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One of the things that really used to drive me nuts was the people who would go on about how they used to smoke and just decided that one day they wouldn’t any more. For those of you who do/have smoked you’ll know that feeling of intense hatred and jealousy as you think back on the may failed attempts to give up, remember how bad it was and continue with your vow of giving up giving up. Annoyingly enough I am now one of those people.

A little over two years ago my then girlfriends sister gave me Alan Carr’s ‘The Easy Way to Quit Smoking’. In this volume he tells you there are two things you need to do to quit:

1. Stop smoking
2. Be happy about it

Point one seems a little obvious. Point two isn’t explained in any great detail, or it is, but attaining this wonderful state of nirvana isn’t. Still, he’d got my interest so I bought ‘The Only Way to Stop Smoking’. Bigger book, more detail, hideously badly written. So bad in fact that I still maintain I stopped smoking on the understanding that he stop pontificating at me, but stop I did. Two years ago today I walked out from a hospital appointment [unrelated], sparked up took a couple of drags and thought ‘what the hell am I doing?’. I gave away the rest of my cigarettes, my lighters, my zippo (and I think that was key) spent 3 days being a miserable sod, 2 weeks feeling crappy [yes, I know he says it can be done without withdrawal symptoms, but I still think he's talking out of his butt there] and never really looked back. I still have the odd craving, but no worse than ‘ooh, I fancy a curry’ type ones and they quickly go. What I do know is that if I ever try smoking again I’ll probably be back on 20 a day within about… oooh… 0.5ms of the first drag so I’ll never consider myself a non smoker, more a relapsed one Still, I never actually intended to quit and was reading the books more out of interest than anything else (I was extremely skeptical of his claims) so the fact I did proves that something he said stuck. I’d heartily recommend the books to anyone who smokes. Worst case you’re down the cost of 3 packets of fags, you have to read some naff books and you get to whinge here about it. Best case you can annoy the crap out of your smoker friends once you stop too