Updated June 08, 2015.

If you've ever been in an unhealthy love relationship that took a toll on you, you will understand the similarities in the destructive ties we develop with smoking over the years. We can see how tobacco is hurting us and yet it is hard to close the door and say goodbye.

Jamie's goodbye letter, while unique to her personal experience, touches on the enslavement anyone who has been addicted to nicotine is familiar with.

Thanks for sharing Jamie, and congratulations on quitting.

From Jamie:

I’m on my sixth smoke-free day and I’m finally glad to be rid of you, Marlboro Light 100’s. This was a toxic friendship we had.

I was always loyal to you and smoked 3 packs of you a day. I woke early in the morning and stayed up late to be with you. Over the 24 years we had together you never did anything positive. You tried to kill me! You suffocated me with poisons which gave me never ending choking and wheezing spells. You made me stink, yellowed my teeth, damaged my hair and skin, destroyed my house and property, and some of the friendships that I'd built up over the years.

Because of you, many people did not want to talk to me, and stared at me with disgust, not to mention making rude remarks for me to purposely hear. They treated me as if I were a freak.

You took the life I dreamed of having, yet through all of the destruction and heartache you caused me, I was still loyal to you. I tried many times to end our friendship, but I always went running back to you, knowing you would only keep hurting me.

I finally realize you will never be good for me and that you were never my friend. I need to say my final goodbye to you today. Although I will grieve you at first, and think about you nonstop, you can bet I will eventually move on and find something else to fill the void that will make me happy again.

You think I will be back like I have always been before, but I will not be deceived by you this time. I have prepared for months to escape you; to flee this lonely and filthy prison I have lived in for so long.

I have already begun my journey and started living the life I was always meant to live. I will not grieve you like a lost friend, but like a brainwashed and helpless addict missing their next fix.

I have started running and living freely again which is what I was doing when we first met. You tried to control, seduce and lure me in with your lies and false promises of how cool I would be hanging with you, telling me I would be happier and look more grown up with you by my side.

But the opposite was true. Those people I thought I looked so cool with and hung with were just other people who had fallen for your lies too. They weren't my friends. I was deserted by my real friends who knew better than to deal with the likes of you.

And look at me now...I look real grown up with the wrinkles and gray hair you gave me way before my time. I can tell you for a fact that you have never made me happy, not once. You did not want me to be a happy, outgoing sociable, confident person or a successful athlete, so I gave in to your lies and deception and quit the things that were good and positive in my life.

You knew exactly when to come into my life, and when I was most vulnerable to you. You introduced yourself to me when I had just lost a precious and dear friend, and knew when I would be most susceptible and receptive to your dishonesty and deception.

You sought me out when I was still a young innocent girl not mature or old enough to form a conscious well thought out decision or to look far enough ahead to know what I was up against with you.

Little did I know that when I took that first addicting puff, your misleading and strategic plan was to drain my lifelong savings over time, and then sentence me to a slow and painful death. I’m sorry to say, your plan has been unsuccessful because I’m done with you.

Smoking Stole My Father and Changed My Future

You did not know this, but I was on my way to receiving a running scholarship for college, which my father and coaches had trained me for since I was 5 yrs old. My father was so disappointed in me that he did not speak or treat me the same for years because of the poor choices I'd made by bringing you into my life.

I never went to college because my parents did not have the money, and had always counted on me to receive that scholarship through my running, which I so unexpectedly threw away. I had so much guilt because of all the time and money people invested in me and my future. To think I'd thrown it all away without a second thought.

My father knew you well too, and you eventually succeeded in taking his life. He was also a runner when he met you, but unlike me, he was unable to get rid of you before it was too late. He had a stroke at 53 that kept him paralyzed in his bed for 17 years before he finally passed. I will never forgive you for that and I hate that I never got the chance to make amends with him before he passed.

I hope he looks down at me now with all of my newly achieved successes like running and getting healthy again, starting my own business and raising a great kid. I hope he can finally smile proudly at the choices I am making and the progress I have made in preparing for my escape from you these last few months.

I don't plan on repeating history again in the relationship I have with my son. I plan on spending more time with him, no longer ignoring him to be with you. I'll now go out and play baseball with him when many times I refused, or when he was trying to talk to me but I did not listen, or would snap at him because I was busy and wanted to be with you.

I’m so ashamed of how addicted and obsessed I was. I have ruined so many valuable relationships and wasted so much of my life and time, and for what? A little poisonous white paper stick?

I wish I could get that time back and be the mom I was meant to be. The wife and friend I could have been or the daughter and sister that I was expected to be. I cannot change the past, but can change right now and the future moving forward.

I hope my family will forgive me and let me make it up to them over time. I also pray that I have not damaged my son or husband’s health or lungs when I was letting you poison mine.

My husband has always hated you. He would have to go out late at night and pick you up when I needed you, and if he wouldn’t right away, I would get angry. Over the years he had to spend a large amount of money so that I could get my fix from you. There were many occasions that I had to sneak out in shame and go get you myself in the middle of the night when everyone else was sleeping because I could not go back to sleep without you.

Many times my husband wanted to hug me but I could not reciprocate those feelings back to him because of all of the years you suffocated me with your 7000 toxins. I did not have enough breath to accept his attempted offers of love and affection.

I was diagnosed early on in my 20’s with asthma; another "benefit" of knowing you. The doctors kept warning me about you and said you were slowly killing me. They said I had the lungs of a sixty year old woman. Now I use a nebulizer, inhaler and many other breathing contraptions to assist me in getting enough air into my slowly failing lungs.

Taking My Life Back

I will not let you continue to ruin my life, health, and relationships with my friends and family. You are a dirty, lethal, emotional leach that has sucked out all my confidence and made me feel as if I was nothing. You drained me physically with your fatal poisons.

You made my nerves so bad I had to permanently be put on medications for anxiety and depression. You trained and brainwashed me which some would say is comparable to a suicide bomber trying to kill themselves and others around them with deadly gases and chemicals.

You will never be welcome in my house again, or in my life. I will see you with your other friends and I will only feel sympathy for them because they also will find out that you're no good for them either.

Some will not be strong enough to get rid of you, and you will eventually kill them with your deceitful and dishonest ways. Others will do as I am doing, and kick your sorry butt to the curb.

You took my dad and my aunt. You have tried unsuccessfully to take my mom with emphysema, but she is on to you and has also said her goodbyes. My brothers suffer because of you, but I know they will see that I defeated you and will soon follow the lead my mom and I have set. I’m finally free of you and will plead nonstop with others to do the same before it is too late.

I despise you, cigarettes, and the mind games you play on people.  Goodbye forever to a killer, liar, thief, fraud and a phony hypocrite disguised as a friend.

~Jamie