When Jane Shortallrealised her existence was being governed by her smoking habit, she decided it was time she and cigarettes went their separate ways. And if she can do it, so can you.
So, here we are, well into January and you're still battling, trying to stop smoking. Believe me, it can be done. The mistake we make and why, in my view, we fail, is in planning to start a whole new life, minus cigarettes, every January 1st.
Then, year in, year out, usually sometime in the late afternoon of the first day, we make another coffee and think, "Oh well, there's really no point now, since I was still smoking at the party at 4am. I'll cut down though, definitely."
For anyone serious about stopping, I put forward the radical notion that it can be done anytime. I stopped overnight and so can you, without hypnotherapy, alternative medicines, counselling advice, self-help books, CDs, patches or fake cigarettes. Smoking is only another habit, and it's one that can be broken.
Tattooed in your brain should be the sound knowledge that every cigarette leads to the next. So forget cutting down, it just won't work. There must be no question of just trying to stop either.
What's the point in trying? The cigarettes will win that battle. They must be faced squarely, the habit acknowledged for what it is, and then stopped.
Overnight, smoking becomes part of your old life. No "cold turkey" follows if you have made a positive decision. You feel only freedom.
Should any sceptics think I only smoked the occasional cigarette and so it's easy for me, I began smoking in my teens, back in the 1970s.
Initially, I smoked about two each day but the time came when I would not go anywhere without two packs. Being without them was not an option.
Back then, we lit up whenever we wanted to, were free to do so almost everywhere, including, bizarrely, on flights and even in hospitals. We gaily smoked our way through endless lunches, dinners, all-day weddings, all-night parties.
The weirdo in the office, daft as it sounds in these more enlightened times, was the poor guy who didn't smoke, who by the end of the day could barely be seen through the haze.
Things began to change though and even before the total ban, offices were sending smokers to separate rooms for coffee breaks.
Homes of friends and family became smoke-free zones. At outdoor parties, we heard, "oh, an ashtray? I'm sure there's one somewhere, we gave up back in the 1980s . . . "
I moved to France in 2003, thinking that everyone still smoked, only to find that they didn't.
Vast amounts of French women, concerned about their health and appearance, had given up long ago.
My new French friends, extolling the benefits of a smoke-free life, talked about the horrors of sagging skin, lines around lips and eyes, discoloration of teeth, hair and clothes smelling of smoke, and how much better they felt on waking each morning.
Still I continued to light up, as if it wasn't somehow relevant to me.
Then, three things happened that made me look at myself. Really look, I mean.
I hosted a ladies' lunch; they were all non-smoking, interesting women and yet I found myself longing for evening.
I barely got through a dinner the following night in the home of more non-smokers, and two days later I drove across France to the Riviera to stay with friends in a splendid place, but which was now, unfortunately, like my friends, smoke free.
With such a glorious sounding life here in southern France, was I over the moon? No. I was bad-tempered, irritated, wound up, thoroughly fed up with everything and everyone. They were all out of step except me. What was wrong with people?
I had begun to feel as if large chunks of my time had become a chore, occasions to be got through, as it were, before coming back to "chez moi", fast becoming the one place I could smoke in peace.
I was walking in the hills, the mighty snowcapped Pyrenees as a backdrop, when the truth finally hit me and it was as if a dazzling light shone in my mind, the scales fell away and all became clear.
The awful, mind-numbing, grisly realisation of how bad things were sunk in.
The appalling reality was that my world was dominated by a small, square pack of chemicals; I was well on the way to living a restricted, narrow, sad little life, my existence governed by my smoking habit.
I was in grave danger and showing all the signs of wanting to avoid humans who didn't share it. Who would have thought that anything could gain such a hold over me?
Only after I had truthfully acknowledged the stranglehold cigarettes had over me, when I had foolishly thought I was in charge of them, did it become clear that this relationship must end, it was time to go our separate ways. I smoked my last that night with a few glasses of wine, and that was it. Fourteen months now and I have no intention of ever lighting another. It's a truly priceless feeling, being back in charge.
Friends, some smokers for a very long time, and those who never started, all have witnessed my considerable spend and enjoyment of cigarettes, and all will agree when I say that if I can walk away from this habit, anyone who really wants to can do so too.