I started smoking as a teenager and I've been doing it ever since, its one of the few things I'm really good at! I've tried to give up in the past with nicotine replacement and cold turkey but never managed more than a few hours. Yep pathetic I know.

One of my friends - also dedicated to the smoking cause was dragged kicking and screaming by her boyfriend to one of Allen Carr's clinics and returned 8 hours later vowing never to smoke again. She passed on all of her Allen Carr books to me in the hope that I would "see the light". I have to say I viewed this with the general cynicism I view most things with - she'd be smoking again within a couple of days... But days passed, then weeks and now years and she still hasn't started puffing away. I tried reading the books, they made complete and utter sense yet after a few hours I would find myself searching out my packet of cigarettes. Eventually my friend persuaded me that the only way for it to work as effectively for me was to attend a clinic as she had done. Now, I didn't really want to give up smoking but, having seen how painless it had been for her - I thought well she hadn't wanted to give up and now she's a happy non-smoker so it's worth a shot.

I booked up for a course on their website, it cost £220 and they gave very clear instructions to carry on smoking and not try and cut down in any way. I liked these instructions.

On the day of the course I chained smoked all the way to the clinic in fear of what was coming. There were about 6 or 7 other people there - all dedicated smokers. The Allen Carr smoking guru basically spends the 8 hours removing all of your reasons for smoking and this is done with logic not in a patronising this is going to kill you way. They understand the psychology behind the addiction and they talk you out of wanting to be a smoker. This is then reinforced with light hypnotherapy at the end.

It's not hard to see that it works - by the end of the day everyone in the room had completely changed their attitude. Well almost everyone... They reassured me that it would work and I would leave the clinic and not want to smoke. So I left and walked back to my car, sat down and thought I'd love a smoke right now. I didn't smoke though, purely because I had just paid £220 not to smoke and there was no way on this planet I was going to go and buy a new packet after that. By early evening I was pacing the house getting extremely irritable and by about 9pm I had driven to the garage and bought a pack of ten. I didn't smoke them but that was down to my own stubbornness having paid out for the course.

Within a couple of weeks the Allen Carr centre had me back on another course and I have to say I left again still wanting to smoke. A few weeks after that I was back again and for the third time I left still desperately wanting to smoke. It was after the third visit that the Allen Carr centre told me that it was possible I was one of the few people the technique doesn't work on and gave me a full refund. I was back smoking 20 a day by the time the cheque had cleared.

Don't get me wrong, Allen Carr didn't work for me and that makes me really sad - but his method works for the majority of people and they become happy non smokers. If you are unlucky like me and it doesn't work - you get a full refund so you have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain - give it a go!