Just sharing why and how I have quit...

It was on the 2nd of January this year when I was rushed to hospital with respiratory failure. What I thought was a touch of flu had turned, almost overnight, into double pneumonia which could have easily killed me.

My little girl's face as I was being strapped to monitors and administered oxygen will never leave me. Nor will leaving the ICU a week later and being surrounded by women who were essentially zombies - grey, thin creatures with hacking coughs and perma-scabbed arms from all of the IVs. This was the chest ward, populated by patients with either infections or COPD. I couldn't help but feel that I had a window into my future - at least a future in which I continued to smoke.

At 30 I had been smoking for more than half of my life. I soon jumped, from roughly 5 per day at the age of 11, to a pack a day by the time I had left home at 17. I thought I'd never quit - I loved (and still do, to an extent) the smell, I thought it helped with my anxiety and depression, my husband didn't mind that I smoked.

I would use strange justifications to keep on doing it. I would tell myself that being more stressed just isn't worth the other more obvious advantages. This being the case, my other attempts to quit were pretty half-hearted and destined to fail.

Anyway, on being discharged from hospital guess what I did? In hindsight I am so ashamed to say it but I lit up. I could barely get air into my body but I was drawing on that cigarette like my life depended on it when in actual fact it was the opposite.

My life depended on me not doing it. I know a lung infection is not necessarily cause by tobacco smoking but it sure as hell doesn't help. My GP told me that for an otherwise healthy 30 year old woman to be hospitalised for more than a couple of days is unusual and I ended up being in there for 10! I've been told it may take up to a year to fully recover.

It has taken me a bit of time to get my shit together but I have not smoked the 738 cigarettes I normally would have in the last 1 month, 6 days and 22 hours. I have saved £292 GBP and bought a bitchin' new mattress for my husband and I and treated my daughter with the proceeds thus far.

While the illness gave me the final kick in the ass, I have found a nicotine inhalator so useful in dealing with moods and cravings. If you are a nervous smoker or light up when stressed it may help you too. Purists will argue that NRT isn't giving up properly but after 3 weeks or so I stopped using it regularly. Now I'll only reach for it if I'm truly hacked off which doesn't even seem to be that often anymore. The habit has gone and for me that has always been the part I could never get rid of.

Sorry for rambling on but if I can prevent one person from going through the same thing it will be worth it. It's been somewhat cathartic noting down the last few months and if its all out there I'd feel like even more of an idiot if I ever think about a relapse.