Quitters on the winning team to beat smoking habit

There are now more people who have quit smoking than smokers in Ireland and Amanda White, who kicked the habit more than a year ago, says it the best thing she ever did.

Amanda from Nenagh, Co Tipperary, features in a new HSE QUIT campaign that uses real-life stories to encourage smokers to quit for good. She believes the help she got from the QUIT team helped to break her 20-year smoking habit.

“The rang me every single week for the first four weeks, and every morning I woke up to a text, which was brilliant because it was really motivational — they were there for me,” she said.

“I can firmly say that I’m never going to smoke again and if I can give one piece of advice to anybody — just take it one day at a time because that’s all you can do.”

Amanda, who is single, started smoking when she was a teenager because it was “cool”. She thought quitting would be a massive task and something she would never achieve. “But, obviously, I am proof now that it can be done. I want to sing it from the rooftops that I am a non-smoker.”

The best tip she got from the QUIT team was the four Ds — delay; distract; deeply breathe, and drink water.

Amanda decided to stop smoking after her father died in 2013. Her father did not smoke, but his death made her look at life differently, and at the age of 35, she decided to look at her life in a different way.

“I went cold turkey and never had a lapse. It is the best thing I have ever done. I feel fantastic. I did put on weight at the beginning, but I have lost it now,” she said.

Amanda, whose daily water intake has increased to three litres, says quitting is a challenge, but perseverance pays off. “Your craving only lasts for three minutes, so if you can distract yourself at all for those three minutes, you surely will get through it.”

Health Minister Simon Harris, who launched the campaign, said real progress had been made in recent years in reducing tobacco use, but it was still not enough with 6,000 people dying every year from tobacco-related diseases.

“Eight percent of our children still smoke in this country, so there is absolutely no room for complacency,” he said. “The message today from the QUIT campaign is all about empowering people to give up and putting out very clear messages about the range of supports that are available to people.”

Mr Harris encouraged smokers to make an effort to quit. “You have support. There is a community of people around you that will help you. There are now more people in Ireland who have quit smoking than actually smoke, but we want to increase that number.”

National Tobacco Control lead for the HSE, Martina Blake, said they used the words and music of Gloria Gaynors’s ‘I Will Survive’ for the radio and television campaign because it mirrored the feelings of many quitters.

• www.quit.ie