Polly Hudson used to be a world-class smoker, and quitting cigarettes was the hardest thing she has done, so she is celebrating news of the magic pill from University College London that is a one-stop shop for beating cravings
If there was a nuclear warning, I’d run straight to the nearest shop. And then, yes, I would spend my last moments on Earth hugging my loved ones and telling them how much they meant to me, but I would be chain-smoking throughout while I did it.
I gave up – you’re meant to say stopped, because “giving up” implies a sacrifice, but I definitely gave up – smoking over 10 years ago, but I can still feel the addiction bubbling away, just under the surface. Sometimes I wonder if I could have just one… Spoiler: I cannot have just one. One will be one million, quite possibly within the hour.
I tried everything to quit, from going cold turkey to hypnotism, Allen Carr’s (allegedly) Easy Way To Stop Smoking, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming via nicotine lozenges that turned my tongue green. It was probably the hardest thing I have ever done.
So the news that there’s now a stop smoking pill sounds too incredible to be true. Like magic beans and enchanted potions– the stuff of fairy tales. But it’s really real, and tens of thousands of adults are about to be given it.
Varenicline will be prescribed without charge at GP surgeries and smoking clinics across the country and works by binding to receptors in the brain so you stop craving and enjoying nicotine. A million pounds and the secret of eternal youth are included in every packet. OK, not quite. But basically!
It’s a one-stop, willpower-free cure to the frenemy that is almost definitely going to kill you, costing you increasingly eye-watering amounts of money and making you feel, look, and smell terrible along the way.
It’s almost impossible to explain how powerful a nicotine addiction is to someone who has never smoked. My son, taught at school how dangerously unhealthy smoking is, gasps when he sees people doing it, completely unable to understand why anyone would ever start.
I’m not really one to toot my own horn, but I have to admit that I was brilliant at smoking. Like, gifted. It was the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing before bed – sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night with my hand in the holding-a-cigarette-between-two-fingers-position, panicking that I’d dropped it, and celebrate it just being a dream by having a cigarette.
I smoked through bronchitis twice. When short of money, it wasn’t even a question, food came second. I wished a prospective boyfriend who said he couldn’t be with a smoker well and sent him on his way. I longed for smoking to become an Olympic event, so I could claim my gold medals. I smoked anywhere, everywhere, always. Even on the way to the hospital appointment where my reformed smoker dad was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer.
Six million people in the UK smoke. It’s the leading cause of preventable illness and deaths, and the NHS spends £2.6billion every year treating health issues caused by smoking. This pill will prevent 9,500 smoking-related deaths over the next five years, according to an analysis by University College London.
We should be dancing in the streets, rejoicing at the news it exists, while giving thanks to science. The remaining smokers out there now have absolutely no excuse, the lucky gits.
