STORY AND PHOTOS BY DARYLL HINVES
Breaking up is hard to do, but it’s even harder when you’re letting go of the thing you depend on to get through the day.
The Break It Off campaign is travelling across Canada to share tools and advice for people who want to end their love affair with cigarettes.
Beginning in Halifax last August, the campaign made pitstops at 23 locations across Canada before stopping at Trafalgar Campus on Monday to let smokers know that while quitting is hard to do, support is not hard to find.
Outfitted with televisions, interactive activities, tips for quitting and more, the Break It Off trailer gave Sheridan students a chance to become a face of the campaign.
Lindsay Nicholls, a second-year Child and Youth Worker student, participated in the interactive campaign.
“You enter the trailer and you’re asked the question, ‘What would you do with $2,000?’ and you write your answer on a whiteboard,” she said. “They take your photo with your answer, and it’s put on the website and becomes a part of the campaign video.”
Along with the cross-country tour, Break It Off created a free mobile app for phones and tablets to help smokers closely monitor their paths to a smoke-free life.
“Through the app, we monitor lots of things about the smoker,” said Loic Savage, Break It Off’s marketing co-ordinator. “When the user is craving a smoke, they input why they want to have a smoke, or what’s triggering their cravings.”
The app also monitors how often users reach for cigarettes when they’re stressed, how much money they have saved since taking the challenge, how many days since they last caved to the crave and how much time they’ve spent smoking.
If users are struggling with their urge to smoke, the app offers a chance to communicate with a “Quit Coach,” a confidential, free quitting hotline.
“We really give you all the values and all of the factors that make you smoke, so you can learn about your habits and change your life by quitting smoking,” said Savage.
Savage knows what it takes to get someone to quit smoking; his father struggled with the difficult task.
“I’ve never smoked a day in my life, but it was hard watching my father’s health decline because of smoking,” he said. “My whole family got my father to quit in 2002, and after a few years with all the money he saved, he bought a sports car.”
Cynthia Morrison, a second-year Child and Youth Worker student, volunteers with Leave the Pack Behind, a stop-smoking initiative aimed at young adults and students. Morrison volunteered at the Break It Off pit stop, and believes that quitting smoking is something you have to do at your own pace.
“There’s a ton of resources to help people learn how to quit smoking,” she said. “Leave the Pack Behind is awesome. We’re not of those organizations that demands people stop smoking, we’re all about providing information, resources and encouragement.”
After visiting Trafalgar, Break It Off made its way to Davis, and continued across Ontario to Winnipeg. This phase of the campaign is set to end in Vancouver in November.
