Inspiration

My name is Veronica. I'm 34. I am manager in retail, and I unsmoked 10 years ago. I was a teenager when I started smoking. I was the popular kid just trying to be ‘cool’ and I got addicted to it. It made me feel grown-up. As I got older, I was smoking two packs a day, sometimes even more. It depended how I was feeling each day. It got to a point where I wasn't enjoying it though. I hated the smell so much. The smell on my clothes wasn't nice. Even the taste was horrible. Then I realised my teeth were becoming yellow. My fingers were becoming yellow where I was holding the cigarettes. I was wasting my money. I was wasting my time. I was wasting my health. That's when I decided; ‘I don't need it anymore’. Especially as I wanted to do my job with people taking me seriously. I wanted a healthier and better life. It wasn’t easy at all. The first three months were horrible. I was just craving cigarettes so much. That was the most difficult thing, to fight against myself. It was really hard, but when you want something enough, even if it’s difficult, you just have to do it. But I've done it. And I’ve noticed so many physical benefits. I used to be a professional dancer and quitting smoking helped a lot with that - exercising became easy. My skin looks better - I’m 34, can you tell I'm 34?! I can't even smell a cigarette now though – it brings me bad memories. At the end of the day, it’s just not worth it. It's your money. It's your health.

Hi, I'm Krissi Tragana. I'm 47. I'm a singer songwriter. I've been an unsmoker since June 2014 and I changed to vaping. I've always been writing songs …I come from a family where music's always been a big thing. It was always my biggest love growing up. All the musicians, all the guys that I was hanging out with, they all smoked. So to be part of the gang I started as well. My mum was a heavy smoker I always hated the cigarette smell. She used to smoke in the kitchen and I hated it. And yet I started myself, which I don't understand. I hated it before I started. I hated it when I was a smoker. I hated the cigarette smell. Not the one that comes off when you just smoke a cigarette but the one that stays on your clothes and your hair. I have three daughters they were always complaining about me smelling horrible. hated it staining my teeth. Waking up in the morning with my mouth tasting like an ashtray. All the time people make you feel really guilty for smoking. People make you feel like you're a second-class citizen, if you smoke on a bus stop you get really nasty looks. I tried quitting for 10 years. So unsmokingwas the target but it was very hard. I tried Alan Carr's book, which was the most successful method back then, it got me off cigarettes for 6 months. But then I just relapsed again. Then one day, I was at work and a colleague on a lunch break took a vape pen out of his pocket and said I'm not going to go out in the rain. I've got this’. And I thought, ‘I have to try that’, because I had tried everything else. Patches, chewing gum, everything, nothing had worked. So I went to a vape shop and bought my first pen and 3 different flavours. Even then I was thinking ‘it probably won't work, but at least I've tried’. The next day I started using it. It gave me the effects of cigarettes that I was missing, but it didn't have the bad side effects of smoking. It didn't have the nasty smell, it didn't make my mouth taste horrible. Then me and my husband were at the Rebellion Punk Rock Festival 2 months later, and after the gig he smoked cigarettes. And I said to him, ‘give me a couple of puffs’, just out of curiosity. And that was it. That was the last time, because I thought ‘yuck it tastes disgusting’. He smoked for a couple of years after me. I became a nagging woman, because I told him he mustn't smoke in our bedroom anymore. And he continued to smoke for a while, but eventually he tried my vapes and now he uses them too. Since switching, as a singer I've had new tones and a higher pitch in my voice. I couldn't have done it before. I can breathe better it's just, amazing. You wouldn't think that after 29 years of smoking you can still just recover like that. I noticed it quite quickly. I feel great.

Hi, I'm Julie. I'm 62 years old. I began unsmoking 5 years ago. My father, who smoked a lot, died of lung cancer. I started smoking at school. It's one of those things you look back and you think 'Why did I do that?' but it was peer pressure and everybody was doing it at the time. If you didn't smoke, then you weren't really ‘one of the gang’. Once I started working, I started smoking about 20 a day, and if I'd been out drinking and socialising, I’d find that 20 a day went up to more like 30 a day. I had a job where I smoked at my desk and when they brought in the no smoking policy, our office gave us a room that we could go to, or you could go outside. I went to that room twice and it was the most disgusting place ever. Brown stuff dripping off the walls, everybody stank. That really made me change my mind about it. So, I stopped smoking during the day and then I probably cut down to three, four or five just in the evening. I smoked right the way up until I got pregnant with my daughter in 1990 and then I gave up smoking for about 11 years. Then I relapsed. By this time, I was smoking on my own as none of my friends smoked. I had stopped for so many years that nobody actually knew I was a smoker, so I would do it in my car or in the garden. Still to this day there are people in my life who don't realise I ever smoked because I was ashamed of it. I felt that I'd let everybody down by starting this crazy habit again. At that point my husband had also been working away Monday to Thursday. So I was on my own and I was smoking quite a lot and then I would stop at weekends when he was home. That told me that I could stop if I wanted to. Then he changed jobs and he was back home all the time and I thought, ‘well I can't let him see what I've become’ I had crossword puzzle, cigarette and a glass of gin and tonic, sitting by the chimney that was the way my life had been during the week. I could smoke, 9 10 cigarettes between 7pm and midnight. Then I met a friend a few years ago who had gone on to smoking a vape and we decided, that maybe that was the way to go. So, we went to a shop together and bought ourselves a little kit each and I've never looked back. My friend would go maybe an hour without cigarettes and then use the vape, then, maybe later he wanted one another cigarette and he alternated it until eventually, he just didn't smoke cigarettes anymore. It's not an easy transition for som e people. The day I decided to give up smoking, I stopped sitting in the place where I would usually sit. I went and sat somewhere else and from that day on I've never drunk in the house, never had a cigarette in the house and I've never done the crossword because the three of them went together. It's changing habits. I do occasionally have the odd cigarette just as a reminder of how disgusting it is. The horrible after taste, the smell and everything about it. Whereas with a vape, you’ve got some nice flavours, it’s a whole lot cheaper, and actually beginning to taste food again is great. I don't vape as much as I used to smoke, which is very good. So, it's gradually easing me away from it. I mean it's a winner. I look at smokers now and you see them outside in the rain, outside pubs and you think ‘why are you doing that?’. I think if somebody really wants to smoke, vaping is a better choice you're still doing the same thing but with less danger to your body.* *Important information: e cigarettes are not risk free

I'm Mbali Toyana, and I'm 35 years old. I'm a researcher by profession. I unsmoked earlier this year for my wife and our dog, Bun. I smoked for 13 years in total. I tried to quit before but went back to it after a couple of years. I had so many reasons to quit smoking cigarettes, and the more I went into jobs that were client facing, the more conscious I became of the smell. Then Mpati came home with this new device and these little boxes of heated tobacco, and she was excited. She was very serious about quitting cigarettes, and I’d got to that point too, so I tried it. Now there’s no more smell on my clothes and hands and I’m glad I’m no longer on cigarettes. After so many years of smoking cigarettes there was a deliberate and conscious decision to unsmoke. We realized that the habit no longer served us. I want to make sure that she's stays on this path, together. I'm going to do it for her and make sure that she never goes back to cigarettes. We're not going to go back. I'm Mpati Toyana. I'm 34 years old and a business consultant and a baker. I unsmoked for my wife and our dog, Bun. I started smoking when I was experimenting with a friend. She used to smoke with my brother who was older than me. The worst thing for me is that I really felt like a slave to cigarettes. It's like it being like dragged down the road when you don't want to be. I also used cigarettes for breaks as at work because when it got really hectic it meant I could go outside to refresh mentally. It even got to a point where if a restaurant did not have a smoking section, we would not make a reservation just based on the fact that we couldn't smoke. But since we've entered our thirties, we've become a more conscious of what we do and what we tell ourselves. We were trying to be more conscious with our choices and actions, and asked ourselves ‘why do I smoke? Is there an alternative to this?’. Then, I was introduced to heated tobacco by a friend’s boyfriend and that’s when I introduced it to my wife too. I’d never even seen nor heard of it but he showed me the device and at first, I couldn't understand it. But he showed me exactly what to do and I decided to try it. I was smoking anyway, so I might as well try to change to something better. At first, I thought it up way too finicky, but now it's like second nature. I’ve realised that the number of times we use heated tobacco is way less than we used cigarettes, and it doesn't smell like cigarettes do, and it doesn't linger. So switching to heated tobacco just seemed like a natural choice for me. Now I'm glad we’re free of cigarettes. We are present and we don't miss a moment. We’ve unsmoked.