Jonny Ferguson started smoking at just seven years old.
“I grew up in the 80’s, and I can’t really watch the ‘Once Were Warriors’ movie because it hits too close to the bone, it’s how we lived, that’s how it was,” he says.
He admits smoking at that young age made him feel grown up and cool at the time, plus it’s what everyone around him was doing.
“The health side effects of smoking when I was younger wasn’t a consideration! I was doing it to feel like an adult. We were expected to be a lot more responsible back then; I was already cooking my own dinners by the time I started smoking,” he explains.
Now a father and grandparent, Jonny has tried to quit before but admits his heart wasn’t really in it at the time and he was just trying to appease his kids who wanted him to stop.
It wasn’t until his partner told him he couldn’t afford to buy a boat that something lit up inside him and he knew he was ready.
“I was talking out the back of our café with my staff about how I wanted to buy a boat and my partner overheard and looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘You’re not getting a boat, you can’t afford a boat’!” he smiled.
“That fuelled my defiance, as soon as someone tells me I can’t do or have something, all I want to do is prove them wrong! From that moment, that was it, I was done with smoking and I was fully committed!” he said.
True to his word and stubborn nature, he soon called Tui Ora to access free support from the Taranaki Stop Smoking Service.
With help from his quit coach Karlene, he’s now six weeks smokefree and a few months away from buying a boat with the money he’s saved from not buying cigarettes.
“Just before I quit, I was spending about $240 a week on tobacco,” he said, “I was smoking very heavily!”
At his first stop smoking session with Karlene, Jonny blew a high 28 level in the carbon monoxide breath tester. At his last session, he blew a non-smoker result of 3.
When sharing learned advice from his journey to being smokefree so far, he says it’s important to be ready to stop, be honest with yourself, and find out what motivates you.
“I know I need to be doing things in the afternoon when I get a bit restless or irritable, I can’t be sitting around doing nothing because then I know I’ll want a cigarette – but I feel success in being able to control myself, and the more success I have, the easier I find it to keep going, it all just plays into my tenacity.”
“The more progress I make, the harder it is to pick up that smoke. Also, all that money I’ve saved, if I muck up and have a cigarette, it’ll go into the family account for something else and I won’t get a boat,” he laughed.
Since stopping smoking, Jonny has saved just under $2000 and has started planning what kind of boat he’ll get once he’s saved up enough. In preparation for his days on the water, he’s already been able to purchase ‘a really swanky chilly bin’ with his savings too.
Although a big motivator, his drive behind wanting to buy a boat isn’t just to prove his partner wrong – he also wants the freedom to take his kids out on the water to go fishing whenever they want.
“I could always go out on my mate’s boat, but when I’d ask if my boys could come along, they’d often say they didn’t really want to take kids with them. Now my mates have stopped asking me as much, so I knew I really needed my own boat,” he said.
“I’m really looking forward to taking my boys out. I can’t wait to be out there fishing with them, in our own time and no agenda of someone else.”