Whidbey General Hospital is offering a free class during October to help people break from tobacco addiction.

The class, “Four Weeks to Freedom from Tobacco,” is run by respiratory therapist and certified tobacco treatment specialist Katherine Riddle.

“My most important credentials are, I’m an ex-smoker,” Riddle said. “That seems to be really important for some folks. I do have a lot of empathy for the process.”

The four-week course helps people identify their smoking patterns and triggers, learn to deal with stress, substitute behaviors and much more.

It also provides people with group support.

“I think group support is really important,” Riddle said. “It’s not just about the facilitator, it’s about a whole group effort.”

Riddle herself was a smoker for 20 years, and is tobacco free for almost the same length of time. She said she’d tried quitting a few times before it stuck.

“I had a really tough time, and I couldn’t understand why it was so difficult,” Riddle said. “I tried lots of different techniques.”

The class, offered five times a year, usually in January, March, May, August and October, is only one of the tobacco program at the hospital.

Riddle said they offer one-hour information sessions, give presentations at the college, the Island County Detention Center, health fairs, school health classes and more.

“We pretty much take our information anywhere anyone wants to hear it, and everything we do is free to the public,” Riddle said.

She said that if the group classes or presentations don’t work for a person, she even offers one-on-one classes.