into a relationship with me, knowing this,” Ruth says of the men she dated during the years she was hooked to smoking.

The price of addiction

Besides the feeling of the substance controlling her, Ruth began to pay the price—one she had not seen coming— after a couple of years. Her lips began to darken, then sharp chest pains followed.

She became anti-social, pointing out that “I couldn’t go anywhere I couldn't smoke comfortably.”

Every time she had a cold, her chest would hurt so much and she dreaded coughing as it aggravated her pain. 

“Whenever I coughed and felt the pain, the first thing that would come to mind was that I had cancer. I would be scared that if I choked on food while coughing I would lose my breath.”

But she could not stop. 

A never-ending craving at the back of her throat would not let her. As part of a group that called itself “the cancer” crew, not even cancer could stop them. The yen for smoke was the master and they all hearkened to its call.

“My fingers would shake and I would find myself going for a cigarette, sometimes, in the middle of the night,” says Ruth.

However, just as she had first smoked because of the influence of friends, she only needed to change them to set herself on the path to recovery.

Moving from Machakos to Nairobi, she left her crew behind. Ruth did not attend any rehabilitation or support groups, and neither did she see a specialist. In her view, “You have to want to quit first. No one will want it for you.”

Path to recovery 

Yet, her recovery path was not as smooth. While at it, some of the setbacks Ruth experienced was the feeling of being judged by those who asked, 'Why don’t you just quit?'

“They think it is easy yet it is not. Instead of telling someone this, they should show them how to quit. It does not help telling someone to quit, ask them how you can help,” she says.

Added to the feeling of being judged, she had to put up with severe headaches which reminded her the pain would go away if only she took a puff. 

In 2013, Ruth’s then-boyfriend, now husband, suggested that they move in together. She thinks of it as one way that made it easier for her since she had chosen the environment, hoping it would help her recover.

“My husband does not tell me ‘do not do this.’ He just pushes me to a direction that will help me change. I tend to think that even as he proposed that we move in together, he had in mind that it would curtail my freedom to smoke,” narrates Ruth.

Dr Margaret Njoroge, a counselling psychologist (specialising in drug abuse victims) based at Serene Hospital and Rehabilitation Centre, Nairobi, recognises that recovering without professional help is common but needs the determination to contend with “lack of sleep, and concentration, severe headaches and getting irritated for no reason.”

Still, she would go out, sometimes to pubs, on some evenings to grab a smoke. But the habit began to fade away albeit with the nagging urge.

Six months after she had stopped, Ruth went to visit a friend.

“We went out and I tried to smoke. I felt the same way I had during the first time. I choked. I did not take another puff.”

However, Ruth believes that had she taken a few more puffs, it would have been a different story. She also remains convinced that every person is different. That her way worked for her and may not for someone else.

Dr Waweru who emphasises therapy as “victims are empowered to take control of their lives,” elaborates that recovery has to do with “making rational lifestyle decisions and following through advice and medication.”

Ruth has a daughter and wishes that any child does not go through what she underwent. She says it is painful.

“If I find out that my daughter is hooked to anything,” she says, “I would talk to her. I will take her for counselling as soon as I find out.”

Dr Waweru cautions that if parents are smoking, the children will take it as something fancy and will start experimenting.

Ruth hopes that her story will be a warning to those who are thinking about smoking and a lesson to those who are hooked to it. In 2014, after quitting, she enrolled for a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance and Banking).

She now works for the State Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ruth has also published a novel, Courage to Love, inspired by her own experience with nicotine.

The romantic suspense novel set in Nairobi, Kenya follows the life of Zora, a business mogul’s daughter being groomed to take over her father’s multi-million-shilling business.

After reuniting with a childhood friend, she plunges into addiction and loses grip on everything she knows. The book encourages having the courage to love again after losing oneself in the name of love. 

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