I gave up about 5.5 years ago after 30 odd years of pretty heavy tabbing. Fags costed about £10.50 for 20 L&B back then and no doubt the beer accumulator model has raised that to at least £13 by now.

Price was not my primary reason for giving up but I can see how it will help. When I started I could buy 10 packs duty free for £5 and smoke on the plane. The UK old 10p (which was basically a two shilling coin rebadged as 10p) was about the same size as a German 1DM piece. DM - Deutsch Mark. Good enough to fool the removed dispensers in West Germany, back in the day. At the time (mid '80s) there was roughly 4DM to £1 and a pack was about DM2.50 from a street vending machine.

As well as price, we need to realise that nicotine is not the only addictive thing in a ciggie. If it was, then patches, gum etc would just work. They don’t really work very well on their own and you can’t shift the blame onto habit either. I don’t think that nicotine is particularly addictive at all.

Giving up is hard, really hard. It needs will power. When I started giving up I was wheezing rather badly and had a very persistent cough that lasted for about nine months to the point that even I realised I had to do something.

I stopped at around 17:00 one friday evening and had a very long lie in on sat morning. That got me half a day. I hung on until saturday evening and went to bed. I now had managed a day. Another long lie in on sunday. Hang on in there and get to monday. Now I have two days. Then I managed a week, then two weeks, then a month, then two months, three months, half a year, a year.

After a few days I realized I could perhaps do this. I don’t exactly know why I decided to come up with a “mantra” that I would say to myself whenever I craved a ciggie but it really helped. “I don’t want to smell and I don’t want to die” was what I settled on and it really worked for me. Even a smoker knows really how bad they smell and the other wish is a bit obvious!

After about a week my sense of smell and taste went berserk! I could smell people entering a room which was a bit disconcerting. I recall it being similar to when I finally caved in and got some specs sorted out for my eyes. It has calmed down since to “normal”.

If you want to give up then you will need a strategy. I was weak willed enough to need a near death like experience to kick me into some form of action. Giving up fags is a horribly complicated affair and the “treatments” on offer are probably bollocks. I tried a vape and soon realised that it won’t help at all - I’d just replace smoking with … something else that doesn’t really cut it.

I found that as soon as I said my mantra, the cravings really did vanish, for a few minutes, then hours, days. weeks etc. I also had some pretty odd dreams involving fags. Before I gave up, I never smoked in my dreams. I did have several dreams after giving up which involved smoking in some pretty bizarre ways!

Finally: I saved roughly £3,500 per year at 2018 prices by not tabbing. It’s probably more like £4000-4500 now.

Hmmm, this comment escalated somewhat 8)

Then they’d just be accused of taxing the less well off, which is a stick they like to wield against Labour.