Okay, so I have been smoking since my 13th birthday. I have quit on several occassions over the past 20 years. Obviously, since I am writing about this, not very successfully. I will not bore you with the whys and wherefores of all of this, but I will cut straight to the chase. The last two times I gave up, I gave up with the assistance of nicotine patches. The first time for about 18 months and the second time for about a year. The last time was about 18 months ago. Oh, yeah, the patches work, but smoking seems to be a default status with me. lol.
The patches work by putting a continuous but teeeny amount of nicotine directly into your bloodstream so that you do not have to actually put a cigarette into your mouth. You go three weeks without the habit of smoking and cut down the level of nicotine to almost nil and then voila, you are a quitter. The theory sounds good.
One of the side effects of nicotine patches are "vivid dreams", psychobabble for nightmares worse than the most deplorable acts of terrorism. Those tiny nicotine driven nanobots travel into your brain, take a look around, have a good chuckle and take your absolutely worst fears and make them into a dreamscape reality. Waaaaah! Yeah, in otherwords you dream of your own death at the hand of some psychochotic serial killer and die. Yeah, you do. But then, you wake up in some way and watch the CSI:Miami team doing the forensics on your death and you get in and help them. G0 figure.
Now before you go, ew, I don't want to do that, let the words of experience stroke you gently.
You don't wear the blasted things to bed. Take them off about an hour beforehand and have a large drink of water. Make sure you go to the loo just before you go to bed. It doesn't get the nicotine out of your system, but reduces it to a more manageable level. You just don't dream about the post mortem. Okay, you don't get the "vivid dreams" either or they aren't so bad. Yeah, I know they aren't nanobots either.
They really do stop the cravings. The patches have nothing to do with why I have failed before. This time around I have done some stress management stuff and have alternative things to do with my hands. I also have some stronger painkillers - although the pain that I had previously was because of my gallbladder which has since been removed. I still lack strong coping skills, but as I am aware of this, I am able to deal more with it. As long as the old person doesn't annoy me more than usual. It is still against the law to kill people.
Ha. bye ...
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