Quitting smoking blog

Quitting smoking blog - WEEK 8

Monday, 30 Jan 06

Monday, 30 Jan 06
Busy busy busy. Work, doing coursework, doing websites for Karlos and Saz, sending anti-bullying illustrations to people yadda yadda ...

It can work either way. When I’m busy I get all geed up and start chewin’ away on mah dang cud like ole Daisy out in them thar fields.

But if the busyness goes past a certain point—to the point of obsession—then I can go a long time without realising that nothing is in my mouth except for a tongue and some yellowed metal-clad teeth.

Two years ago I bought a tooth-whitening kit from the dentist. I endured the horrendous gagging of having a tooth template put in my mouth; the Abu Grahib people would have had better results if they skipped the sexual humiliations and just gave the prisoners hourly tooth templates.

All you need to use the kit is to not smoke or drink tea or coffee for two weeks because the whitening goo makes your teeth porous. If you consume “browning” stuff your teeth will discolour even more. My whitening kit is still waiting. I sometimes wonder if the stuff has a use-by date or, the way things are going, whether it can be carbon dated.

I’ve bought some guarana tablets to help me handle going off caffeine (one addiction at a time, thanks) but I also worried that the yellow gum will stain my teeth. The good news is that the yellow dye in the gum is water soluble and apparently doesn’t stain. Still, I think I will have more of those virginal white lozenges during the treatment period.

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Tuesday, 31 Jan 06

Had my first full day of my course today. Being both ADHD and hitherto university-uneducated, I found the reading, well, terminal. I have no idea how people manage to plough their way through material that's as dry as a dead dingo's donger.

The resultant mix of boredom and anxiety I felt during the day lead me to constant mouth exploits, with 4½ gums, 2½ lozenges and a clove joining three cups of coffee, a cup of tea and 6 biscuits all going down the hatch. At other times I comforted my mouth by being an active session participant (ie. overbearing pain in the arse). Since it's not even 6pm yet I expect my NRT intake to be well up on yesterday.

What to do about this oral mania I have? The Freud theory of oral fixation says that it can happen if an infant is weaned too early or too late. You can then end up constantly "hungering" for oral activities. My mother had a breakdown when I was an infant and I was in a Triscillian home for a few months so maybe that's what went wrong? Wikipedia tells me that "oral fixations are considered to contribute to over-eating, being overly talkative, smoking addictions and alcoholism ... other symptoms include a sarcastic or 'biting' personality (known as "oral sadistic" qualities)". Who? Me??

That's all very well, but what can you do about it? The best I could find was a message board where an "oral" woman suggested "carrying around a little thermos style mug from Starbucks and filled it up at the water fountain. If you just have it there to sip on, it helps curb that need for something in your mouth".

Postscript: I had my legs crossed during dinner and when I got up my foot was alseep. When I got up my ankle caved in so now I have a twisted ankle. Mr Groin pointed out that my non-smoking must have really improved my circulation [sic]. After hobbling to my car I found that someone had hit my front fender which jammed the drivers side door so I now have to squeeze through an 20cm gap to get into the car. I was obviously stressed so Mr Groin kindly offered me a smoke.

What else could I do?

.....

....

...

..

.

... I said no, of course.

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Wednesday, 1 Feb 06

I tried the drinking water method and duly spent much time at The Room. Still, I think it's a good strategy and a possible way of dealing with my mouth compulsion.

I saw a Starbucks on the way to tennis (I strapped up my twisted ankle) and wandered in to see about the small thermos flasks. For a cool $60 I could be the proud owner of a small thermos ... or almost two packets of nicotine gums or lozenges. Or five packets of cigarettes, for that matter.

I think I'll use one of the plastic bottles they sell juice in downstairs from work. The juices cost $2 to $3, and you get some freshly squeezed juice to drink as well. Rather more suitably priced. It won't kill me if the water gets warm, just as long as it doesn't reach 50°C ... 

A study done several years ago on 96 smokers shows that those who wore a patch for two weeks before their quit date nearly doubled their success rate.

A study published in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, showed that twice as many smokers who started using patches two weeks before quitting had stopped smoking. Bear in mind that the manufacturers strongly recommend that you don't smoke while wearing a patch for fear of nicotine overdose. It seems that smoking while you're wearing a patch lessens the enjoyment of the smoke. Since patches keep you supplied with nicotine you don't get the enjoyable nicotine hit from smoking. They used the analogy of eating when you are full.

The news article had a wonderful quote from a smoker of 10 years, who said he wouldn't want to use it because he's "a fan of cold turkey".

Amazing how many continuing smokers are fans of cold turkey ...

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Thursday , 2 Feb 06

This mouth obsession issue is going to be harder than I thought. Hasn't happened yet. I drank water. I used cloves. I ate. But still the gums keep coming.

I've been wondering why more smokers don't just grow their own to save money and avoid all the extra toxic and addictive chemicals that the big companies put into cigarettes. After all, not everyone is capable of quitting so if they do smoke, perhaps they can at least minimise some of the problems, especially pensioners and people on welfare.

The University of Florida website has a page that tells people how tobacco is grown and cured. It looks like a lot of trouble! Once harvested you have to cure the tobacco just the right amount of time in just the right temperature (hot, but not cooking heat). Apparently if you cure it too fast, the smoke tastes bad, too slow and it gets mouldy. After all that you are supposed to age the cured tobacco for a year or more.

Somehow I can't imagine the American Indians going to all that hassle for a shot of the old peace pipe.

Which then lead me to medical uses of nicotine. There's been some reasearch on the possiblity that nicotine could be useful in treatment for brain damage, blocked arteries, tuberculosis, spinal cord trauma, colitis, connective tissue cancer and, of course, depression. None of these are fully proven yet as far as I know.

Still, the difference between a medicine and a poison often seems to be just a matter of dose and application. It wouldn't surprise me if nicotine eventually finds a way of making itself useful, apart from just killing pests and reducing pension and aged care costs.

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Friday, 3 Feb 06

I noticed an interesting shift in my cravings today. I had eaten lunch at my desk while working and decided I needed my usual lunchtime walk to get out of the office for a bit.

By now I’d not had any NRT goodies for a couple of hours. As I left the building I automatically planned my next moves—walk around a couple of blocks, buy a chai latte on the way back, and after I’d taken it back to the office and finished drinking it I could have a ... gum!

It was that very same thrill of delicious anticipation that I’d experienced with cigs, but this time for a stupid Nicorette gum.

On 23 Jan I mentioned that Hightowers was planning to give up yet I saw him smoking ouside the building as I was on the way back to work.

He’s botting one per day from a colleague but is otherwise going cold turkey instead of using patches. Next week he’s hoping to cut out those one-a-days because he promised his girlfriend etc. He said that so far the withdrawals haven’t been as bad as he’d expected.

I guess it’s a bit easier for people who haven’t been 39 years old for a long time, so he’d had less time than me to get seriously addicted ...

I got home at 6pm having only had three gums and two lozenges, which is an improvement on previous days.

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Saturday, 4 Feb 06

I wondered if other animals used tobacco or if people were the only ones. It turns out that rabbits and deer graze on young tobacco plants, but the mature plants are too poisonous for most animals to consume.

They say that pigs can get into tobacco plants and survive with only illness, but it can cause birth deformities if the pig is pregnant when eating the stuff. Various moth larvae, they say, are pretty keen on tobacco plants, especially the icky and repulsive hornworm, which eventually grows to become the rather beautiful Sphinx Moth.

It's funny how butterflies and some moths are thought of as beautiful yet while they are in the larval state they are kind of loathesome. Still, when you think of it, butterflies are still more or less the same oozy grubs, just that they have fancy ornaments attached. A bit like a long-term chainsmoker with blackened, slimy internal organs but has been made beautiful through plastic surgery.

My progress? Just more NRT scattered between chores, errands and chats with family.

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Sunday, 5 Feb 06

A few egg-heads from the University of Kentucky have told AZ Central that smokers don't generally want to give up smoking. He said smokers often do actually love it but know they need to quit because of the health problems.

I know what he's saying. During my early attempts I didn't want to quit because I enjoyed it too much, even though I knew I should. It wasn't until 4am on 11 January this year that I felt resentful enough at the ugly way I
was being manipulated by nicotine that I really wanted to quit.

I suffered badly from depression in my younger years and at times I swear I was living in hell ... heaven and hell are right here on this earth, not in some fairyland created by religious nuts.

The moment of realisation—no, the moment I knew deep in my bones—that nicotine ruthlessly played my moods (helped by additives put in them by multinationals) was the moment I finally wanted to quit. There were no
oughts, no shoulds. I really did not want to smoke.

The Kentucky brains trust also noted that women tend to relapse because of weight gain (is it a blessing that scales at my family's place are broken?) and that men do it because they get on the piss with their smoker mates. They also noted that using gum and lozenges are better than patches because you can control your dosage. Of course, men often tend to prefer cold turkey. I suspect this is for the same reason they won't ask for directions when they're lost.

My message to men is that using NRT doesn't mean you're a nancy boy. Just someone who is sensible enough to accept help when it's on hand.

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Weekly summary
(Cigarettes = 0, of course)

Ave per day = 6¾ gums, 4¼ lozenges

Week 9 -->