What happened to the Turkish man who banished his head to a cage and gave only the key to his wife?

Addictions—don’t we all have something we can’t quit? Whether it’s battling that extra weight, mindlessly scrolling through Netflix, or something much more serious, we all have our struggles. Some of us are dealing with big issues, like Lamar Odom, who’s been open about his own personal demons. Smoking, for example, is one of the deadliest addictions out there, claiming millions of lives every year.

But one man decided to take an extreme approach to kick his own smoking habit. Ibrahim Yücel, a Turkish father of three, was so desperate to quit his two-pack-a-day cigarette addiction that he went to some pretty extreme lengths. And when I say extreme, I mean he literally put his head in a cage. Yes, you read that right—a cage… for his head.

This all happened in 2013 in Kütahya, Turkey. Yücel, who had lost his father to lung cancer caused by smoking, was determined to stop. Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death worldwide, and Yücel had seen first-hand the destruction it could cause. Despite smoking for over 20 years, his willpower just couldn’t hold up against the cravings. So, he crafted a helmet-like “head cage” out of 40 meters of copper wire to trap himself in. Every day, he’d put it on, and his wife and daughter would take the keys, effectively locking him into his self-imposed prison.

While it sounds like something out of a weird reality show, you have to admire the guy’s determination. But you’ve got to wonder—how did he go about his daily life like that? Drinking water through a straw, nibbling on crackers… it seems like a strange and awkward way to exist. And what about socializing? Was he just silently nodding at people from behind the copper bars? His story quickly became a topic of interest online, with people discussing his very unusual method for quitting smoking.

One Reddit user summed it up pretty well, commenting on his dedication. But the online crowd wasn’t content with just admiring his unusual choice; they had plenty of questions. The main one being: Did it actually work?

Over on X (formerly Twitter), some were skeptical and doubted the method’s effectiveness. And, of course, some couldn’t resist throwing in some angsty ’90s rock lyrics into the conversation, making light of the whole situation.

It’s been almost a decade since Ibrahim Yücel became a symbol of extreme self-discipline, but even in 2024, we’re still left wondering: What happened to him and his unusual journey to quit smoking? Since that head cage went on, news updates about him have stopped. The world moved on, and his story slowly faded away from the spotlight. I like to imagine that somewhere in Kütahya, there’s a storage unit full of discarded copper wire and a faint whiff of old cigarette smoke. Part of me hopes Yücel succeeded in his quest, but given how little information is out there, his ultimate fate might remain a mystery forever.