Dale Earnhardt Jr. On How He Finally Kicked His Secret Smoking Habit

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I tried many times and failed. I never really put my heart into it. I wasn’t sure that I even wanted to quit. My friends smoked and I loved to socialize. It was a part of it. If you went out and drank and hung out, you smoked. If you played video games or drove your car, you smoked. It went with everything. It was a buddy. I was like, I don’t know how I’m gonna break this… it wasn’t even a habit, it was like a partner in all these activities. How am I gonna ‘do these things without my partner?

I had to quit video games. Like, I’d play video games for hours every day. I had to quit for two years. Cold turkey, no video games. I couldn’t play ‘em without wanting a cigarette. I was like, God, I don’t know how to enjoy games without a cigarette, what the hell’s wrong with me?

One day me and Amy were talking. We’d been dating about a year and a half, and she was encouraging me to quit multiple times. I was like, “okay, I’ll try. Oh darn, I failed!” Finally she came to me and was like, listen, I need you to try. I’m thinking, well, I don’t know. I failed so many times. She was like, will you ever be able to quit? I was like, I don’t know if I’ll actually get it done. I don’t have confidence.

She goes, that’s a problem for me. It will really be a problem for me if you can’t get this out of your system. That’s a deal breaker. And I thought, oh no. I really gotta fix this.