1 Week Nicotine Free

I am now 1 week nicotine free.


I reached a point in my nicotine replacement program and plateaued.

To summarize:
For the first 4 weeks or so, I used one 4mg lozenge every 1.5 to 3 hours.
Then I switched to the 2mg (lower strength) lozenges, but didn't change the schedule. Or if I did, I soon drifted back into the same frequency.

And there I remained for well after the 12 week mark (which is the time by which one should have systematically weaned off entirely)...16 weeks, I believe. =shrug=

When I ran into friends, I told them that I quit smoking, and that now I'm addicted to nicotine lozenges instead. There seemed no end in sight.

I knew it would be at some unforseen moment where circumstances coincide with a thrust of willpower. But when would this arise, and how could I make it or help it happen?

The stars aligned on a Tuesday (like the day I stopped cigarettes), June 30th. The unconnected events of nicotine supply depletion and becoming terribly ill (extreme nausea followed by violent vomiting, leading into the flu) paved the way for me to lay off the lozenges for a bit.

This is how lemonade is made.

As long as I could keep the temptation of buying a new pack of lozenges at bay, I could try to hold out and rough it. Just a few more days, and the worst of the painful cravings will pass; or so I have read.

So, here I am, a week later. Still having flashes of cold sweats every 1/2 hour or so. Still snapping into extreme anger over the slightest annoyance. Still craving at least one of the chemicals that became such an integral part of my physiology for about 2 decades.

But, hey! I'm 1 week nicotine free!

Using illness as excuse to quit lozenges?

I haven't had a nicotine lozenge in about 3.5 days.

Seems ignorable if I were to go out and buy some today or tomorrow.

It wasn't necessarily a conscious choice to stop using them. [What the hell do we call it any way: taking them? Using them? Sucking on them?] I just got horribly sick that day.

Around lunch time, I started feeling nauseous and generally, physically strange. Coincidentally, I had run out of lozenges. I started feeling sick before the usual after-lunch lozenge-popping time.

Well the sickness ran it's course: nausea to violent vomiting binge to fatigue to aches to chills to hot (back'n'forth) to headache to...better!

So now, I am feeling spells of cold sweats, but now I know it's the lack of nicotine. I'm feeling it now as I type it, and I'll probably feel it every hour (at least) for the next few days.

Can I do it? Can I actually be not only cigarette free (yes, I still have not smoked since March '09), but NICOTINE free!?

Stay tuned....

I hate it!

It's the last day of Week 12 of my cigarette abstinence.

The first day of the 12th week is the first day I should be nicotine free entirely. I was expected to have successfully weened off the lozenges at that point. I'm still stuck at around the success level of a 2 Weeker. And I f**king hate it.

Every time I reach for a lozenge and pop it free of it's blister pack, I feel the subtle excitement in taking a form of action to achieve a level of relief from some vaguely nagging feeling.

Shortly after, I feel a pressure in my chest, a slight nausea and acid indigestion burn. This is followed by a feeling of disgust, and self loathing.

I'm angry that I'm stuck here in this quagmire. The comfort of knowing that I'm not taking in the deadly smoke has faded.

Someone told me, or I read somewhere, something about how long it takes for a habit to imbed itself. I believe the idea was that if I do something for 20 days or so, the habit will stick, or 20 days without and the habit will loosen...or...what the hell am I talking about!? I can't even think straight right now, as the burning in my stomach is increasing.

Aaarrrrgghhh!!! I hate it!

All of it!

I've actually moved backward. I got to a point where I could go 2-3 hours between lozenges (to be clear, I mean the time between putting one in my mouth to putting the next one in my mouth; not between one being dissolved/spit out and popping in the next one). Now, although, I occasionally go 3 hours between, it's usually 2 hours or less. Sometimes I can only go an hour before dropping the next.

I hate it. And I just can't seem to apply the discipline to get back on track; to force myself to wait longer. I need another quantum leap.

Week 11

I'm just upon 11 weeks without smoking tobacco.

According to the original 12 week plan, I should be nicotine free a week from now.

Not gonna happen.

The only change in my nicotine lozenge dosage is that I switched from the 4mg to the 2mg. But I still "need" them about every 2 hours, on average. By "need," I guess I really mean "crave, and take one to satisfy that craving."

I don't think that is any significant, boastworthy progress.

So, I'm still not saving any money by not smoking. But I'm saving my lungs, so, hey!

I just need to work my way back to a point of strict discipline to take the steps that I was supposed to a few weeks ago. And at least I haven't really moved backward.

Bill Bruford on Quitting...Smoking.

I came across a passage regarding smoking and the quitting thereof in the recently released autobiography of innovative, British, jazz/rock drummer Bill Bruford.

When you try to give up nicotine, you're treating with the Devil. I thought the deal was that if you gave up, the desire to smoke would also leave you, so that you wouldn't have to give up again every day. Somehow you took it as read that if you gave up so did the craving. But the Devil saw me coming and sucked me right in. Oh, I gave up, but the delicious smell, feel, and touch of a cigarette remained as firmly embedded as ever.

Out the Window

In the Daily Tabouleh, Danny shares a smoking-related thought:

I am still wondering why people throw their cigarettes from their car out the window and not place them in an ashtray. If you are stinking up your car already and you reek of smoke, why are you littering?

Good question, Danny. And there is an answer.

Unfortunately this answer will never satisfy any non-smoker's curiosity.

Before I dig in to this, please note that I consider someone who tries smoking, smokes "socially," or smokes regularly for less than, say, a year a non-smoker, in a polar generalization.

There is one big question, and millions of questions branching and rooting from that trunk.

A non-smoker cannot understand why a smoker exists at all. There is no logical, intelligent reason for anyone to smoke cigarettes, given sufficient information about the product. If the point of smoking itself is senseless, than why bother questioning the logic of any of the user's attendant habits?

I mean, how does a smoker know he has a "cough," as in when one's gets a cold?

Well, guess what? He knows. There are many, minute, physiological changes in the body. Listening to a smoker cough, noone else would know the difference. We (were) always coughing, hacking and hocking every waking moment, as if we were sick anyway. It all sounds the same to those around us. The sick cough and the "smoker's cough" just feels different, and we internally feel and taste the difference. There is a different taste in the throat and mouth, a slightly different muscular pull, a different tickle in a different area of the throat, different phlegm content and consistancy, etc.

Now, the ash tray issue is similar in some regards.

To a non-smoker, cigarette smell is just one, foul smell. Cigarette smoke stinks, and everything exposed to it stinks.

But cigarettes have many smells, that have differing intensities and half-lives (metaphorically speaking). There is the presently burning cigarette smoke itself, billowing out of the lit tip. This will choke anyone, and burn the eyes if it blows in one's face. Then there is the smell of the cigarette smoke indirectly. You smell it, but the actual smoke is not in your face. These scents are the more immediate, pungent smells. These smells diminish in intensity over various lengths of time. You can roll your windows down and 'air out' the car, and these will diminish.

Then there is the smell of the ashes. They have a more stale, stagnant dead smell. This is the smell that stays. If an ash tray is left full, you will continue to smell this. This same smell will be embedded permanently into the upholstery. Long after one quits smoking, and driven thousands of miles with the windows down, it will remain in the upholstery and carpet in the vehicle. Just sit shotgun in my ride and smell for yourself.

I'll cut this short. We're like dogs. Humans think poop stinks. Period. Dogs perceive all kinds of information from a variety of scents it perceives in a piece of doodie in a variety of locations and states of decay.

And I have no problem comparing cigarettes to fecal matter.

Fellow Strugglers and General Update

I have a larger post in the works, and it's taking a bit longer to get around to/finish then I thought, so I thought I'd check in.

Usually, such long lapses in communication from recovering addicts indicates that the "recovering" status has reverted back to "indulging."

Not in my case. I am in the middle of Week 9 without even a single hit off of a cigarette.

My lozenge addiction hasn't changed much. 5 days from now, I am supposed to cut back another step further to 1 lozenge every 4-8 hours, I believe. But, alas, I am in a quagmire of 1 lozenge every 2-3 hours, on average.

The other night, I hung out with 2 fellow nicotine addicts. One highly recommended using the lozenges to the other as an aid to quitting. He said it was a major help to him. But apparently, not enough. He said he was doing great for a few months, but stated he was back now, lighting up one of those flavorless cigarettes that makes you suck the hell out of it to feel any rush.

The other friend was excited to report that, after constant, thwarted attempts to quit, he has gone 4 days without cigarettes, cold turkey. Hooray! He recounted his morning struggles of flailing his arms and head about, in a mad scramble for the missing vice, fighting to make it through the diabolical first morning craving.

The problem is, he is also a recovering alcoholic with over a year of sobriety. He has had several near death experiences as a result of his drinking, and all his peers have been very proud of his daily triumph.

Coinciding with his abstenance from nicotine, was a tumbling from the wagon, and back into a routine of feebly concealed alcohol consumption.