'It is a hellish habit to break. Your neurons are involved. My mother smoked when I was in her womb. I first had one when I was nine years old and I thought, 'Yes, I missed this!' I knew I missed it,' Hollywood.com quoted him as saying.
'And 45 years later, after every single artistic decision; every decision I'd ever made was done with a cigarette. To not have that is pretty hectic. It's worse than crawling the walls, which I did for a while.
'There's no more fun things left. I just don't do anything fun anymore; but that's dying isn't it? I mean you die in stages. You let things go in pieces. It's mostly over halfway through.'
Gibson admits quitting smoking is just the start of a new health regime for him. 'I try and eat right and exercise a little.'