It's hard to explain the real love in his heart an ex-smoker can feel for nicotine gum, the warm affection for the drug in its "clean" form, free of the filthy, cancer-causing delivery vehicle. Yeah, the opioid-receptors in your brain say, you can have everything!
I've been quit for almost five years now (and for nine of the last twelve), and I would rather eat a spider than smoke a cigarette. But I've been attached to the gum like Linus to his security blanket, convinced that Bad Things would happen if I gave it up.
Apparently I am far from alone in long-term use of the gum. As many as 25 percent of people who use Nicorette chew it for longer than the prescribed twelve weeks, and some use it for years and years. I used to laugh at those people. Not anymore.
Long story short: my blood pressure is somewhat high, and my doctor is about to put me on medication if I can't bring it down naturally. She wants to start me on beta blockers, which make the heart beat more slowly and thereby lower the blood pressure.
I know that nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, i.e., it narrows the blood vessels and forces the heart to work harder at pumping blood through the arteries, raising the heart rate. I began to realize that it was a pretty stupid idea to take one drug (with potentially nasty side effects) in order to counter the effects of another, optional, drug. I also reasoned that the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal are quite like the side effects of beta blockers, only less awful, so I was making a pretty decent trade, as far as I could tell. (Also: nicotine withdrawal lasts a few days, and beta blockers were looking like, well, forever. Maybe.)
They say that the gum is not addictive in the way that cigarettes are. And while I always knew it was a good thing that I was no longer freebasing nicotine, I still had a nagging feeling that I was still a nico-junkie, just a better-smelling one. It took Monday to find out for sure:
9:00 a.m.: I feel all right. This is easy. Why didn't I do it years ago?
10:00 a.m.: Still okay. Twelve hours now, only sixty to go until I'm officially nicotine-free.
11:00 a.m.: I have no mind. Luckily I don't need one for this job.
Noon: Ever feel like your brain is itching and you can't reach it to scratch? No? Good. You're lucky.
1:00 p.m.: Under my breath to man in elevator: Stop that tuneless whistling right now, or I'll strangle you.
2:00 p.m.: If it doesn't get any worse than this, I'll be all right.
2:30 p.m.: If it doesn't get any worse than this, I'll be all right.
3:00 p.m.: I will never feel well or happy again as long as I live.
4:00 p.m.: Devil on left shoulder: "You must have been nuts to try quitting on a Monday. You can relieve this misery by chewing a piece of Nicorette, and then you can start over again on the weekend." Angel on right shoulder: "You're almost through the first 24 hours. If you crack, you'll just have to live through it again soon. The gum is not the answer. The gum caused this situation in the first place."
5:00 p.m. The devil is sprawled on the shoulder of Highway 6 West where I tossed him out of the car on the way home. He is shaking his fist at me. The angel sticks out his tongue as we drive off.
6:00 p.m.: I meditate for forty-five minutes and afterward I feel very nearly normal.
10:00 p.m.: I've made it twenty-four hours now. No turning back.
Tuesday: Much better, except that night I have a strange and troubling dream that we elected a complete moron President of the United States.
Wednesday morning: Oops, wasn't a dream.
Wednesday afternoon: I drive to Memphis to pick up Miss J. from the mechanic, and do not turn a hair in the hellish I-240 traffic. It is clear that the calming properties of diaphragmatic breathing combined with sugarless bubble gum are insufficiently researched.
Thursday: I feel completely normal and happy, except when I remember what happened Tuesday, and then I feel totally ill. But it has nothing to do with nicotine withdrawal, which was officially over for me last night at ten.
The one thing that really worried me was that I'd have a hard time writing without chewing Nicorette, but so far that hasn't been a problem.
So if you are out there and afraid you'll completely lose your mind and go back to smoking if you quit Nicorette, I'm here to tell you that it was nothing compared to giving up the evil weeds in the first place, at least for me (so far, God willing). Now go buy your ten-pack of sugarless bubble gum, fire up your meditation tape, and give it a try. You have nothing to lose but a really expensive habit and twenty beats a minute from your heart rate.
loved this post!
Posted by: david | 12 November 2004 at 04:39 PM