I have never smoked (apart from the one drag I had in school which almost made me vomit). It isn't the fact that it's hard for a smoker to quit that I find difficult to understand, it's how they ever got started on the things in the first place. This article is written by me, but is from the heart, and in the words, of my man...a smoker.

I was sent away to boarding school at the age of 6, and for the first few years my life was made pretty miserable by my peers. I was a little on the chubby side and was known to one and all as 'slug'. I began smoking at the age of 11 to become 'one of the boys'.

I did indeed become one of the boys, but the peer pressure didn't stop with cigarettes. One of Britains top private schools was awash with various other substances that were popular in the early 1970's.

All this was 39 years ago, and the long hair and platform shoes are long gone (so are the illegal substances that we all tried by the way!) but I am still smoking. I have tried to quit, although not very hard I have to admit, but never really got very far.

In those 39 years, the amount that I have smoked in a day has varied from 5 to 70 cigarettes. As any other smoker will tell you, those little sticks keep you sane when times are rough, relationships are going wrong, and money is tight...yet we still seem to find the money for those ciggies hey.

The lowest I have been down to has been 5 a day...OK, so that was whilst in hospital recovering from surgery (and was forced into dangling precariously out of the bathroom window).

More recently, as the places where us lepers are allowed to commit our sin become fewer and further between, fines and jail time have been risked.

3 times I have tried to quit smoking.

I had a partner a few years ago, who was also a smoker, so we decided to try and quit together. We started again roughly 2 weeks later before one of us killed the other.

I tried to quit for the second time around a year and a half ago but failed due to lack of willpower I guess. I had promised my new girlfriend - a non smoker - that I would stop, but after a fortnight of a stinking attitude (mine, not hers) I chucked in the towel.

Then I had a heart attack last year. Time to get serious thought I. I managed 3 weeks, but, like an idiot, I gave in to those darned cravings. It seemed that I couldn't think of anything else; especially with being forced to rest and sit around. My Cardiologist had a few stern words with me...I had bumped into him sitting in the sunshine outside the hospital cafe. He told me to stop the smoking, kill the fat intake and ditch the caffeine...and all while he sat there eating a fried egg sandwich, drinking a strong black coffee and SMOKING A CIGARETTE!!

Both my parents were heavy smokers and managed to give up due to chronic illnesses; but then my mother passed away. She died of cancer at the age of 68.

If ever there were good reasons for me to stop smoking then I have plenty. I am 50, overweight, and suffered a heart attack last year, but guess what, I still cannot do it. This fear of what will replace the dreaded weed, the anxiety, the hunger, the need for nicotine. It scares the crap out of me.

Of course it's logical that I have no choice but to stop smoking, but then that little voice inside my head says hey, maybe if you cut down to just 10 smokes a day, wouldn't that be good enough??

In every other aspect of my life I am in control but, my God, I hate these things that I seem to need as much as the air that I sometimes struggle to breathe.