Larry Stout aka stuckkreide: I was a slave to my three packs a day
I was 11 years old when I first lit up in 1954, well within the golden age of cigarette-smoking, when a fag between your lips was glamorous – a la Bogart. The first inhalations were painful, but one had to keep a stiff upper lip. And I did. Aged 31, I was a slave to my three packs per day, smoking first thing out of bed, before attempting the most trivial of office decisions, following every meal. And, needless to say, after sex.
I realised that my onerous addiction to nicotine had been cleverly engineered by tobacco companies, and I knew that I was damaging my health. So I made sporadic, futile attempts at quitting cold turkey. More than once I threw my pack of smokes out the car window (yes, littering!), flushed the evil cylinders down the toilet, incinerated them on the BBQ grill, only to find myself in a panic five minutes later. Until...
One day my two young children came home from elementary school quite agitated, and with a message presumably received at school that day: "Daddy! You have to quit smoking! It KILLS YOU!" This I already knew. But this simple, and touching plea brought the matter home. You might think it a nudge, but for me it was the loudest gong that ever sounded on my sensibilities. I resolved to quit. And by resolved I mean I determined to suffer, as I knew I would, the torture of withdrawal. I tossed my cigs and bought cigarillos, which I used unlit, for pacifier effect. After 10 very difficult but manageable days, I had won the war. For the truly addicted, a nudge does not suffice. That my personal pacifier cure will work for all, I doubt. But, for some it should, and for all there is a cure beyond the nudge.
Catherine Arbuthnott aka katepost: Put the pharmacies in charge
How nice it is to be nudged by the government. "Clearly it makes all the difference" I thought to myself as I drove down to see my elderly parents, who believe I've given up smoking. Their eyesight is deteriorating, but not their sense of smell. It's a hot summer day and I'm wearing a woolly hat that covers all of my hair, a scarf and an extra jumper. Wipes in the glove box for stinky hands. This is humiliating and, I fear, slightly weird. But parental misery and disapproval is easily circumvented by a little forward planning.
Of course the black-edged warnings of death and doom on the packet would work if I noticed them. Let's make the pictures bigger. That would be a good nudge. License tobacconists in a handful of locations so it's incredibly inconvenient to resupply? Great idea, although I do remember the time I drove in circles for nearly 20 miles on a Sunday night to find an open shop. And that was after pulling out the ashtray to see if I could find any longer stubs. Make cigarettes more expensive? Well that will just make me a lot poorer.
We all know smokers keep smoking in spite of staggering disincentives, like, for example, death. Right-thinking people either hate us or think we're insane, and actually we are a little. So let's stop pretending that nudges work and try something different. How about making it a little easier to stop on a whim? Sell stop-smoking aids like patches and gum in tobacconists right next to the cigarette packets. GPs are the gatekeepers to NHS stop-smoking treatments. Why? It's a hassle, requiring an appointment, one or two follow-ups and the time off work. Put the pharmacies in charge, and let them distribute NHS treatment at prescription prices. These are quite small things that might make a big difference.
Simon Burrows aka Spondit: A tubby avatar showed how fat I was
When I stood on the Wii-Fit balance board at the tail end of a New Year's Eve party, I assumed the device needed recalibrating. It was telling me I was 17 stones. According to onlookers, I went very pale, quiet, and sat in the corner for 20 minutes, nursing a now warm tin of export strength lager. 17 stone, at 6' 1", nudged me into Nintendo's "morbidly obese" zone. My Wii-Fit avatar (the on-screen representation of your body) stared impassively out of the screen, its grotesque beer belly a stark reminder of what I had known for years: you drink too much, you eat too much, you don't exercise enough, your diet is poor. And you're approaching 40.
I'd never made any new year's resolutions, but the following morning I made two. The first was to go a month without drinking any beer. No "cheeky halves" after work, no impulse buys in the supermarket drinks aisle. The second was to start running, something which I loathed as much as I love beer. By the end of January I'd lost a stone, and by June I'd lost another one, despite resuming drinking some time during February.
No government initiative, no words of advice from my equally out-of-shape GP; just a tubby videogame character showing a room full of friends how fat I was.
Rebecca Bond aka WeightWars: Diets never take the blame
Last year at the heaviest weight of my life, 285lbs, I gave up diets. I'd yo-yoed through a considerable amount of my adult life and I was fed up with losing weight and always gaining more back. After going to my GP to beg for help, I was told to "move more, eat less" and it dawned on me that I needed to change my thought processes before I could even consider changing what was on the outside.
I started helping myself by blogging, reading books about happiness and removing some people from my life who were intensely negative. In the process, I let go of years of hurt that I'd buried under pizzas. I became happier, but still so fat. I knew I wasn't healthy though, and I didn't want my four-year-old son to follow suit. So I upped my veggies, learned nutrition, ate better. Then I found running and completed the British 10k 2011. Diets like to take the credit when things are going well, but they never take the blame, now I take the glory. So far this year, 35lbs of it.
Doctors need much more support and advice in treating obesity, and they need to be much more honest too. My weight, which put me at morbidly obese, had never been mentioned before I mentioned it. They should be working with patients to identify what made them fat in the first place, it's pretty rare that it slipped by unnoticed.
Jess aka BookElfLeeds: Smoking just isn't cool any more
From the first of August, I will never smoke again. I know that's probably a ludicrous claim that will eventually hideously backfire, but I'm clinging onto the possibility that it will happen, and I shall quit.
I started smoking when I was 15, and fags have been my friend, lover and constant companion ever since. Seventeen years later I want to stop for one reason alone: I don't want to be known as a "smoker". Smoking just isn't cool any more. It's what outsiders do; we who cling onto each other's company and judge pubs not by the quality of their beer, but their beer gardens. It would be nice to go to a club night and not chain smoke in the rain. It would also be nice to have someone sit next to me on a bus without looking like they want to heave, and to be able to have my friend's children think I'm a decent role model.
Financially, it's a massive drain on my meagre resources. Complaining bitterly about single women my age being unable to buy a house is slightly hypocritical when the reason I don't have savings is because I've spent a good 40% of the money I've ever earned on fags and, more infuriatingly, lighters. I'm also destroying the planet one bag of baccy at a time, so should really get off my high horse about getting the ferry.
I know it's going to be horrible. I am, frankly, scared of quitting. Every single time something has gone wrong in the past, I've had a cup of tea and a fag – what will happen when I have to actually sort stuff out? The plan at the moment is to make sure all my friends and colleagues are onside. I'm also going to be ringing helplines. I shall miss smoking dreadfully, but this is a positive and life-changing thing. Hopefully I will come out the other side a stronger, more practical, richer person.
