Ex-smoker stays on track with helpline support
Agency offers trained, professional moderators, quit coaches to assist
It was a smoke that would have cost Cindy Lawson $500 — but that price tag helped her resist the temptation to light up on a day when she badly wanted to.
The trigger was a crisis last month. Lawson had to take her aged cocker spaniel, Macy, for euthanization. He had belonged to Lawson’s sister Carol Olexan, who died from lung cancer in 2009 at the age of 57.
“It was a struggle,” Lawson said. “All I could think about all that night was having a cigarette.”
One year earlier, Lawson won $500 in the Smokers’ Helpline First Week Challenge Contest. In exchange for a pledge to quit smoking for the first seven days of the month, she was entered in a draw for one of two cash prizes.
Back then, Lawson had made a deal with herself: Even so much as one puff, and she would have to pay back every penny she won. That, and the memory of a string of family members lost to illness, got her through without succumbing to the urge.
Her sister Carol never smoked in her life, Lawson said, but growing up she was exposed to second-hand smoke from their parents in the car and the house. Carol had also been in a house fire during a sleepover at a friend’s place.
Within the space of a few years, Lawson also lost her mother to smoking-related emphysema, her father to what doctors described as “galloping cancer” (he died less than a week after diagnosis), and a sister-in-law to brain cancer.
Seeing so much suffering prompted her to quit smoking.
“I want my grandchildren to be non-smokers. I want to set a good example for them,” she said.
Not that it has been easy. Like many smokers, Lawson has quit several times. The longest stretch was four years. She last kicked the habit in August 2017.
Although each time was a struggle “it does get easier,” she said.
Lawson still turns to the Smokers’ Helpline on the Canadian Cancer Society website whenever she feels the urge to light up again and wants support or answers.
Stress is her prime trigger, but she has sought alternate ways to cope, such as chewing gum. The thought that smoking “is not the easy way out, it’s the hardest way out” keeps her on track, she said.
“We know that most smokers want to quit,” said Donna Pasiechnik, Health Policy Analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society in Saskatchewan.
About two-thirds say they plan to quit in the coming year, according to a Canadian community health survey, she added.
A Health Canada evaluation of the quit line in 2012 showed just how effective it can be. Smokers who tried to quit with no support had a success rate of three to five per cent after six months, Pasiechnik said. Among who used a telephone support service, the success rate was 28 per cent.
Recently revamped, the Smokers’ Helpline offers the support of peers, moderators and quit coaches who are “trained and professional and kind and empathetic,” Pasiechnik noted. It’s free of charge to anyone in the province, and accessible by telephone and computer.
The First Week Challenge Contest has doubled the helpline’s registration from its 2015 level, she added. It’s effective because people think “I can do anything for seven days,” and then they realize quitting is doable, she said.