Silent Inserts

[eluser]yehiasalam[/eluser]
Hi,

I have a unique index on one of my table columns to avoid duplicates, what i want to do is to insert a list of items and ignoring any errors for duplicates:

Code:

$this->db_debug = FALSE;
foreach($interests as &$interest){
  $interest = trim($interest);                        
  $this->Interests_model->insert(array('interest_name' => $interest));
}
$this->db_debug = TRUE;

But I'm still getting

Code:

A Database Error Occurred
Error Number: 1062
Duplicate entry 'playing soccer' for key 2
INSERT INTO `interests` (`interest_name`) VALUES ('playing soccer')

What's wrong with that?

Thanks In Advance
Regards.
Yehia A.Salam