Comments on: It is not the nicotine.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 07:56:55 +0000

Gabriel – I get those same fleeting cravings. And it’s always when the behavioral cues are right. It only lasts moments though.

I tried patches once. I can distinctly remember taking some clients out for a walk around the hospitall and on the way out of the unit I took out a patch and applied it. Because work had been busy I’d not had one on that day. Within minutes I had a headache, my head was also buzzing, I felt dizzy and I felt sick. That – unsurprisingly – put me off patches :)

By: Gabriel...

Gabriel... — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 04:46:48 +0000

I have to say, I smoked for eighteen years before being successful in quitting (so far)… but it was the nic craving that crushed me anytime I tried to quit before. When I did manage to quit — January 2006 — I used the 2mg NicPatch for six weeks so that all I’d have to concentrate on would be the smoking behaviours. I haven’t reached for a pack in awhile, but for the first five months or so I was reaching for a phantom pack.

The NicPatch system, according to The Box, was to use the 2mg patch for six weeks, then four weeks at 1.5mg then… a bunch of weeks, I guess, at 1mg. I remember it being somewhere around a four or five month system. But at the end of the six weeks I found I could deal with the behavioural stuff, so I went cold turkey on the nicotine at that point. I still, honestly, get cravings — this almost empty feeling in the back of my throat — when I think about smoking.

By: Root

Root — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 16:32:24 +0000

I start at the top and work down. I am kinda methodical like that. :)

By: dino

dino — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:18:59 +0000

Change my showering routine…..stop it you horrible man! :D

By: brightfeather

brightfeather — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:16:05 +0000

(If you want an example of a behaviour that is difficult to change – next time you have a shower/bath, wash yourself differently. Start with a different part of the body, change the order you wash around your body. Try and change the whole routine in some way. It’s not easy to do and yet still feel comfortable.)

My friend and I were in a small group where for 7 days we did exactly what you suggest in the paragraph above. At the end of every shower/bath we wrote down how it went.

When our group met again we read the entries and found how patterned our behaviours actually were. Something else we uncovered was how easy it was to establish new patterns, while still grieving the loss of the patterns of the past.

It was a fascinating little test. I’m definitely hooked on shampooing my hair first and washing my feet last. Reversing the process was almost painful. :)

By: bri

bri — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:52:34 +0000

Totally agree with you… I remember thinking that the actual nicotine craving was gone after a few days, the difficult bit was getting used to not smoking at times when you would normally light up automatically, like with a coffee mid morning or with a drink. My worst one was trying to not smoke just after I’d finished a meal.

I think it’s just a case of training yourself into a different routine. Which is really hard to do, and people assume that once the nicotine is out of their system it will be easy to give up. I think it takes weeks or months to give up smoking, not just days… but it’s POSSIBLE!! :)