Kerry Hebberley: Smokefree me best way to be

Kerry Hebberley, journalist at Hawke's Bay Today.

This Saturday morning I will be nicotine free for the first time in many years, thanks to the vaping "trend" and having a 2018 goal firmly in my sights.

I started smoking when I was 12, in my final intermediate year in 1974. I smoked my last cigarette on Saturday, January 14 this year.

Many of my friends were smoking by the time they were 11, so I was considered a late starter. By the time I reached my early 20s, I was inhaling a pack of 25 a day and in my 30s, even more ... especially on Saturday nights while out at the pub.

Yes, in those days you could smoke virtually anywhere, even on aircraft.

I remember my first flight, from Napier to Wellington, with my mother when I was 14. The smokers were all seated at the back of the plane, puffing up large.

There I was, up the front, desperate for a ciggie ... but my mother didn't know that and I would never have considered smoking in front of her anyway. She often talked about smokers and their "filthy habit".

So, she endured the smell of smoke and I endured the cravings ... there and back.
I stopped smoking while I was pregnant but it wasn't easy and, I am ashamed to say, a few minutes after each baby popped out I was off like a shot to the balcony or down the corridor of the maternity home to the smoking area, to light up.

In my late-40s, smoking began to hit me hard in the pocket. With hungry children to feed and high school uniforms to buy, along with a boyfriend who didn't smoke, it was easy cutting back on the ciggies.

I couldn't ditch the habit altogether, though. I always enjoyed smoking.

Visiting Nottingham in the UK in late-2015, I was picked up from the bus station by my friend Lesley, who had recently given up smoking and showed off her smart new accessory - a stainless steel vaping device.

She showed me how it worked and I was impressed, though not enough to quit.
My mates in Wales smoked and ciggies are still cheap there, so that didn't help. I smoked like a chimney the whole 10 days and nights of my stay.

Back home from a second trip to Wales last year and planning a trip to Finland in 2018 to hopefully see the Northern Lights, I wondered how I would fare in my posh viewing igloo, protected from the bitter temperatures outside, if I felt the urge to light up. Would satisfying the craving be worth it?

I hope to plod about in snowshoes, go sledding and spend evenings in front of a roaring fire, not behind buildings as a social outcast, outside in the deep snow, inhaling money that would be better spent elsewhere.

So I made a vow. I would quit, whatever it took.

A few colleagues had taken up vaping. One said, "Try it, you won't regret it."

I set a date and smoked my last cigarette in a carpark up town in Napier, then walked to the vapour shop. I bought a device and some oil, and I was all set.

I started off with 12mg of nicotine in the oil. Two weeks later I was down to 6mg and this Saturday, I will be down to zero.

I will be inhaling a grape-flavoured oil and I will be able to call myself an ex-smoker.
I have not missed the ciggies and I have had no withdrawal symptoms. I don't need a lighter or ashtray.

I was spending up to $70 a week on my 2.5 packets of 30 cigarettes: now I'm spending $20 a fortnight (sometimes almost three weeks) on oil. That alone is a big enough incentive to quit smoking: it's never going to get cheaper.

Some people have said, "You're just swapping one habit for another." That is true but my vaping habit is a whole lot better for my health.

I don't smell like an ashtray now. I can smell the grass, the rain (give me more), spices in my recipes, flowers ... I never realised I was missing out on scents non-smokers take for granted.

In a few more weeks, I will no longer need my vaping device. I shall arrive in Finland next year fitter and smoke free.

It's going to be glorious.

* Kerry Hebberley is a journalist at Hawke's Bay Today.