I had two teeth pulled and two caps put in. The caps aren’t much of an issue, but the extractions….. left holes. Those holes will heal, BUT, until they do, I’m off nicotine. The only way I have thought of that I could have nicotine is if I used the patch, but I used the patch when I was stuck in a no smoking hospital, it’s part of what’s kept me from checking myself in for the last five years. The patch doesn’t provide pleasure, it makes the lacking worse.
On the shy side, 48 hours to go…. that’s the minimum before I can enjoy nicotine…. more likely, weeks and weeks. Because you see the work isn’t done, on the 9th I go back and they work on the other side, which means another two weeks after THAT I’ll have to abstain as well.
I feel at the same time anxious and demotivated. With that gone, I have to resort to more caffeine, which I’ve already figured out makes my stomach act up and tends to make me irritable….. part of the moral crusade of anti smokers that every few people I talk to says “maybe you should quit forever” and I want to reply “Maybe you should stick your hand in a blender, you don’t NEED TWO surely.”
For someone barely holding on, losing one of the major reasons to live……. is a test of what little will I have left. Nicotine was a sure thing, bad day? take a puff. People awful? take a puff. It took the edge off of all the horrible things in life. If you can use it, I very much recommend it. It’s mellower than THC, and less jittery than coffee.
That’s ANOTHER thing I can’t have; THC. If I had edibles (which are prohibitively expensive), I could do that, and that might help….. but I can’t smoke. All my reserves are smokeables. I also don’t have my medical license, because I took for granted that I’d always have nicotine and caffeine.
and my diet is extremely limited. I expect I’m going to lose a lot of weight during this whole ordeal, so that’s one upside. At least the sun is supposed to come out tomorrow. I mean literally by the by; it’s been raining for six days, tomorrow the clouds are supposed to break…. and I can get out in the garden and on my bike, which would be something.
That’s not even getting into that I was discussing another attribute of my struggle in the comments of a different thread and encountered a new behavior; The post would allow me to click through as if to submit, butt it never did. I tried my normal workarounds, cutting it and pasting it into a text document and attempting to log back in or refresh the page. Suffice it to say; yes, I get bored, mostly when I can’t marshal my forces to attack a problem that is unavoidably bothering me… like this damn nicotine fasting I’m being forced into….. I’m bored because to actually defeat it would take more effort, and therefor I must endure it.
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never thought I’d start smoking cigarettes… my first cigarette made me sick… then never thought I had the power to quit for good… yet I did it.
No one asked…but then no one ever talked to me about quitting…
the first step was rearranging my life so I was down to only a few a week, the habit was still so strong. To do that I tried to avoid obvious pairings, red wine, meat, chocolate, and of course caffeine. I read about this in a fashion magazine article. That last one was not easy, coffee and cigarettes got me through so much, watching my life turn into life action Cinderella for my former best friend and her family, when the third pairing was the ocean to stare at each morning, working as a hotel housekeeper, where that was the way I bonded with my coworkers.
At the end of one tough workday which was a cold drizzly day I could just afford a coconut flavored coffee and from inside a duncan donuts that was enough, that coffee was everything. So eventually focusing more on the breakfast drink and getting more into interesting breakfast drinks helped a lot too. These days I hear people refer to that as lifestyle changes.
emotional tapping specifically to the philtrum is supposed to help. my step grandmother uses a white plastic stick in place of a cigarette religiously. and an artist gave me a painted wooden cigarette I kept in my car which I was able to pass along to someone once I realized I no longer needed it.
what finally stopped me for good was allergies, the really terrible kind, and remembering that feeling from when I believed I’d never start helped me a lot too personally. That was a big part of quitting for me.
Marijuana is something I can have sparingly so I keep it taped inside a paper bag so I don’t get my hands messy just whenever. I previously quit for months and years and writing down or making mental notes about why I’m doing better have made a big difference.
It’s really easy to make oil or butter with it for baking and cooking and healthier too. I am not sure if edibles have helped anyone quit smoking but it’s believable since vices are doing something, not exactly releasing stored trauma but they are helpful with getting into meditation and yoga which I’d say are better for anxiety than nicotine, although you don’t tend to get mesmerized watching an ant scoot by with them, after all nicotine is a drug.
Good luck, definitely avoid dry sockets and improper healing.