I still hope to quit and would welcome any practical advice from those that have.
The following is probably more than you wanted to know. But I have some old notes on the subject, and I figured I would dump them into the thread. Pick out what works for you.
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I smoked 2 packs a day for 30 years. I tried quitting over and over. To finally stop once and for all, I chewed huge amounts of nicotine gum all day and even chewed it as I was going to sleep.
I routinely chewed 2-3 pieces of gum at a time, and sometimes as much as 4-5 pieces of gum at a time. I just kept on popping gum into my face until I was so high on nicotine that I couldn’t even imagine wanting a cigarette.
After about 15 minutes the gum becomes flavorless and you spit it out. That should take care of you for an hour or two. Eventually the nicotine starts leaving your bloodstream and the desire for a smoke starts coming back. So you start jamming gum back in your face again. Repeat all day. 🙂
Furthermore I kept on chewing nicotine gum for the next 5 years. I didn’t want to stop the nicotine gum until cigarettes were so far back in my past that I couldn’t even imagine picking up a cigarette again. It’s now been 15 years since my last cigarette (and 10 years since my last piece of nicotine gum).
It means carrying a lot of gum around with you at all times. But it works.
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People have different levels of addict-ability.
With smoking, the theory is as follows:
Nicotine is a mild stimulant. Some people are borderline depressed, and they use the stimulant effect of nicotine in their cigarettes to medicate themselves into a better mood, i.e., they use that nicotine boost to power them through the day. So they are going to tend to be more heavily addicted. Take away their cigarettes, and they are going to continue to crave (feel the absence of) that helpful nicotine stimulant for weeks, months, or even years.
By comparison, other people don’t particularly need the stimulant effect of their cigarettes. Their mood is probably fine or at least doesn’t bounce around a whole lot. They’re just smoking for the taste, and they don’t necessarily get much from the stimulant boost. So they can quit relatively easily. Once they get over the hump on the nicotine addiction itself (about 3-5 days), they don’t particularly miss the nicotine boost. Effectively, they can take cigarettes or leave them.
Looking at the first group again (borderline depressed and deeply in need of a long-term stimulant boost): One smoking-cessation strategy involves seeing a doctor and getting put on a mild anti-depressant so that the quitting smoker won’t need the stimulant effect provided by the cigarettes. But then you have to play around with finding the best anti-depressant, dosing strategies, and how long to stay on the anti-depressant. A lot of people don’t want to do that; I didn’t.
In my case, I basically self-medicated with the nicotine gum and played around with the dosing of the nicotine stimulant myself. I used the nicotine gum and just let enough time go by to effectively “grow out of” the smoking habit. After a while I just didn’t see cigarettes as something I needed anymore.
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In your typical cigarette, here’s how tar and nicotine work together:
Tar provides the taste/flavor and the harmful (cancer-causing) elements. Meanwhile, nicotine provides the addictive element and acts as a mild stimulant.
Take out the tars, and what you have left is nicotine: highly addictive, but otherwise a harmless mild stimulant.
When nicotine gums and patches first came out, you could only obtain them by prescription: Nicotine is so highly addictive that everyone assumed it must be harmful as well.
But now nicotine can be obtained OTC and is pretty much uncontrolled (I think you have to be 18 years old to buy it in the US). Health authorities still don’t want kids to get hold of it because of its high addictiveness and expense; but as of five years ago when I last checked, long-term medical studies showed that nicotine use alone didn’t result in any harmful health effects.
So some people go ahead and chew the gum for its quick stimulant effect. It gives a noticeable boost like a little cup of coffee. But it’s kind of expensive, and like any addictive drug you have to wean yourself off it gradually if you decide that you’re tired of paying for such a habit.
As for me: It was great for getting off cigarettes. When I used it in place of cigarettes, I missed the flavor of cigarettes, but my health improved instantly since I wasn’t clogging my lungs with tar. Meantime I didn’t experience any withdrawal symptoms from the lack of cigarettes since I could have all the nicotine I wanted via the gum.
Five years later I was still perfectly healthy with the gum, but I knew that I really didn’t need such an expensive habit anymore. So I took about a year and weaned myself off the gum slowly. I chewed nicotine gums at specific times of the day, and then every few weeks I would knock out one gum-chewing session or substitute cinnamon gum for the nicotine gum.
These days I’m still prone to chew on a toothpick occasionally. And cigarettes still smell good to me when I pass a smoker. Sometimes I just want to be near a lit cigarette and enjoy the scent and the memories. 🙂 But cigarettes (and gum) just aren’t part of my self-picture anymore; I couldn’t seriously imagine picking a cigarette up and lighting it and returning to all the negative burdens that come with those things.
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I tried the nicotine patch for a while. But I thought it was a hassle to keep playing with those things, and so the patch always ended in failure for me.
The gum was easier. No matter how bad I was craving a smoke, I could take care of it by popping more gum into my mouth. Sometimes I was chewing five or six pieces of gum at a time. Whatever works.
Nowadays they also have the e-cigarette/vaping around as a smoking substitute (sort of). It wasn’t around at the time I was quitting, so I never tried it and don’t know anything about it as a way of quitting tobacco.
The Missing Man 3 years, 1 month ago.
