Do you want to stop smoking badly enough to try? If you do, start now. Dont wait for what happened to my friend Waleed.

Waleed brimmed with funny stories, but our last meeting was a sad one. He was still telling his stories and he was surrounded, as usual, by a gathering of laughing girls. Ominously, however, a wire ran out of his shirt-front to what looked like a 1940s radio.

He caught my glance. Heart monitor, he said. Then he pointed to a cylinder next to his chair. I need oxygen too. Cigarettes, you know. Theyve finally got me.

At the time, I was smoking 80 a day four packets and had an unrelenting cough. My home leave was over. Next day I was off again to my job in the Persian Gulf.

After visiting Waleed I found it harder to breathe. Call it funk and Ill agree with you.

I chewed gum, which I hate, on the flight. At the other end, I stumbled into the heavy Gulf heat, exhausted. Thoughts of self-hypnotism--about which I knew nothing--ran through my head.

Then I remembered how, as a child, I would wake myself ahead of some holiday trip that required early rising. I would bang my head on the pillow six times before sleeping and whisper: Wake at six! It always worked.

I didnt know how many bangs I needed for a Quit smoking order, so I used the six oclock formula and whispered: Dont smoke.

My cigarette consumption fell, but I was still smoking three months later when I heard Waleed had died. A darkness, like that of a sudden sandstorm at mid-day, seemed to fall on me.

Then, at a New Years Eve dinner, I overheard a woman across the table tell her neighbour: He stopped my fianc smoking I soon had the story from her and the address of the person a Chinese doctor who had worked this miracle.

I cant help you unless you really want to quit smoking, Dr Yeah said when we met.

I assured him I did and he twiddled an acupuncture needle in the lobe of my left ear and stuck a tiny tablet into the top of my right ear with a piece of sticking-plaster. Keep that there and come tomorrow, he said.

He repeated the treatment over the next five days, alternating needle and tablet between ears. I was still smoking on the fifth day, when he said: This is our last session.

At home again, disgruntled and sorry for myself, I sat in the garden smoking. Then, suddenly, I realised I was mindlessly smoking one cigarette over and over, taking a couple of puffs, stubbing it out, putting it in my pocket, taking it out and lighting up again.

Disgusting! I said aloud and ground it out.

That was 12 years ago. I havent smoked since. I dont know why the treatment, which seemed laughable at the time, worked. But I dont understand why antibiotics kill germs, or why the sky is blue. I believe self-suggestion helped. I could at least tell Dr Yeah I truly wanted to stop smoking. I had, after all, been trying to stop and I had got some results.

Today, I am not tempted when others around me smoke. I move away. But I dont want to analyse my born-again non-smoking too piercingly in case I'm tempted to start smoking again.

Want to quit smoking? Start with pillow-talk whispers and carry on with acupuncture.

Copyright Yasseen Yasseen