Meta: My apologies if you wound up running into me online at some
stage this week — I’ve been in a lousy mood.
I gave up smoking cigarettes at the end of May, and switched to patches. That went pretty well, dropping from 21mg patches, to 14mg, to 7mg. But this week I finally hit the end of the line, stopped applying a patch every morning, and became fully nicotine-free. Only, ouch — it’s not quite as easy as I thought!
Cigarette addiction is (apparently) composed of two conceptual lumps — the physical addiction to nicotine, and the mental addiction to the ‘idea’ of smoking. Through the patches, I’ve successfully nailed the mental addiction, but I’m now facing the physical withdrawal. I’m sweating, dizzy, can’t focus my eyes, can’t concentrate, my skin is going crazy, and I’m INCREDIBLY grouchy. It’s amazing how much havoc the act of withholding nicotine can cause, especially when you consider that it’s not a required nutrient for the human body — it’s an ‘optional extra’ that I never should have gone near in the first place.
Wierdly, though, I don’t want a cigarette. Instead, I want a patch ;)