At some point I read the Alan Carr book. I was skeptical but hey, might as well try it, right? Around that time my wife and I were also thinking about kids and I really wanted to quit before she was pregnant. I finished the book, smoked my last cigarette, went to bed, and lasted about 6 hours after waking up before I was back at it again. That night I re-read the last bit of the book, smoked my last cigarette (again) and went to bed.
I haven't touched a cigarette since and it's been very easy. not a single pang or hankering or anything. I can get drunk without wanting a cig. People can smoke around me and I don't care. I'm not an ex-smoker. I'm a non-smoker. Looking back (4 years now) I find it hard to understand myself why I had so much trouble quitting. It's been soooo easy.
But only after I really wanted it for me.
The addict self-identification is also the reason why people get so defensive about it. People tell them to quit and they treat it like an attack, an injury against their identity, and this cognitive dissonance protects the addiction from being resolved.
Incidentally, that's precisely what helped me quit (a long time ago): I realized I was a slave to the cigarette and the only way to be free again was to stop it altogether. It was one of the hardest thing I ever had to do. I stayed in bed for four days trying to think about something else and sleeping it through. And then it wasn't over for a couple of weeks.