BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)

Subject: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 05:36 PM

A pretty (nah, very) heavy smoker, I managed to quit on the 1st June last year. Not a puff since. Wasn't always easy, but better than I'd expected. Nicotine chewing gum was (and is) my friend.

Problem now is how to give up the gum?

Any advice?

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: PoppaGator
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 05:56 PM

You've gotten over the "habits" of lighting up, oral satisfaction, etc., but you still have that physical addiction to nicotine, which is dead serious, said to be stronger even than heroin addiction.

Finding yet a third "delivery system" for this drug (e.g., a patch) won't be a help to you at this point. Your only alternative is to stop using the gum. Tapering off gradually will probably be easier than going "cold turkey," but it really depends upon your personality type. Some people actually find it easier to quit abruptly than to prolong the agony.

A good friend of mine, an American living in Japan, was a very heavy cigarette smoker. In Japan, as you may know, smoking is more than socially acceptable and is allowed everywhere. When he visited the US, he used to buy and chew lots of that gum, not to quit, but to maintain a constant ongoing intake of nicotine, even when in no-smoking environments.

Sadly, he passed away last year. Not from lung cancer or anything like that, but by drowning while scuba-diving off Fiji. I never learned all the details, but I suspect that his chain-smoking may have been a factor ~ his lung capacity was undoubtedly very compromised.

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 05:57 PM

Cut yourself down to ten pieces a day and hold that line for a couple of weeks.

Then cut yourself back to six.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 05:57 PM

Many thanks for the cheery news....

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 05:59 PM

Amos,

How does that work in terms of cravings? They don't fall into place in an obvious sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 06:00 PM

Congratulations, Ed. Best of luck for your continued success with it.

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 06:21 PM

Peace,

I'm obviously very stupid. I was trying to get some help on giving up nicotine replacements. I thought the thread title was fairly obvious. Clearly not....

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 06:40 PM

Not at all. Hell, it's the damned crap in the tobacco that leads to cancer and sundry medical ailments. I was congratulating the fact that you'd given up smoking.

As for the gum, try halving the gum dose and add a regular gum to it. Then in a month, halve it again. Etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 06:41 PM

What if, when you get a craving, you chewed half a piece of the nicotine gum (or three quarters, if half won't work), and half a piece of some other kind of gum together (effectively cutting in half the amount of nicotine you ingest each time you get a craving, while still getting some nicotine each time you have a craving. And then after your body's gotten used to that amount, you could halve the half, and so on, until you're not ingesting any appreciable amount of nicotine?

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 06:42 PM

"Problem now is how to give up the gum?

Any advice?"

Have a cigarette?

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 06:42 PM

Looks like I crossposted with Peace.

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 06:44 PM

My Rog has been tapering down on smoking through use of the prescription drug "Chantix." He is just finishing his third or fourth week, can't remember, but he has gone from at least a pack a day since age 16 to maybe five or six individual cigs per day. The med. blocks the nicotine receptors, so you gradually get nothing out of smoking a cigarette. I imagine it would do the same for the gum, i.e. help you get off the gum.

Other than that...titrate it down, if you can, as Amos has said. If you can get past the intense first minutes of a craving, then go for something else, i.e. cough drop, regular chewing gum, etc. then it might get easier. I have read though the nicotine itself is more addictive than heroin, so this may not work as well as the prescription.

Good for you, for stopping the acual cigarettes, though!

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: open mike
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 09:52 PM

http://www.chantix.com some neighbors of mine have had excellent results with Chantix.

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: michaelr
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 10:26 PM

kat -- PLEASE MONITOR YOUR ROG VERY CLOSELY! Check out these links:

http://cbs2chicago.com/health/chantix.side.effects.2.567122.html#strategic - Complaints about Chantix to the Food and Drug Administration have been increasing steadily since it went on the market in August 2006. There were 48 by September, and 246 more by December. The number jumped another 602 by March 2007, and 948 more by the end of June. In all, there were 1,844 reports in 11 months.

Pfizer says the most common side effects of Chantix are nausea, sleep disturbance – including changes in dreaming – constipation, gas, and vomiting. The company says Chantix has been studied in more than 5,000 patients, it is monitoring adverse event reports, and more studies are underway with people with cardiovascular and lung disease.

But the watchdog group Public Citizen says testing didn't go far enough. "It's only when tens of thousand or more people start the drug that you get a sense of the real frequency of that effect of how serious it can be," said Public Citizen Health Research Group Director Dr. Peter Lurie. Two months ago, Public Citizen put Chantix on its worst pill list.


http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/89646.php -   FDA recommends that health care providers monitor patients taking Chantix for behavior and mood changes. Patients taking Chantix should contact their doctors if they experience behavior or mood changes.


http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=3623085 -   Since Texas musician Carter Albrecht's bizarre and tragic death, concerns have surfaced about Chantix, the stop-smoking drug he was prescribed. Those closest to Albrecht believe the drug contributed to his death.



http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2008/01/art-bell-fell-for-dangers-of-chantix.html

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 11:31 PM

Thank you, Michael. I haven't noticed any of those effects from it with Rog and our doctor is monitoring him carefully. What I have noticed is he is not waking up every morning hacking his lungs up from congestion from smoking.

Just checked with him. He hasn't noticed anything except that it kind of *kills* the pleasure receptors, as he put it. As a consequence, he is not drinking as much, either, which I had noticed. Drinking was not a problem, just a glass or two of wine or a couple of beers in the evenings, but it won't hurt his semi-beer gut, either.:-)

I will definitely look over those links. Thank you for posting them.

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 12:13 AM

I seriously believe the final step has to be a ferocious, independent determination to do something else with the minutes in which the cravings are present, and never give up on that determination. In the last stages of walking away from the addiction, it has to be without aids, no matter what yu had to do to scale down.

I have been a regular user of nicotine gum, and if the sucking tablets called Commit, and of tobacco. What it takes is doing something else with the time of attack, even if it is just splashing water n your face, taking a few deep breaths or going out to the garage and pounding a nail. It's only about 45 seconds to a minute and a half, and you're good to go until the next wave. That's when you do something else instead of even thinking about nicotine. That's my plan of attack, for the next time I quit smoking.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: Morticia
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 06:38 AM

I went with a piece of ordinary gum every second time I would have used NRT gum, then every third until I realised that I was simply prolonging the issue so I took a deep breath ( I could by then) and went to just ordinary gum. I still ( just had my 4th no smoking anniversary) don't like to be without ordinary gum but it's a way better alternative so I live with that.

I came to realise that the craving, though unpleasant wouldn't kill me and would pass.

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 08:46 AM

Thanks, everyone. I think Amos and Morticia are right, and I just need to 'do it'. The mind plays a lot of tricks, but in reality the craving only lasts minutes.

Many thanks for your help.

Ed

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: catspaw49
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 09:35 AM

2 and a half packs a day for almost 40 years. Tried to quit in every way possible......none worked. Even after 3 major heart surgeries and an unrepairable dissected aorta, I continued to smoke. My last "near death" experience brought me again to the edge and I had to quit......but how? Everything in my life I did with a cigarette somehow attached to it. I smoked in the shower ferchrissakes!

I'd go for periods of time on various methods and somehow always failed, generally thinking I could just have one or two. I couldn't. Gums, patches, lozenges, shots, hypnotism, acupunture, a wacky group of "natural" substances guaranteed to work, an even wackier thing that punched holes in cigarettes...........nothing worked. Over the years I think I must have tried them all.

Then following my last near death "funtime," I read a single line, only two words.....and it was those two simple words that did the trick for me. Frankly, it was something I had never before considered exactly. Two words.........URGES PASS.

Yep, that they do. Did you know that? I didn't! I thought the way to pass the urge was to "just have a quick drag" or some gum or something to replace the urge or satisfy it. I didn't substitute anything or try to knit or crochet. I didn't try to think better thoughts or consider how smoking had ruined my body, killed my Dad, or anything else. When a craving hit I thought of only those two words and kept right on doing or not doing whatever I was up to at the time.

I know it sounds stupid and you can tell me all the reasons it won't work for you and all, but I'd ask you to simply consider that urges DO pass.....no shit. Even that incredible nicotine addiction that has you locked up. Urges pass. Yeah......they do. Over two years and never even a puff. The coldest of cold turkeys. I'm prouder of that fact (not even a puff) than of the actual quitting. I have never cheated. One morning I woke up and felt guilty because I dreamed I had a cigarette. I had to go look where they were in my dream to be sure it wasn't real! It wasn't. Over two years and I say again...... nary a puff.

Urges pass.........if you just let them. Don't give in. Urges pass.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 11:22 AM

Pat, you are Da Man.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 12:28 PM

Thank you, catspaw49. You've put into words exactly what I've been trying to think (and do).

Just hope I have the srength to let the urges pass.

Ed

Urges pass, urges pass, urges pass

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 02:31 PM

Urges pass, urges pass, urges pass

can become

Urges prompt, urges prompt, urges prompt....

Choose a new healthy behavior to shift into when the urge hits. A glass of water, for instance. Retrain the body AND the mind that way, while also amending the behavior and changing your health. Powerful.

Too often we try to hit something head on, that is better turned sideways with adroit action.

The addiction is stupid. People are smart. Let the smart person run the show, not the stupidly-limited addiction. YOU are not dumb-- the addiction's behavior pattern IS. You are not the addiction, even if the addiction lies to you and insists that it is yourself. Addictions are not only stupid-- they are liars. :~)

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 02:57 PM

WYSIWYG,

I think I'll stick with catspaw49's sugestion. No offence and thanks for your idea.

Ed

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: catspaw49
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 03:13 PM

Well Wyzz, that's the generally accepted idea but it never worked for me. I was altering a behavior pattern with something I might not ever have done or liked to do or whatever. For hand habits I tried toothpicks, stick cinnamon, fake cigarettes, etc. I also tried healthy activities like water or even bad ones like candy and gum.

Yassee, my problem with all of that stuff was that while I was doing it I was thinking "I'm doing this rather than smoke a cigarette." AND......I still wanted a cigarette as soon as I finished "whatever." In every case it was always on my mind becasue it wasn't natural or what I was doing. So the "urges pass" idea became an important stand alone idea.

I'd be reading and want a cigarette. I'd just think "Fuck it.....Urges Pass," and go right on reading. I'd be Mudcattin' which I damn near always did with a cigarette, chain smoking, and I'd get the urge. Again, "Fuck it.....Urges Pass." and keep on reading threads or responding.

When I tried all the subs, I'd be saying, "Hey great.....Ain't smoking, faking it with a cinnamon stick," but the urge was foremost and still there when I was done with the gum or mint or toothpick or carrot stick..........As soon as I was finished I wanted the real thing because I'd been thinking even more about it while I was gnawing on the jerky!

I'm a fan of whatever works for the smoker. I loved cigarettes. Really. Loved the taste, the hand habits, blowing smoke patterns.....everything but the price. Ya' know that last trip to the hospital, I was in really bad shape and I knew it but I stalled and covered as much as I could because I knew I'd have to try and quit again. Even with our "smokeless hospitals" its still easy to get a cigarette. Before I'd make it a few days and as soon as I could leave the floor I'd be having a gasper within a few minutes. I know the addiction is stupid. I also know its incredibly powerful. For me, the more I thought about it, the harder it was to quit......and that's what the substitution thing always did to me. It made me continually conscious of the addiction.

Urges pass. Let them go. Keep right on with what you were doing, even if it was staring at the boob tube!

Good luck Ed.......Do whatever it takes!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: Nick
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 03:29 PM

The good thing to be aware of is that you have broken your psychological addiction which is the hardest bit of this and the reason so many people go back to smoking long after the physical dependence has long since gone. The even better bit is the incredibly short time that it takes nicotine to clear your system - 48 to 72 hours depending on how much you are taking in.

So with what you have achieved so far - ie the removal of smoking from your behaviour - the relatively short period of time when the physical withdrawal takes place should be easy compared with the really difficult bit that you have done already.

It's a lovely place to be not feeling the need to have to smoke.

I have never smoked a cigarette or anything since giving up 15+ years ago but there is one psychological link that I never broke. If I go on holiday to somewhere like Greece it comes back to me. I don't get tempted because I know I would go back and I have no need to smoke but it's incredible how after all that time that association is still there enough to trigger me to think about it.

Youve done the difficult bit!

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: Spot
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 03:58 PM

Allo everybody

                I gave up the fags 8/9 years ago.... I virtually went cold turkey. I tried the patches for a week or so but, in the patches box was a table of dates and stickers. One day without smoke - another sticker etc. I got obsessed with finishing the stickerboard!! I did it - something like 3 months...!! But I also saved every penny I would have smoked for ME, and ME alone....One Yamaha guitar, one Lowden guitar, one Stelling banjo, one Eastman mando, one Oakwood mando and one Collings mando later, I'm still off the fags, still save the money (usually in pound coins that I take to local store to exchange for big denomination notes.) Ok - I'm still feeding a major addiction (MAS/GAS)- but this one shouldn't kill me slowly and agonisingly..and mostly, it's not antisocial!! ;-) (Unless I play outside!!) Re. giving up the gum - no idea,apart from CT and willpower... but it's got to be better than smoke and shit..... Good luck..

      Regards to all....Spot

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 04:02 PM

I was altering a behavior pattern with something I might not ever have done or liked to do or whatever.

Well, DUH! No wonder it didn't work!

What if it had been "want cigarette, go play with Tris"?

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: catspaw49
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 04:31 PM

Wyzz, its the thought of "I'm doing this instead of a cigarette" that kept that from working for me. Thinking about what I was doing made it worse. Its like Allen Sherman said of us all about sex..........

Humans engage in "thinkery-fuckery." So we have lots of problems both physical and mental, or physical brought on by mental, or.........well anyway, we worry about it, we suffer performance anxiety, we worry about what the other person thinks and are they enjoying it or are they thinking you're no good at this, or that they aren't any good or...................that's thinkery-fuckery.

Ever see a dog with that problem? Do you think zebras give a crap about what the partner thinks? Ever watch a deer in rut and wonder if they have performance anxiety? Is there some form of penis envy amongst the sheep population? NOPE......They just fuck. We don't. We seem to have to think about it and in the process have become one of the few species who need therapy to throw a fuck....in either direction.

For me anyway, thinking was detrimental to my quitting. The less I thought the better. Tell ya' what else........Works for sex too!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 07:05 PM

Spaw, if it didn't work for you, it didn't work for you-- because the thought you had was NOT to do the "other" thing but because your thought went immediately back to the craving. And that's fine-- it just didn't work for you. But it wasn't the technique that was at fault. You just had not yet learned how to out-think the addiction. It fooled you. Don't you kinda hate it that you let it do that?

I am glad you found what could work for you at the time. But you have given two different reasons now why this didn't work the other way.... so watch out, my friend, that addiction doesn't go right back to fooling you, in another form or another time around.

IMO there is very little in life that goes better when we take our best thinking out of the picture. Sex? Better with the brain engaged, too. Sctatching our crotches? I'll have to try it both ways to be sure..... but I bet thinking makes that feel even better, too. :~)

I'll get back to you,

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: catspaw49
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 07:42 PM

I ain't gonna' argue on this one. I tried and the weakling in me was beaten by the addiction. I beat it in a way that worked for me.....Everyone else is free to do whatever works for them.

Best of Luck Ed.....We're all behind you whatever works!!!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 20 Jan 08 - 07:12 AM

Kee-rect! :~)

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: Becca72
Date: 20 Jan 08 - 10:08 AM

As was stated above, quitting smoking has been proven to be more difficult than giving up heroin...so yes, it's a "smart addition". I agree totally with Spaw that when you think to yourself "oooh...I'm having a craving for such-and-such, I'd better have a glass of water" you're not really getting past the craving. Waiting it out removes the middle man.

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 26 Jan 08 - 02:07 PM

It's a strange thing (or maybe it's not), but starting this thread, and the wisdom and advice therein, have allowed me to dramatically cut my amount of gum.

It's 7pm here, and I've only had 1 piece of gum all day! I'm yearning for another one right now, but I'm not giving in because it will pass!

Having said that, writing this post (and thinking about it) makes the urge stronger.

It will pass

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 26 Jan 08 - 02:41 PM

And there is much fun to be had in the meantime. It can pass while you do something else, because it WILL pass whether you focus on it or not. In fact it will pass whether you give into it or not (it's a fickle addiction), but each time you do NOT give into it, that makes for one less craving before they quit altogether.

Another way to look at it is not that you are quitting The Habit, you're actually letting It Quit You. Biochemically, that is just as true.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: vectis
Date: 26 Jan 08 - 05:12 PM

I found that on my umpteenth attempt to BECOMING A NON SMOKER I just fed the addiction with whatever it took. I started with inhalators, then gum, then weaker gum and then nicotine lozenges. In the end I just realised one day that I would get as much satisfaction from sucking a mint.
That was it, no more addiction. By that time I had been a non smoker for long enough to have no desire to smoke left in my addicted brain.
Cravings are just a trick your addictive brain is playing to get its addiction fed. Eventually it has to lose in order to finally break the habit.
You have done the hardest part Ed, just the final push to go. Don't hurry it, take your time. You can, theoretically stay on NRT for the rest of your life if you need to. Nicotine is not the damaging ingredient in tobacco (in moderation - before you all remind me that it is deadly poisonous in large quantities) it is the rest of the crap in smoke that kills.
Let us all know how you get on........
please

Subject: RE: BS: Giving up NRT (Nicotine Replacement)
From: katlaughing
Date: 26 Jan 08 - 11:24 PM

Good for you, Ed. It's always nice to hear how someone is getting on when they've asked for input.

Thanks,

kat