Nicotine Withdrawal

[Guest electro]

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[This message has been edited by electro (edited 14 October 2002).]

[Auxin]

A shirt that says your quitting. That way when you freak out people will know why.

Some people swear that lobelia tea 'reduces the cravings' but all it really does is make you through up if you do smoke tobacco (thats all it did for me anyway.)

[Zu]

Originally posted by electro:

Anyone know of anything that helps with nicotine withdrawal ? (apart from will and patience ?)

I used Zyban and found it effective for eliminating withdrawal. I still craved (sometimes still do) but it was manageable. I didn't have any major side effects but I may have just been one of the lucky ones as I've heard some Zyban horror stories.

It's on the pharmaceutical scheme so it's not much more expensive than a packet of smokes for an 80 day course.

[Guest reville]

Smoke lobelia instead.

I have 100g packs for $6.50

its fairly fine but its probably best to grind it a little more , then put it in a tobacco pouch with a lettuce leaf or even better a tobacco leaf to rehydrate to smokeable level

(its crispy)

I found it an enjoyable altenative to tobacco and it did allay any cravings i had.And youll smoke much less of it. It may also help you clear up your lungs a bit, as its a bronchodilator.

Another person i accidentally left some with smoked it and said exactly the same thing. All id told her was that it was a tobacco substitute.

and yes auxin one of its main uses is as an emetic....

Lobeline is schedule 2 and 4 depending on concentartion. However do you know any pharmacist that carries it? sneaky prohibition

However smoking mixes are exempt

alternatively you could use calamus root to create a sickening effect if you do try and smoke - ha conditionaing a reflex, light up , hurl, light up, hurl, go to light up... p'haps not

[Torsten]

keep your dopamine levels high as any drop will trigger cravings. use l-tyrosine, achievements and a reduction in stress.

[Guest reville]

I suppose eating choline rich food would help too after quiting a cholinergenic drug..?

lotsa fish might soothe the irritability and lack of concentration.

[t st tantra]

star jasmine seems to help,so does having bronchitis.

apparently canabis contains a small amount of nicotine,so maybe it would ease the cravings more gradually?

t s t .

[theobromos]

Almost dying from meningitis helps the willpower (smoking makes ALL infections ten times more likely because of the depressed immune system).

Getting addicted to caffeine first then giving up at the same time will help against the cravings as the withdrawals cancel each other a little. Breathing in a paper bag to increase carbon dioxide levels could help as many of the effects of stopping smoking are due to the sudden drop in CO2 levels in the lungs.

There were some other threads on this subject that could be helpful, anyone know where they were.

[gomaos]

Well I gave up tobacco approx 3 months ago, and that after 37 years of approx 10 to 20 (more like 20, ten on my good days) cigarettes a day.

How?

My throat was in so much pain that it was clear i'd either have to part with me throat (and probably wear a little machine thingy that amplifies my voice, like "ned' on South Park)or with cigarettes.

Since you can't smoke cigarettes without a throat it was quite obvious what the choice had to be...

Didn't use Zyban or anything...

But I have to mention that I still smoke "substitutes" approx 3 times a day....

[woof woof woof]

just quit man and find yourself something to keep busy with.

[John_Barleycorn]

It needs to be borne in mind that smoking addiction and nicotine addiction are two distinct entities. On a whim last night, I had a vapouriser hit of tobacco, and was pleasantly surprised by the effect. There was none of the usual instant dizziness/nausea which I attribute to oxygen deprivation caused by the carbon monoxide. Instead, the stimulating effect of the nicotine kicked in and peaked in about 5 minutes. The other nice aspects are that the aroma of the tobacco comes through much better than in a cigarette, and you don't stink either yourself or the house out.

So, although I realise I am not quite answering Electro's question, it seems to me that bypassing combustion of tobacco has a lot going for it. I am fairly certain the intake of tars and other carcinogens is way less. And you can get up the next day and not be out of breath. And (geez, I'm sounding like some sort of salesman here) I think the vapouriser route might work better for those people who have tried and failed with nico patches, gums, etc, due to the difficulty of breaking the inhalation habit. The main negative is that it takes 5 minutes to prepare the vapouriser, and these things aren't particularly portable.

[Guest Thelema]

and in fact BARLEYJOHN, europe has come up with this vapour-answer in the form of vapour-cigarettes.

Now to answer the q directly, there are CHEMICALS that will replace or block the nicotine. And there are substitutes that will make do.

Substitutes are, to my knowledge, Clove (usually powdered)...beware asthma, and sundry..

Chemicals: anything rising catecholamine levels...tyrosine/phenethlyamine.

Zyban: Try it, but as a seasoned smoker, what it does is disenable you to feel anything when you smoke. Nothing. In this way it makes you quit.

MECAMYLAMINE: this blocks nicotinic receptors at the post-synaptic site (good luck getting some)

The best way to quit is to ask yourself WHY you smoke, TO BE REPUGNANT AT THAT, and thence to have the will to quit one REPUGNANCE at oneself..

I for one have never managed in that task...

[coin]

indeed the inhalation is habitual..the oxygen dep is habitual..everything about it's nice til the realisation that it's sucking your life force away

part of the satisfaction of taking a nice deep inhalation is chest & respiratory tract sensation.. a couple studies have shown that inhalation of essential oils that give sufficient chest sensation, will significantly reduce cravings for ppl quitting "cold turkey".. most effective i've read, was black pepper oil.. (mint/menthol was ineffective)

[Guest electro]

Hoorah !

last attempt went no where, but two weeks ago my gf brought home some movie about an english professor with cancer ... it freakes the hell out of us - needless to say we quit the day after (after 3 more packs that day to "cope" with what we had seen and to prepare for the days ahead).

Anyway, on monday we will have been quit for 2 weeks.

Lorazepam was brilliant in helping alleviate tension.(almost a constant companion for the first 4 days)

If Legal, Opium and alcohol would have been used as daily rewards, with a few e's at the 5 day mark as the "through the physical" reward.

Herbal smokes were used constantly until the 5th day mark, when the habit itdself became the main area of attack..

so far so good

[hoodoo]

I quit cigarettes 8 years ago after smoking for about 20 years. I used the method outlined in the book "You Can Stop Smoking," by Jacquelyn Rogers. She founded "Smokenders," which is credited with helping hundreds of thousands of people to quit. The method essentially deprograms your urges or should I say reprograms you? It takes a few months to follow it through. It worked for me and none of the other 30 plus times I tried before that worked.

A note of encouragement: after you quit, it takes a while, but the urges DO indeed go away forever. I remember thinking at one point that if the nagging urges didn't go away eventually I'd rather smoke and die young than live with such aweful nagging. But again, they will go away!

Also, you could throw in some daily small, non-inebriating amounts of Mitragyna and/or Tabernanthe/Tabernaemontana to help distract or realign your mind patterns.

[M S Smith]

I have smoked on and off since I was 15 years old and always "stopped" when I figured I was smoking too much (typically more than 10 a day). So I'm not a heavy smoker, but I do get the urge. I have always considered myself as a highly willfull person and as having patience with myself when under mild withdrawal. So is what I usually do to "stop" smoking (I never say quit as it has too much finallity to it) is to keep it (my desire to stop smoking) a secret to myself and try and restrict my smoking until the afternoon sometimes. I find this helpful in that too many people run around telling everyone that they "quit" and then only fall right back into it. They now have lied to both themselves and to others and this is not helpful at all in regards to a second attempt to "quit." I don't tell anyone I have stopped smoking and find it hilarious when I resume smoking and people who clearly knew I smoked before say that they didn't know I smoked. Of course keeping a secret about stopping is tough, especially when people you smoked with ask if you want to go outside and have a smoke at work. I just tell them I'm not in the mood and before long they usually stop asking and forget about you. Not smoking until the afternoon is a great way to ween yourself off smokes as it gives you the six to eight hours of sleep or so for your body to cleanse itself and then you go for a few more hours until the early afternoon to pick one up. In my case this would give me from about 10pm to 6am without smoking (8 hours) and then going from 6am to say 4pm without smoking (10 hours), for a total of 18 hours without smoking. In many cases I find myself not wanting one at all since I have not taken that first morning puff and set my nicotine cravings in action for the day. And honestly, my feeling is if I can go for 18 hours without smoking then why should I totally keep myself from smoking? Why shouldn't I be able to smoke about five or six a day and really enjoy them? Well that is what I usually do.

Now of course if I tell people this they say "why do you smoke at all if you only smoke just a few?" I provide a little analogy for them and ask them if they would ask their friend to stop drinking beer if he drank one or two a night rather than drink till he got shitfaced. I mean really, one or two beers, or five or six smokes is a lot better than a six pack and twenty pack of cigarettes.

My uncle used to jog five miles a day and then light up a cigarette. I asked him why he smoked if he jogged and he said it was better to smoke and jog than to not jog at all. Good point Uncle Jimmy.

So in the end my rec is to not worry so much, try and limit the number of cigarettes you smoke each day (certainly don't smoke first thing in the morning), tell no one about what you are doing, and then before long you control when you want a smoke and have one at your leisure to enjoy. And in the end you might find it something you don't want to do anymore. That's the way to stop, not a cold turkey shock to the system. And hey, if you do start to smoke in a controlled manner again, you didn't lie to anyone, yourself included.

Good Luck!

~Michael~

[Auxin]

I gotta admit that I am not intending to quit any time soon. I'm even teaching myself to grow and cure my own tobacco- so, really, I'm looking ahead into the next few years assuming I'll need a few kilos per year. I'm not so reluctant to consider cutting down though, for the last several years I've kept myself in check smoking 8.5-9 ciggies per day and that is a little too much.

But I did have an idea a while ago when I was reading about the aussie natives mixing tobacco with ash, chewing it, and sticking it behind their ear for dermal absorbtion. The problem with that is the cancer causing nitrosamines can still cause problems BUT nicotine forms an azeotrope with water, SO if I made a tobacco decoction, added lime, and distiled it I'd have some nicotine solution I could measure it out to aliquots equivalent to 0.5 grams of tobacco and rub on my arm when I'm trying not to smoke

[nabraxas]

those Nicobate CQ lozenges really do take the craving for a smoke away, much better than patches or gum.

[Guest electro]

thanks for the advice all

Hoo .. that is very good to hear, i assumed they would go away, but this patience thing really gets to me sometimes

Auxin .. i like that idea .. if it's like patches it may well hurt though

re the cq suff ... i tried all that stuff last time.. just left me to physically withdraw for another couple of days (which proved too much lol)

i think the only thing that got me through was the lorazepam ... from 80 smokes a day (double that on weekends) to nothing .. i was ready to kill people everytime the pam wore off lol .. and the only thing that will keep getting me through is to not underestimate nicotines power & give in for "just one" anytime soon .. if i give in "to just one" , it will be to a horible tasting "herbal" smoke ....

[planthelper]

used to smoke up to 60 a day.

cold turkey methode, willpower and meditative auto-suggestions.

if you have never meditated or done similar things, simply talk to yourselfe, just after waking up in the morning.

simply make up your own affirmations like:

i stopped smoking and fresh air tastes much better than smoke.

nicotine withdrawl lasts only for 14days or so,

if you use patches, gums or inhalers you will only prolong your addiction.

some people put even more nicotine in ther body with those means than with cigis...

unfortunately i used to get panic attacks once i stopped smoking. so i had to learn to control my anxiety levels.

most of the withdrawl is psychological anyway,

just an example: person complains about withdrawl,

but, as suddenly the phone rings and some exciting news are exchanged, no withdrawl symtoms are felt....

cigis represent oral satisfaction and can be substituted with chewing gum (nicotin free) or lollies.

[Auxin]

planthelper:

most of the withdrawl is psychological anyway,

just an example: person complains about withdrawl,

but, as suddenly the phone rings and some exciting news are exchanged, no withdrawl symtoms are felt....

I can relate to that. If I'm conciously trying to keep from smoking I smoke sooner, but if I'm fully distracted with work, chemistry, sex, etc. I can go without a cig for an extended period without even noticing (its too bad sex cant last 18 hrs- quitting ciggies would be easy).

 

planthelper:

cigis represent oral satisfaction and can be substituted with chewing gum (nicotin free) or lollies.

Or hot peppers for pod freaks like me

Oh, and sex applies here too- doesnt it

Make love, not tumors

hehe :D

[gomaos]

its too bad sex cant last 18 hrs

ever tried tantric sex or sex on acid?

Maybe not 18 hrs but you can come close... with the right partner of course...

[hoodoo]

I am looking for sources of plants from the regions of China just north of Thailand and Burma and found this place. Nice site, nice photos, with links. I don't know anything about the integrity of the plant sales operation.

http://natureproducts.net/Forest_Products/...s/Argemone.html

Interestingly, the web site indicates that locals in that region of China have introduced Argemone mexicana and they now use it for opiate and cigarette withdrawal as well as a painkiller. In addition, one specialist I know said A. mexicana is the strongest painkiller of Argemone species. Personally, I like Argemone and think it's effects are up there with cousins Lotus and Lilly and all three may very well make a nice combined product.

Maybe this info should be posted somewhere else on Shaman Australis, such as in one of the Lilly threads?

[ 30. December 2003, 23:02: Message edited by: hoodoo ]

[psycho0]

it was with the help of a collapsed lung that i managed to give up...only 4 7 months but i only smoke when i drink, and not many at all

but i got VERY shitty and irritable the first few days then the cravings went(i couldn't smoke anyway, i had tubes coming out of my side.hehe)