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I smoked for over twenty years, and towards the end I was smoking 40 a day and feeling like shit because of it. The first time I tried to quit I was eighteen - I liked this girl and she liked me, but didn't like the smoke. I met her just before she went away on holiday to Spain, so I quit, thinking it'd be a nice surprise for her when she came back, but then found out she'd been fucked senseless by a Spanish waiter for the whole two weeks, with whom she fell deeply in love, which kinda put the dampers on my ardour, and my prospects. So I started smoking again.

Next time I tried to quit, I was twenty-five, and smoked about twenty a day. I got down to about 2 cigs a day, but couldn't quit. I finally gave up trying and ended up smoking more than I used to. Tried again at the age of twenty-eight - got myself hypnotised during three sessions, but even during the sessions I lay there gasping for another cigarette and wishing for it to end so that I could go out and have one.

Over the next ten years, as my consumption gradually increased year on year until I smoked forty a day, and I found my cigarette cost per month outweighing the cost of my mortgage, I tried everything I could to quit the damn things - patches, more hypnosis, acupuncture, aversion therapy, but I never managed to make it for more than a day without smoking. I couldn't think straight, I was stressed, couldn't function, couldn't sleep at night. During the day I was crimson-faced and walked around like a bubbling keg of nitro - I felt as if I might explode at any given moment.

I probably went five years or more feeling completely defeated by my inability to stop smoking. I gave up on ever being able to do it, and I seriously thought the only thing that could and would stop me was my doctor telling me I had cancer, or I had a serious heart condition and would die if I didn't stop. But then I remembered my gramps when I was a kid. He had to have a tumour removed from his throat. Kept his voice box, but from there downwards he lost a huge tract of his throat/gullet/intestines, which meant he struggled to eat normal food from then onwards, was never the same again, nearly died, and was told he must never smoke again. With him still weak from all the operations, he'd be puffing away on a cigarette in the toilet and blowing the smoke out of the window. He eventually died from the effects of smoking. I was sure I would, too.

I don't know what brought it about, whether it was pressure from my wife and kids, or the impending changes in the law that would soon make smoking in public places illegal, but I decided to try and stop smoking once again. I told a few people of my intent, and how much I was dreading it - how impossible I thought it was. Then somebody on my forum suggested I try reading 'The Easy Way' by Allen Carr. Yeah, right, I thought - like a fucking self help book would help where all other things had failed. Then somebody else said they'd quit after reading it. Then somebody else. Turned out three people on my little forum alone had quit after reading the book, so I ordered a copy. When it came I was relieved to see pretty early on in the book he says not to try to stop until you've read the whole book. That buouyed me immensely - a license to keep on smoking for as long as it took to read the thing.

I wheezed a sigh of relief.

Every lunch time, I read the book for ten minutes. It took me at least a month to read the thing - probably more like two. There aren't any scare stories in it, or polemics about how bad smoking is for your health. Nothing like that. All it does is explain the nature of the addiction and explain why you feel the way you do about smoking. By the time I got half way through the book, I knew I would be able to kick the habit - no doubt about it. When I had finally finished the book, I sat there thinking I would give it a few weeks until this particularly stressful time in my life had passed. Then I thought - no. If I could make it through this stressful time without relying on smoking as a crutch, I could make it through anything without needing a cigarette.

That night I threw away everything - my cigarettes (which I bought in bulk), my ashtrays, my lighters, patches, gum. Anything to do with nicotine went in the dustbin. I went from smoking forty a day to nothing, overnight. I went through the stress and the shit without it - even had a guy in my face threatening me with a meat cleaver at one point. And I never smoked - not even a puff. No nicotine has passed my lips in the past two and a half years. I don't miss it, don't feel deprived, and from day one I've felt sorry for the smokers I see who are still addicted to the stuff.

The book cost a tenner on Amazon, and I honestly believe it has saved my life.