Holly’s stop smoking story

Holly, one of the Essex Working Well workplace Workplace Health Champions quit smoking with us and she has kindly given us an interview and permission to share a photo taken during her recent holiday, paid for by the money saved from quitting!

What motivated you to quit?

I’d been a smoker for over 20 years and was at a point where I knew I wanted to quit to improve my health and save some money.

How easy was it to access the Essex Wellbeing Service Smoking Support?

I’m a Workplace Health Champion at Ingleton Wood and I saw that Essex Wellbeing Service offered a support service to quit tobacco and move to vaping, so I got in touch with the team to find out more. I completed an initial online assessment and booked a quit smoking course that suited me. I was assigned a smoking advisor, and we had regular telephone calls to review my progress and help keep me on track. 

Your journey from smoker, to cutting back to being smoke free, took 6-7 months is that right?

I must admit it was a challenging journey especially at the start.

I tried to quit cold turkey at the beginning, but I found myself going back to cigarettes especially in social situations or when my stress levels were rising.

“I realised that quitting outright wasn’t working and changed my approach by reducing the number of cigarettes I was smoking each day”

Over the space of a few months, I slowly reduced the amount, but I struggled to completely quit. I also started using mindfulness and meditation to help manage my stress levels which I think helped me cut down and I also treated myself when I was able to reduce the amount I was smoking, which was anything from a day at a spa or getting a massage or getting an indulgent sweet treat from my local bakery.

I signed up to the EWS scheme and by the end of the support sessions I had moved over to using just a vape.

It sounds strange but smoking a cigarette and a vape feels different, so it took a bit of time to adjust and get used to using a vape but now I’ve been smoke free for over a year.

What health benefits have you noticed since quitting?

I used to get out of breath walking up the stairs and one of the first things I noticed was not being out of breath all the time. At the beginning I did cough up mucus but this did pass after a couple of weeks. As the months went on, I’ve noticed my sense of smell improve and my general fitness and energy levels improved.  It’s not a health benefit but each month I noticed that I had extra money that I wasn’t spending on tobacco, which was an incentive to keep going, what I did save I put towards a summer holiday this year.

Is there anything you can say to encourage others to opt for the Cut Back to Quit as a way to becoming smokefree?

If you are looking to quit smoking and find yourself struggling, I’d really recommend the programmes offered by the Essex Wellbeing Service. Having someone to talk to and encouraging you to take accountability in achieving my goal was key in helping keep me on track and achieve my goal to quit smoking.