The hardest part of giving up smoking is the cravings, Westport man Riki says.
After about 40 years of smoking, he gave up six months ago, using patches and gum, and talking to Smoking Cessation advisor Jess Brophy once a week.
He says when he started as a lad, his parents both smoked, but they didn’t know he was smoking.
“It’s so easy to start and I never got caught.”
Two years ago the former pig hunter, shearer and French polisher returned to Westport where he had gone to school many years ago. He’d spent most of his adult life in Adelaide.
Riki needs new hips, and doctors told him he wouldn’t “get off the table” (survive) if he didn’t quit before the operation.
“As you get older everything goes to s..t. I was smoking like a train, a pack a day easy, and if I went to the pub it was even worse and I’d sometimes go through two or three packs a night. It was about keeping my hands busy.”
Riki says now he’s given up, he can smell if someone is a smoker when they walk past. He’s also noticed his pension stretches a lot further.
And next up, he says needs to get his teeth done – also affected by the decades of smoking.