Des Durkin had tried to give up smoking on several occasions. Acupuncture, hypnotism, nicotine patches - he had tried them all without success.
But the 50-year-old is adamant now that he will never smoke again. Since being told some two months ago that he was on the verge of suffering a serious stroke and needed emergency surgery, it seemed like he didn't have any option.
"When they tell you that if you don't follow their advice there's a chance you won't be here next year, you say to yourself I'm in trouble. And then you look at your children, and you look at your wife, and you do what you're told."
He says one doctor took a nicotine patch off his arm, threw it in the bin and told him bluntly he was going "cold turkey".
"People have invested a lot of money to keep me alive so why should I throw it back in their faces? If you go back on the cigarettes, and go back to being a telly addict and eating the wrong food, you're wasting everybody's time."
Des was one of the first 50 people to be assessed at a new TIA (Transient Ischaemic Attack) clinic at Tallaght Hospital in Dublin after he experienced typical symptoms.
Ironically he has spent most of his working life in ambulances, first as a driver and more recently as an emergency medical technician accompanying the driver.
"I was helping people with the same problem that I was going to get and I didn't realise I was as bad as them," he says.
The first warning sign he got was on St Stephen's Day, sitting with his wife, Linda, and two children aged 14 and 19, watching television in their Tallaght home.
"I went to explain something to one of the children, but I couldn't get the words right - I was using the wrong words the wrong way. It was as if I was drunk - I laughed, I thought it was very funny, it only lasted a few seconds."
The second incident occurred while he was working. He was in the ambulance with a patient and when he tried to talk to his colleague he found he couldn't speak. He then went to his GP who referred him to the clinic.
He was on medication both to lower cholesterol and blood pressure but says he had been checking his blood pressure regularly.
He was smoking up to 25 roll-ups a day but had stopped drinking more than 20 years ago.
After initial tests it was discovered he had a blockage in his carotid artery, which was preventing the proper flow of blood to his brain. Within a fortnight he had surgery.
Since attending the clinic he has changed his eating habits, no longer putting "half a pound of butter on potatoes". He has reduced his cholesterol and has lost a stone-and-a-half already but needs to lose about three more.
"I'm not totally healthy yet, but I've cut down on big amounts of food and am eating plenty of greens, and I'm not out raiding the press where the chocolate bars are kept. I make it my business to go for a walk every day, and it's not a stroll with your hands in your pockets - even with the lashing rain a few weeks ago I was still going out."
Why is he now following all the rules he would have known about for years? "Because I thought I was going to leave a wife and two children, my son has just started his apprenticeship - if you have to go, you'd like it to be after your kids are fixed up."
He returned to work two weeks ago. "The good feeling you get that you're still alive motivates you to go back to work," he says. In his first week back he took two stroke victims to hospital. He says he is not as slow now to encourage people to give up smoking.
"When people look at the scar on the side of my neck, I tell them cigarettes did that to me."