Transcript: Thanks, Allan. This is David Brower with Your 20 Minute Podcast. Our special guest today is Rocky Rosen, the Cigarette Whisperer. He describes himself as having been a diehard, got to quit, can’t quit, must quit, won’t quit, desperate to quit, tried everything there is to quit, never going to quit smoker who has helped many, many people stop smoking over the years.
I can relate to every single one of those. Welcome, Rocky, glad to have you on the show.
Rocky Rosen: I’m humbled, nice to be here.
David Brower: So, how long have you been doing this? How long have you been recognized as the Cigarette Whisperer?
Rocky Rosen: Well, the Cigarette Whisperer is a new nickname in the last few years. It’s one of the physicians who calls me that. I’ve been helping people stop smoking since 1991, I’m off cigarettes since 1987. I never dreamt this would be a calling for me, but it has been.
David Brower: Nice.
Rocky Rosen: My calling is to help people who wish give up smoking.
David Brower: What a gift, man.
Rocky Rosen: I’m not anti-smoking, I’m not against smokers, I hate the way smokers are treated. I don’t care if people smoke or not. I care deeply if they wish they didn’t smoke.
David Brower: Yeah, yeah. You were on The Doctors a couple years ago, and I watched that video this morning. It was first of all, wonderful exposure for you, wonderful success for Shelly. I watched her pre-interview with her primary care physician. That girl was in trouble.
Rocky Rosen: Oh yeah.
David Brower: Then on the show, you had her off cigarettes for three days and her body language, the glow in her face, I mean it was like 180 degrees. That was crazy impressive.
Rocky Rosen: Yeah, well what’s amazing about it is, how quickly things turn around with the smoker when you’re an ex-smoker. The benefits that are so huge are also so very subtle for people. My job is to help you remember what the benefits are. It’s pretty simple what I do. It’s a four-day program. It takes six hours over four consecutive days. I teach people how to use the urge to smoke as the way to stop instead of always trying to fight and ignore those urges.
You know, there are two big lies about quitting smoking. Lie number one: I gotta quit. Lie number two: I don’t wanna do his anymore.
David Brower: Right.
Rocky Rosen: When people pick up the phone and call me, that’s usually what’s on their mind. I gotta quit, I don’t want to do this. I just kind of let them know right away, the truth isn’t that you have to quit. You don’t have to quit. You’ve been telling yourself for years you have to quit. Now, you may hate yourself, your health may suffer, and cigarettes may take you out in a way you can’t dream about being taken out. But you have free will, you can smoke any time you want to. One of the things my clients do, even if they stop smoking is they’ll still carry cigarettes with them. So they always know they’ve got the choice to smoke or not to smoke. It’s when we don’t have cigarettes when we’re a smoker that we drive ourselves batty.
David Brower: Boy isn’t that the truth, yeah.
Rocky Rosen: Lie number two, I don’t want to smoke anymore. You told me earlier that you’re an ex-smoker too. You’re off cigarettes since 1980.
David Brower: Yep, September 16th 1980, but who’s counting? That’s right.
Rocky Rosen: Ever get any urges to smoke? Ever?
David Brower: Oh my gosh, I quit a hundred times.
Rocky Rosen: No, but since the last time you quit.
David Brower: Oh since then? No.
Rocky Rosen: You’ve never had an urge? Oh, I feel like having a cigarette, or a cigarette would taste good right now.
David Brower: No, no.
Rocky Rosen: Okay, well you’re the rare exception. You see the truth about people like me, and those of us who’ve gotten addicted, that’s you too –
David Brower: Yep.
Rocky Rosen: – isn’t that we don’t want to smoke. The real truth is, we do want to smoke, we just won’t want to suffer the consequences. If there was no consequences to smoking, we never would quit.
David Brower: Right, that’s right.
Rocky Rosen: But there are, the consequences are many, there are a plethora of consequences. Whether it be smoking or vaping, you know. A couple things I try to educate people on very quickly is, and this goes for vapers too is … do you know what nicotine is?
David Brower: I have no clue.
Rocky Rosen: The tobacco industry has been brilliant hiding the truth about nicotine in dictionaries. What nicotine truly is, is it’s valued as an insecticide. It’s one of the most lethal substances found on earth. When a person is smoking or vaping or chewing, or chewing nicotine gum or wearing the patches, all they’re doing all day long is insecticiding themselves.
David Brower: Oh my God.
Rocky Rosen: Smokers and vapers, you wonder why your throat feels raw, you wonder why your chest feels tight. You wonder why you just feel a little bit crappy. It’s because you’re constantly insecticiding yourself. For all the good you’re doing, you might as well be spraying a little squirt of hot Raid down the back of your throat.
David Brower: My goodness.
Rocky Rosen: So …
David Brower: I do remember the scratchy throat, I absolutely do remember that, yeah.
Rocky Rosen: Of course we all do. Then I want to talk about real quick, the most evil brand of cigarettes in America, that’s the brand the American Sprits. The reason why they’re the most evil brand, is they try to convince people we’re not as bad as the other guys. When they are equally as bad as any other brand out there.
David Brower: Wow.
Rocky Rosen: They brag about how they don’t have any additives. Well, you take a pure leaf of tobacco. With no additives and you ignite it, and it breaks down to over 4,000 different compounds get released. Those 4,000 compounds you get things like arsenic, cyanide, benzine, ammonia, formaldehyde, fiberglass, there’s even minute amounts of plutonium 210, minute amounts of radioactive material get released, when you ignite tobacco. This is where epidemiologists think the cancers originate from, from these free radical radioactive materials circulating in your bloodstream, gets caught in an organ, radiation changes its cellular structure and a cancer is formed.
David Brower: Yeah, and it just wants to be fed, right?
Rocky Rosen: And the additives, you can’t feed this enough. The cat gets scratched. If I were talking to a smoker, I would ask him, “In your life, who or what comes first?” And oftentimes, they’ll tell me, “My family, my job, my kids, God,” anything. And they’re wrong. What comes first in a smoker’s life are their cigarettes, and they never gave them permission to be more important than family and God to them. I always say cigarettes are shaped perfectly. I hope I can go a little R-rated.
David Brower: Of course.
Rocky Rosen: But cigarettes are just little pricks that wanna hurt you. You love them. They don’t even know you exist. What I do is I flip that for people. When the person calls, and they tell me they’re disappointed in themselves for smoking, but they love their cigarettes, I flip that. I teach them how to confront their urges, and how to really come to hate cigarettes.
David Brower: Wow. I remember that was my thing, when I was smoking. I was like, “Oh, man, I know I need to quit, but I love the taste of my cigarettes.”
Rocky Rosen: Actually, that’s not altogether true. What you love is not having the urge to smoke. Do you wanna know why people smoke?
David Brower: Yes, please.
Rocky Rosen: They smoke to make their urge to smoke go away.
David Brower: That makes sense.
Rocky Rosen: That’s the only reason why people smoke. I teach them how to use that urge instead of always trying to decide it won’t work.
David Brower: You literally flip it, because you’re right. Any of us who have smoked before, or smoke right now, are really familiar with this conversation of, “Yeah, I like my cigarettes. Yeah, I think I can quit, but I’m gonna wait. Yeah, I’m just gonna have one more.” And on and on and on, right?
Rocky Rosen: I always tell my clients, “Now is never a good time to quit smoking.” The truth is, with everything going on in their lives, this is probably not the optimum time. But, there will never be a good time. There will always be a reason why now’s not a good time.
David Brower: Exactly.
Rocky Rosen: And since there’s never a good time, there never will be a bad time, and since there never will be a bad time, now is the best time, because I can guarantee you a smoker who knows they have the opportunity to stop smoking [inaudible 00:08:16] ever again.
David Brower: Yeah.
Rocky Rosen: There’s always, you know, you get to fight for your life now, or you get to fight for your life later. Your choice.
David Brower: Right. I remember my mom, she started smoking when she was five. She would follow my grandfather in the potato fields, and he would roll his own cigarettes and drop the still lit butt in the furrow of the potatoes. She would follow behind him and smoke. She smoked a couple of packs, easily, a day until she was 68 and had a stroke, and then she quit cold turkey, ’cause the doctors told her to, and she did it.
Rocky Rosen: How long did she live after that?
David Brower: Four years.
Rocky Rosen: Four years.
David Brower: Yeah. Esophageal cancer took her.
Rocky Rosen: George Harrison and Humphrey Bogart, your mother. Lung cancer took my mother. I’ve been helping people stop smoking for four years before Mom died. I always say about Mom, that she finally stopped smoking right after her ashes cooled. That’s horrible, but…
David Brower: No, I understand. Wow. So you’ve been doing this for a while. How many people do you feel you’ve touched, in a ballpark?
Rocky Rosen: Four figures. I don’t know the exact number.
David Brower: Right. And how do people find you?
Rocky Rosen: Through their doctor, through word of mouth, through somebody who’s [inaudible 00:09:42] with me, through some of these shows.
David Brower: Right.
Rocky Rosen: You can go to rockyrosen.com. You can YouTube Rocky Rosen. You can see what doctors say about me, and what my clients say about me.
David Brower: Yeah, when you Google your name, or Google the Cigarette Whisperer, there is tons of tons of information there, folks, that you can check out and go, “Oh, yeah. This guy’s beyond credible.” It’s important to do your homework, and Rocky’s obviously had great success.
Rocky Rosen: And I always do a free consultation. There’s no pressure, there’s no obligation.
David Brower: Nice.
Rocky Rosen: And usually the free obligation takes about two hours. All you need to do, if we’re not in the same city, is just be on the phone and have access to the Internet, to a PowerPoint presentation.
David Brower: Nice.
Rocky Rosen: And the best way to get in touch with me, I’m very approachable, may I give my phone number?
David Brower: Sure.
Rocky Rosen: I’ll give it now, and I’ll give it at the end of this.
David Brower: Sounds good.
Rocky Rosen: Talk to me directly. My number’s 818-961-6978.
David Brower: 818-961-6978. So, on TV, probably the only thing I remember recently in the last few years is Chantix promoting how to quit. My son and his wife both tried that. She had zero success with it. For whatever reason, he did. He hasn’t smoked in five years. How do you feel about that kind of stuff?
Rocky Rosen: What happens is, eventually you’re gonna go off the pill, and you’re gonna get another urge and you won’t know what to do with it. That’s one, but two: Chantix, if you watch the commercial, is about 10, 15 seconds of happy, happy, happy, and then 45 seconds of cautionary tales of what Chantix can do.
David Brower: Exactly.
Rocky Rosen: Hallucinatory dreams, thoughts of suicide, homicide. It’s a very scary drug. I don’t care how anybody stops. Any way you stop is the best way in the world. I’ll tell all your listeners right now, do you wanna know the entire secret to quitting smoking?
David Brower: You bet.
Rocky Rosen: Don’t take the next hit.
David Brower: There you go.
Rocky Rosen: Don’t take the next hit of nicotine. Stopping is ridiculously simple, but it’s just not easy. And I take that really simple concept, I make that really doable for my clients.
David Brower: You know this better than I, but our brains are very reactionary. If I’m gonna say, “Okay, I’m just gonna take one more hit,” my subconscious is going, “Yeah, right.”
Rocky Rosen: I have yet to meet an addict who can get lit just having one hit, without having another hit.
David Brower: Exactly.
Rocky Rosen: And not everybody who smokes is addicted.
David Brower: Oh, that’s interesting.
Rocky Rosen: There are social smokers. There are people who can take it or leave it. I was a social smoker, but then I crossed that invisible line where I didn’t care if my friends were around or not. I want freaking cigarette.
David Brower: Right.
Rocky Rosen: And I got addicted. There are people who have smoked for years and go, “You know what? This just isn’t serving me,” and they just seem to be able to walk away from it painlessly. I don’t know how. It’s just not my experience.
David Brower: Right. I remember that was the hardest thing for my son, when he was 22. He came up to me, and was so ashamed and told me that he smoked. I’m going, “Okay, and that bothers you because…?” “Well, I know I’m just disappointing you, Dad.” I’m going, “No you’re not. This isn’t about me. This is not about me.”
Rocky Rosen: Good for you, because it isn’t. It’s between the smoker and the smoker.
David Brower: Yeah, exactly.
Rocky Rosen: And if they have any religious or spiritual signs, it’s between them and their god and themselves.
David Brower: That’s exactly right.
Rocky Rosen: And nobody else.
David Brower: And nobody else. My experience was interesting. Everybody has a story. You mentioned faith in God, and I’ve always felt that the reason I quit was a God thing, or a guardian angel thing. I’m in a press box in southern Washington, getting ready to do a semifinal state championship football game, play by play. My buddy, Dave, was there with me. He’s a Vietnam vet, totally disabled, carries oxygen. His line was, “My doctor makes me smoke, otherwise I’ll die.” I’m going, “Yeah, whatever.”
We’re getting set up for the game, setting up the equipment. Nobody’s there in the stands yet. I’m doing that rationale thing. I look over at Dave, and I say, “Hey, man. I’ve been doing so good on quitting cigarettes. Can I have one of yours?” I’m rewarding myself. Right then, this little old lady stands up on the top bleacher, turns around, looks in the press box. And I’m five hours from home, right? And she says, “Are you David Brower?” I said, “Yes, ma’am.” She says, “How’s that quitting cigarettes thing working for you?” And I’m going, “Okay, I’m done.” And that’s when I quit.
Rocky Rosen: I never use that language like “quit.” The three words in the English language I hate the most are, “I quit smoking.”
David Brower: Okay.
Rocky Rosen: The four words I hate the most are, “I must quit smoking.”
David Brower: Right.
Rocky Rosen: I don’t teach people, per se, how to quit smoking. I teach people how to get out of a very evil relationship. Smoking isn’t smoking; smoking’s a relationship. It’s a commitment.
David Brower: That makes sense.
Rocky Rosen: It’s the most intimate relationship a smoker has, because their cigarettes are with them during every success and failure, during every happiness and sadness, and every boredom.
David Brower: That you go to.
Rocky Rosen: It’s about getting free; it’s not about quitting. When I go, “I quit smoking,” I went, “My brain says I never can smoke again,” and I go obsessed that if I could just say, “You know what? Screw cigarettes.” I’ve gone 31 years, I’ve never thought I quit smoking.
David Brower: What do you say when somebody says, “So did you quit smoking?” And you come back with…
Rocky Rosen: I haven’t smoked in a lot of years.
David Brower: Yeah. Now that you say that out loud, that’s usually what I say. I say, “September 16th, 1980, but who’s counting?”
Rocky Rosen: Isn’t that amazing how significant that date really is to you?
David Brower: Yeah, it really is.
Rocky Rosen: That’s what I really try to impress upon my clients. The day three with me is their independence day. It’s the date they get to proclaim their emancipation.
David Brower: I gotta tell you, if you watch Shelly on that Doctors program, and you can find it easily on YouTube or Google, and you look at the way she was sitting with her primary care physician, her legs were tight, her hands were twitching, she wasn’t smiling, she was flush, she was frustrated, she didn’t know what to do next. Then you cut to Shelly on the stage with the doctors, “Okay, I’m on national TV. I’m freaking out.” No. She’s calm, she’s relaxed, she’s composed, her skin color was brilliant, she was smiling, she was radiant. Oh my god.
Rocky Rosen: She’s still free.
David Brower: Awesome.
Rocky Rosen: One of my clients used to call me The Fixer. I don’t know if you remember the movie Pulp Fiction?
David Brower: I do, sure.
Rocky Rosen: Harvey Keitel plays a short, pivotal role in it.
David Brower: Yeah.
Rocky Rosen: When Travolta and Jackson make a huge, bloody mess, they call him and he cleans up the mess and he sprints. And that’s exactly what I do for my clients. I come in, I clean up this mess, and I sprint. But I sprint with a caveat, and that caveat is that my clients know that I’m gonna be there for them 24/7.
David Brower: Nice.
Rocky Rosen: It isn’t just wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, goodbye, good luck. You’ve got a coach. You’ve got somebody in your corner on a 24/7 basis.
David Brower: And what a gift that has to be, to realize there’s a safety net. Somebody’s got my back if I have a slip up.
Rocky Rosen: You have to call me before you have a slip up.
David Brower: There you go.
Rocky Rosen: I always ask my clients, “How many more times in your life do you wanna quit smoking?” I never wanna feel like I have to quit smoking ever again.
David Brower: Yeah.
Rocky Rosen: And I didn’t begin to help anybody get smoke free until I had three years off cigarettes. Like I said, I never dreamt I would wind up in this field, but fortunately, I’ve got an excellent reputation, and I work very hard for my clients. I’m very approachable. I’m just a guy trying to help other people who wish they didn’t smoke.
David Brower: Rocky. It is Rocky. I had a brain fart there for a minute.
Rocky Rosen: That’s okay. You can call me anything you want to.
David Brower: We’re about out of time here, but I wanna thank you. Rocky Rosen, the Cigarette Whisperer. You can check him out at rockyrosen.com. You can Google the Cigarette Whisperer and see many of his successes. And you can call him direct. 818-961-6978. Rocky, it’s been a real pleasure, man. Thank you so much.
Rocky Rosen: Well, congratulations to you on the years you have off. And guys, I really am here for you. If you’re having trouble getting off these things, I hope I hear from you.
David Brower: Right. Have a blessed week. Take care.
Rocky Rosen: Right back at you.
Allan Blackwell: Your 20 Minute Podcast with David Brower has been brought to you by Audible. You can listen to any of David’s podcasts anywhere podcasts can be found, including iHeartRadio, the Spotify mobile app, and at davidbrowervo.com/your20minutepodcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.