I'm addicted ... to giving up

It was Oscar Wilde who said: "Smoking is easy to give up, I've done it hundreds of times." I feel very much like Wilde - I've quit the evil weed enough times to know that it is surprisingly easy to stop, and equally easy to restart. At present I am in starting mode and soon, aged 43, I shall quit for the third time. I know I will. Honest.

I think this time I was persuaded to start again for the silliest of reasons - a delightful meal in a local restaurant, a little bit of wine left at the end, and then two people on the table behind me lit up. A single intake of breath and, suddenly, I simply had to have one. It didn't matter that until that point I hadn't had a craving in months. The will to smoke was stronger than ever.

I am still nowhere near as bad as I used to be. There are times, of course, in which I deliberately plan to go out with smoker friends so I can filch from them, and dinner parties are inevitably enlivened (for me, at least) if someone plonks a packet of Marlboro Lights on the table. Ah, dessert!

I know it is ridiculous but as long as I don't buy the buggers I'm not a smoker. At least that's what I tell myself - "keep tobacco consumption subsidised" has become something of a mantra.

I have been a confirmed smoker since the age of 14 and to my shame there was not a day between the ages of 14 and 40 that I did not smoke at least 20 cigarettes a day - sometimes a lot more.

And then came my conversion. Three years ago I gave up for the first time, having been bullied and cajoled into doing so by a group of friends whose religious-like belief in their chosen method convinced me of my sins. That is the sort of effect the anti-smoking guru Allen Carr has on his disciples.

Carr is something of a maverick, and a wealthy maverick to boot, with a worldwide network of quit-while-you-can clinics. A former 100-a-day man, he stubbed out his last in 1983 and founded his Allen Carr's Easyway clinics. His books have sold in their millions.

At the time, I confess that wheezing, blowing and being out of puff having climbed a couple of flights of stairs no longer held much attraction, nor for that matter did lung cancer, throat cancer and heart disease which, when you hit your late thirties, suddenly don't seem like the things that happen to other people.

So, for the first time in my life, I decided that cigarettes and me should part company for ever. I figured I'd rather further enrich Carr than I would the tobacco companies, so I rang and signed up to one of his clinics.

It was with reluctance that I presented myself on time at a grotty building in Raynes Park in the suburbs of south-west London. There was an awful smell of stale smoke when I entered and there were lots of pathetic-looking people smoking and coughing in a disgusting tobacco-stained waiting room. It was more like the interior of a down-at-heel betting shop than a clinic. We all (literally) coughed up £120 each and were then led downstairs into the horror of the treatment room.

In one corner there were hundreds of discarded cigarette packets and in the other, lighters. We sat down in huge reclining chairs and were encouraged to smoke and smoke and smoke - then it began.

Carr's philosophy is that smoking is a simple drug addiction and chronic smokers need merely a combination of clear information and positive reinforcement - through hypnotherapy among other things - to help them definitively escape their enslavement to nicotine.

So-called "willpower", he says, is useless when it comes to dealing with addiction; far from consciously making an effort not to smoke, the addict needs to redefine his self-image and become quintessentially a non-smoker. And he must embrace that new self-image as a wholly positive one.

Understanding that once the drug is out of your system your craving will automatically fall away, and that substitution is pointless (whether food or a nicotine patch) since it will only maintain the addictive pattern, is a genuine revelation.

John, our therapist, explained the advantages of smoking (none), and the disadvantages (lots). He invited us all to light up and then, quite out of the blue, he said: "That is the last cigarette you will ever smoke." A palpable panic hit the room. There were lawyers, shopkeepers and taxi drivers present, and the one thing we had in common was that we all felt pretty ashamed of ourselves. (It was indeed a shaming experience. I sat next to a 28-year-old man who told me that he had to give up because he had recently suffered his second heart attack, which his doctor attributed entirely to his smoking.)

We were then asked how, on the one hand, cigarettes were stimulating, and, on the other, relaxing. Nicotine, John told us, was highly addictive but only for a short period of time. He didn't treat us as idiots but as addicts.

The entire palaver lasted for four hours - complete with horrendous pictures of lungs and throats, testimonies from both cancer-ridden addicts and the newly converted and, towards the end, there was a smattering of mind games - hypnotherapy designed to make you think in a different way, to condition the brain into breaking the addict's thought pattern.

When I left the clinic I felt elated, joyful and free of the weed. It was as if an awful burden had suddenly been lifted from me: I was a changed man. I went home and my wife (a seasoned smoker herself) could not believe it - no rush for a fag as the phone went, no scouring around for one when she gave me a glass of wine. She booked in for the next day, went to the Raynes Park slum and came back later in the day also cured of smoking. At last we were free.

Very quickly I began to feel better. No wheezing, no sore throat, no stinky clothes, no nicotine stains on the ceiling. I felt it was one great achievement and I had rid myself of that nagging doubt that I was going to reach a grisly, cancer-ridden end.

I have two children to think about and as long as I can give up I can nag and harangue them when, inevitably, they begin to experiment with smoking. That won't be for a while yet, though - they are aged just six and eight - and so the main consideration at present is that I last long enough to be able to convince them that 20 a day aged 14 is not a good thing.

The trouble is, will I still have quit by the time they explore their teenage temptations? For despite Carr's best intentions, stopping smoking is still something of a daily struggle.

Nine months after attending the Allen Carr clinic I was a new man, never giving a thought to smoking. And then, in the early hours of a party one Saturday night (I vividly recall all the details, such was the importance of the occasion), someone-offered me a cigar. Why not, I thought? I've quit for this long, what's a few puffs going to do? I'm a non-smoker now.

So I smoked, inhaled and felt fine, just the same, no coughing, no shortness of breath. Then came a couple of cigarettes the next weekend, then a few more over lunch the week after that. I began to manoeuvre myself so I was standing next to smokers at parties, gently nudging them as that sweet, intoxicating aroma filled my nose. The breaking of my Carr vows had become something of a habit.

So the inevitable happened and nine months later Rose and I were both back on 20 a day. Carr produces books as well as running clinics, so we bought one and, as we had done before, both gave up, one day after the other. Rose went first this time and stopped immediately. The following day I packed up too. The book worked because it is common sense, reinforcing the core beliefs you learn on that first day-course.

It worked for a while, then I was offered a cigar which I accepted because I like to be polite, and now here I sit, writing this, smoking a cigarette. Maybe I like them too much, or possibly I'm more addicted - physically and mentally - than I once believed. Or perhaps it is merely a social thing, I just don't want to feel left out.

No. Enough's enough. This morning I popped down the road to buy Allen Carr's Easy Way to Give up Smoking and very soon I shall give up. Again. For good. I promise ...