The decision

Everything so far has been argument. This chapter is a plan. You can change any part of it to suit your life, and where a part rests on evidence I'll say so, so you know which bits are more than my opinion.

Decide that you're stopping, and what that means. The decision I'd suggest is that you've smoked your last cigarette and you don't smoke at all from a given day. I don't mean cutting down, or smoking only at weekends, or only when you're drinking. The NHS is firm on this. It says that even one cigarette can put you back in the cycle of craving and withdrawal, and it advises against a single puff. That fits the mechanism. One cigarette restarts the hourly clock.

Pick a day soon, and stop all at once. A lot of people would rather taper, and it sounds sensible. It was tested in a trial of 697 smokers in England. Half stopped abruptly on a set day. Half cut down by three quarters over the two weeks before that day. Both groups had nicotine replacement and support from a nurse. After four weeks, 49 per cent of the abrupt group weren't smoking, against 39 per cent of the gradual group. At six months it was 22 per cent against 15.5. Abrupt stopping did better even among people who'd said beforehand that they'd prefer to cut down. My reading of why ties back to chapter 7. When you ration cigarettes, the gaps get longer and every cigarette delivers more relief, so you make each one more precious just as you're trying to let go of them. So choose a day within the next two weeks. An ordinary day is better than a symbolic one.

Line up your help before the day. Ring your local stop smoking service, or speak to your GP or pharmacist, and sort out whichever product or medicine you've chosen. An adviser will tell you if yours needs starting before the day. If you take the medicines I mentioned at the start of the book, this is when you have that conversation with your doctor.

Clear the decks. The night before, get rid of every cigarette, and I mean the emergency one in the glovebox as well. Lighters and ashtrays can go too. The lapse study in chapter 8 found that lapses were more likely when cigarettes were easy to get. A pack in the drawer might seem like a test of your resolve, but in practice it's just a supply.

Write three plans for your three hardest moments. Use the form "when this happens, I'll do that", because plans in that form have been shown to make follow-through more likely than good intentions alone. Yours will be your own. Here are some examples. When I finish dinner, I'll get up straight away and make a tea. When I get in the car, I'll put the radio on before I start the engine and keep mints where the pack used to be. When someone offers me one, I'll say "No thanks, I don't smoke". Go for the moments you dread most. They're the cues from chapter 10, and having a plan turns the moment into something you've already dealt with once, on paper.

Keep your breaks. Take them at about the times you used to, outside if you can. This is chapter 6 put to work. You're removing the smoke from your day and leaving the pauses where they were.

Know what to do with an urge. When one comes, name it. It's either the need, which is chemical and fading, or a cue, which is a memory tied to a situation. Either way it'll rise, peak and pass without your doing anything about it. While it does, use what you've arranged, whether that's a spray, a vape or gum. Move if you can, even to another room. Breathe slowly, which is half of what the cigarette break used to give you. And ask the question from chapter 2. A cigarette now wouldn't add anything. It would give back an hour of quiet and book the next urge.

Two things catch people out in the first fortnight.

One is coffee. Smoking makes your body clear caffeine faster, and when you stop, the same number of cups leaves more caffeine in your blood. Jitters and poor sleep in week one may be partly the coffee. If you drink a lot of it, consider cutting back by a cup or two for a while.

The other is alcohol. The NHS points out that it weakens self-control and makes cravings harder to resist, and it suggests going easy for the first 28 days. You don't have to become a hermit. But the third drink in a pub garden is where a good many attempts end, so decide in advance how you'll handle that evening.

As for what to expect, the first three days are usually the worst, and the first week is the hard one. You may be irritable, restless, foggy and tearful, you may sleep badly, and you may cough more for a bit. Tell the people you live with what's happening, so they know it's temporary and not about them. Weeks two to four are generally easier and more uneven, with good days and sudden bad hours. The NHS says that people who reach 28 days are five times more likely to stay stopped. After that, what's left is mostly cues, arriving less and less often.

Some of the good changes come early, and they're worth looking out for. Food tastes of more, and you've got more breath on the stairs. You have money at the end of the week, which the NHS puts at around 49 pounds for an average smoker. One change tends to arrive without announcing itself. At some point you'll realise you've sat through a whole film, or a whole lunch, without part of your mind being elsewhere.

I can't promise any of this will be painless, and I can't give you odds. I think your chances are better with the beliefs from the earlier chapters taken apart, and with help in place, than they were last time. That's my honest estimate and it's no guarantee.