A friend came to me recently, heartbroken. She and her husband have been together for 10 years. He was her first love. And now, they’re getting a divorce.

We thought they were great together. Sure, he smelled bad, but we let that go because she loved him so much. He was always with her at parties, always there to celebrate the fun times with her. He was there in the hard times too, when she had stressful days, when she felt lonely, when her mom died.

Everyone else told her they loved him, that they looked so good together! In fact, whenever she wasn’t with him, her thoughts would always drift back to him.

But then we started to notice changes. She started talking about how ugly she looked, and we knew it was his fault she thought so. She started spending more and more time with him, and less time with us or doing the things she used to love.

She was having sleepless nights, she couldn’t work out as much as she used to. She couldn’t sing the songs we used to wail out to in the car. She started getting sick all the time because of him.

It got really bad when she noticed her bank account dwindling. He was stealing from her. It got worse when he started threatening her kids. It hit rock bottom when the doctor asked to take an x-ray during a regular check-up, and she finally acknowledged that her husband had been poisoning her every day for 10 years.

My friend is married to Cigarettes (you may have heard of him). She admits she loved him so much, but he’d taken the best years of her life and left her with nothing but fear and debt. I asked her if she wanted to divorce him. You know what she said?

“I don’t know if I’m strong enough anymore. I don’t know who I’ll be without him.”

For millions, tobacco isn’t just a chemical addiction to nicotine or a habitual addiction to routine. Tobacco can be emotionally binding. Ask any addict: an addiction, like an intense love, owns a part of you forever.

In a recent CNN article, Natasha Bishop of Los Angeles, California, found the key for herself, admitting: “I need to end this relationship.”

Quitting smoking is like going through a divorce. There are sleepless nights. There are hours, days of doubt. There are moments of bitterness and frustration and victorious pride and utter heartbreak. You might spend full minutes just standing in an empty house, blinking, not knowing what to do. There are moments when you question, “Am I meant to survive this? What if I’m not this strong?”

You can be, just as Natasha was. If you’re open to it, try to envision tobacco as a person. What kind of relationship do you have? How is it fulfilling? How is it not?

What would it look like to be tobacco-free again?

My friend is doing much better now. She threw Cigarettes out of her house and told him to never come back. There are still times when she doubts herself and thinks about him, but she tells us it’s getting a lot easier.

She has more energy, more money, more time to spend with her kids; she’s having fun again. She brings lollipops to parties, and has picked up painting to relieve her stress after work.

It’s like she’s a whole new person: stronger, healthier, and free.