Smoking is normally castigated by health experts, family, cartoons, friends and even the box the cigarettes come from!

To smoke in this day and age can be a hard task for it is deemed a shameful habit and rightly so. But what about those people who have an addiction so bad that they can't survive without a smoking a packet a day? How hellish must their lives be?

Comedian and now Radio Jambo co-host Terrence Macharia lived this life for more than 22 years. His addiction was so bad he would smoke 2-3 packs a day. Don't forget that a pack holds 20 cigarettes!

Terrence hosts ”Bustani la Massawe" alongside Massawe Japanni and he spoke about his habit and how much he had spent on the filthy habit, close to 800,000 shillings on cigarettes! What!

I remember some of my ‘friends’ who wanted me to offer my creative services to them used to say ‘huyu usimpee pesa, bora uende na fegi atakuskiza’ That’s how low I could stoop, and as an addict, you put smoke ahead of you.

He added in his earnest confession:

365 days ago I was a smoke slave, I couldn’t function without smoke, I kept it to my mind that I needed to smoke to be more creative, later on, I realized it was just a myth, I prayed to God and said to myself I will quit, I prayed and told God to free me coz am His child and He did. I had smoked for 22years, between age 9 – 14 I was a soft smoker but from age 16 I became a heavy smoker.

Terrence was able to calculate how many cigarettes he had smoked and how much he had spent by doing simple math. He computed:

I smoked 2 -3 packs a day. Estimately before quitting, I had smoked more than 166,000 cigarettes, in this, I haven’t counted Shisha and Marijuana. Estimately on the lower side I had spent more than 804,000ksh on smoke.

But Terrence is able to smile now as he has been smoke-free for more than one year. He thanks his wife and friends for standing by him. He also encourages people to quit from whatever might be enslaving them. Will you?