Dean Leatherby (Taranaki Tuturu) doesn’t really remember a time that cigarettes weren’t a part of his life – until now
He started smoking when he was just 12 years old and is proud to have reached non-smoker status 44 years later, thanks to support from the Taranaki Stop Smoking Service.
Starting at such a young age, he admits the health and financial implications of smoking weren’t a consideration – it was just a habit picked up because his peers were doing it that quickly became a part of his daily routine.
“It just became a part of life,” he says, “Getting up in the morning and having a smoke instead of breakfast. As a kid, as a teenager, I’d just have a cup of tea, get out the door and have a cigarette, and that was it. And I did that for years and years and years.”
As he grew up, what prompted him to reach for a pack of smokes wasn’t just a cup of tea. Stress, anxiety, drinking, socialising – all became reasons for a cigarette.
But, while on his smokefree journey he’s realised that smoking doesn’t need to go hand in hand with those things, and it doesn’t make anything better.
He shared the analogy “You’re driving along in the middle of the night and it’s dark and it’s raining and you get a flat tyre. So, you have a smoke. But afterwards it’s still dark and it’s still raining and your tyre’s still flat.”
It’s this switch in thinking that’s helped him to stop, along with knowing himself, wanting to be healthier, and honouring the support he’s received along the way.
“Being smokefree – it’s in my mind now, and I don’t want to let anyone down,” he says.
“I know that the thing with me is to just not have that smoke. Because I can’t just have a smoke for old time’s sake. If I just have one, I know I’m going to be back smoking again.”
Due to a previous setback after he’d stop smoking for 18 months, he knows drinking is something that can tempt him, so he’s stopped that too.
“To be honest, I don’t even feel like it!” he says.
Recently, this was put to the test.
“I’d just come back from a tangi for my nephew, and I was with someone who was smoking and they offered me one, but I said no. I knew that if I had stayed there and had a drink, I’d probably have started again,” he says.
Dean is now more than three months smokefree. At first, he said he was counting the weeks until the next check in with his quit coach, but now he’s stopped counting.
Touching on what it feels like to be smokefree, he says it’s “the best thing out!”
“And to be able to say ‘non-smoker’, and write that down, tick that box, being able to tell people I don’t smoke, especially people I haven’t seen in a long time, that makes me proud,” he says.
“I just wish I never started, but I can’t dwell on the past, I can only move forward and control the future now.”