Travis Barker says esophageal precancer diagnosis led him to quit smoking

Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker said a precancer diagnosis of the esophagus led him to quit smoking, during an episode of Big Bro with Kid Cudi released Wednesday.

"I only quit because I got diagnosed with precancer of the esophagus," Barker said.

"I loved blunts and I would smoke too much," he said. E! News reported that Barker recalled smoking 10 to 15 blunts daily at the time of the diagnosis.

He had imagined smoking for the rest of his life. "I thought I could be like Willie Nelson and smoke to the day I die," Barker said.

His doctor gave him a warning. The doctor told him, "This is your warning shot," Barker said, and instructed him to quit smoking. Barker said he "would have never stopped" without that warning.

The dates of Barker's diagnosis and his decision to quit were not immediately known.

The episode notes say Barker and Kid Cudi also discussed his aviation anxiety and how facing it became part of his new documentary, Louder Than Fear.

In a 2021 interview with Men's Health, Barker described a 2008 plane crash that killed three of his friends as his rehab. "Lose three of your friends and almost die? That was my wake-up call. If I wasn’t in a crash, I would have probably never quit," he told the magazine.

Page Six reported that Barker's past opioid addiction was connected to an enduring fear of air travel. In Louder Than Fear, Barker said earlier, "My friends knew how much I dreaded being on planes, and one of them gave me a pill to help with my anxiety."

At the height of his addiction, Barker said earlier, he employed a security guard full time, and the guard's "only job was to make sure I was breathing." Barker said that, after his hospital discharge following the crash, he disposed of everything in the toilet, "including stuff that I really needed."

Shanna Moakler, who was married to Barker from 2004 to 2008, recalled him telling her he sometimes took "about 20 to 30 pills a day." She remembered thinking, "How are you alive?".

E! News reported that Barker took up jogging after the crash, which he said helped him overcome an addiction to prescription painkillers and opioids. He said on the podcast that he still misses smoking and thinks about it all the time.

"I miss it," Barker said, though his running "started getting bigger and more important to me than smoking."

He said running helped him stay sober. "It really helped me stay sober 'cause you can't run you a half a marathon if you're doing drugs," Barker said.

Two decades on, he said, a "couple miles a day keeps the demons away."