Quit TIPS

So you’ve decided to stop smoking… try the following suggestions to increase your chances of quitting for life:

Give one of the trained counselors a call at the … it’s just the cost of a local call from anywhere in Australia

Talk to your doctor or pharmacist and together plan a quitting strategy. This may include using Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT)

If your partner, friend or a family member smokes, encourage them to quit with you so you have a ‘quitting buddy’

Make your car and house ‘smoke free’ zones- it will help reduce the temptation to smoke

Quitting Buddies

Therese Kelly and her friend Carrie Alvaro are quitting buddies and work colleagues.

Rather than taking a ‘ciggie break’ together as they once did, they now support each other by going for a walk instead.

They both phased in their quitting rather than going ‘cold turkey’.

Firstly they called the Quit line and were sent a Quit Kit. They then took the advice found in the Quit Kit and picked a quitting date (13 May) and made their home and car smoke free.

PROFILE of Therese Kelly, 33 year old woman who has quit

Therese started social smoking at 18 when she started University.

What started as the ‘occasional’ cigarette soon turned to a pack a day addiction.

When Therese was 19 she was smoking 16 mg cigarettes but decided, rather than quit, she would change to ‘mild’ cigarettes to reduce the harm the cigarettes were doing to her body - this is a commonly believed myth, the reality is low tar cigarettes are just as harmful.

Therese successfully gave up smoking for three years when she was 23 but this was short lived.

She started smoking again simply because she was bored. Not long after she took her first drag after three years, Therese was hooked and back to smoking a pack a day.

Therese admits that every time she smokes she thinks about quitting,

“I am sick of the taste of smoke on my breath and the smell of smoke on my clothes,”

On Monday 10 May Therese got serious about quitting and called the Quitline to obtain a Quit Kit.

After reading through the Quit Kit she adopted a few strategies to enable her to successfully quit for good this time.

Therese has embarked on the following steps to obtain her goal of being a non-smoker. Therese has:

Cut down on the number of cigarettes she smokes each day
Banned smoking in her car, she is planning to make her home a smoke free zone
Found a quitting buddy who will be quitting with her on Thursday 13 May
Decided on a quit date

Therese has reported that she is now a non-smoker, and proud of it.