I am adept at giving things up. I gave up whisky. I gave up cheese. I gave up crack cocaine.

Smoking, which yields no such dramatic results (unlike Cointreau, it does not send you mad before it tucks you in your coffin), is another matter. I am desperately hooked. I have eaten 30 cigarettes a day for 15 years. I once estimated that I have spent 3,000 hours of my life smoking. My fingers are yellow and my tongue a mottled beige. My teeth look like a miniature relief map of the Dolomites. Naturally, I can't breathe. My lungs are burning. My complexion is mouldy. All moments in my day clamour for a cigarette; the inaugural cup of coffee, the final cup of coffee - and every cup of coffee in between. Waking, eating, talking, solitude, celibacy and sex - all need a fag to recommend them. Like Winston Churchill, I smoke between mouthfuls. I am in thrall.

Why don't I stop? I think I like smoking; and it is harder to give up a friend than a lover. And then there's Nesbitt's Paradox. Have you heard of Nesbitt's Paradox? It's a bitch. Smoking simultaneously soothes stress but enhances alertness. There is more to commend smoking. If you smoke at 65, you won't get Alzheimer's disease. You will remember you have cancer. You will probably be thin, though I am not. And I also like smokers - they are self-destructive and capricious. Almost everyone I admire smokes cigarettes; Bogart, the cast of All About Eve, and Kenneth Clarke. To smoke is an existentialist avowal, however moronic, that there is yet something more enduring than my own sweet neck and a pension. To smoke is glamorous; my psyche is wreathed in a diaphanous veil of smoke. But this veil is strangling me. Sometimes I dream of emphysema. I have resolved to abandon the smokers and join the smirkers; or, at least, try to.

I have considered various tactics. Decapitating myself. Taking a week's supply of opiates, to ease me through withdrawal. Horse tranquillisers, so I can sleep through it. Conversion to Catholicism. The Allen Carr Programme in Raynes Park. Crystals. Twig infusions. Even psychiatry. The Apocalypse. Patches 'n' gum. I will try them all.

But, for some strange reason, I am particularly drawn to aversion therapy. A friend persistently smoked himself sick, trying every brand until he found the most repulsive. He stopped for an entire week and only relapsed because of a mild shock.

So, I have visited the tobacconist. I have purchased 12 different packets of 10 (menthol and plain), five coloured pouches of "shag" (tobacco), some mini-cigars and a lighter shaped like a penis. I will try to give up smoking by smoking. I begin in 10 minutes with a packet of miniature Hamlets. They are winking at me through the cellophane. A baby cigar named after a fictional manic depressive? Rejoice!