All in the mind | 20 October 2007

The only light came from a reading lamp pointing at the centre of the room. The background music was whale song and randomly plucked harp strings. The room was the top floor of an 18th-century house. The only other floor I’ve seen that sloped as much as this one is in the Crooked House at Peter Pan’s Playground, which is next to Southend pier. On an assortment of chairs three men and a woman were sitting facing each other. They had tiny needles sticking out of their ears and forearms. One of the men also had a needle sticking straight up from the crown of his head. This I subconsciously took to be a mark of leadership, and I asked him, superfluously perhaps, whether I’d come to the right place for the acupuncture session.

It was a drop-in acupuncture session for addicts, the first of a ten-session initiative by our thrusting young local acupuncturist to bring cut-price acupuncture to the toiling masses. Lola was kneeling in the shadows, taking the woman’s pulse. She stood up and invited me to take the remaining wicker chair and said she’d be over in a moment.

I’d gone there as part of the latest surge in my Hundred Years War against smoking. The NHS anti-smoking nurse suggested it. I’ve been seeing her on and off for four years and we’ve tried everything. She’s written me out prescriptions for nicotine gum, lozenges, patches. I’ve been hypnotised, twice. I’ve even tried willpower.

When I visited her last week, I’d had enough of failure. I demanded that there and then she write me out a prescription for Champix, the new revolutionary wonder drug, or, failing that, for Zyban, the new revolutionary wonder drug before that.