The Day After

How’s that no-smoking pledge going?

This post is not meant for most of you. Those of you who never smoked, or smoked and quit successfully—move along, maybe check out my earlier posts about smoking this month.

But for those of you who have decided to take the 35th annual Great American Smokeout seriously—for those of you who decided today, or yesterday, or recently, to quit smoking—I have a few remarks, if you have a moment. I’m fairly trustworthy on this subject. I’m a science writer, I follow the field of addiction science, and I smoked a pack of Camel filters a day for about 25 years. In addition, I quit smoking using the most recently available smoking cessation aids—nicotine patches and anti-craving medication, in this case Zyban, a.k.a. Wellbutrin.

I had decided, after the usual smoker’s run of unsuccessful independent quitting attempts, that the only real hope I had for success was to throw myself into the hands of my primary care physician. Happily, Dr. Joe is a young example of the last of the breed, a lingering remnant of a tribe that used to be known as family doctors. When I told Dr. Joe of my plans to quit smoking, he was overjoyed. Too overjoyed, it seemed to me. As it turned out, there were grounds for my suspicion. Dr. Joe had recently returned from a smoking cessation seminar at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, with a grab bag of refinements and alternative approaches for setting up a no-smoking regimen. Furthermore, he made it clear that, if necessary—if I forced him to it through relentless noncompliance—he was fully prepared to order regular blood workups to detect and quantify my nicotine levels.

Of course, I instantly regretted setting a foot into this ring, but once Dr. Joe started flinging prescriptions for patches and pills my way, I realized I was in it up to my wallet (Insurance companies weren’t paying for nicotine cessation products, ever, at that time).

Most smokers know the current drill. A few weeks with nicotine patches or gum or nasal spray, combined with a short course of Zyban or Chantix to further reduce cravings, and then you are expected to fly out of the nest and spread the good news.  Most smokers know that even this controversial armamentarium is not going to completely spare them from a rare and special kind of suffering: addictive craving for nicotine.  It’s a mean, rough ride, as everyone knows.

But if you take a few of the major potholes out of the road, smooth over the really big bumps just a little, fill in the low spots a bit as well, you have a fighting chance—especially if you have tried and failed before (almost nobody pulls it off on the first attempt).

Here are the key features of the program, as my doctor worked it up for me:

--Stronger patches. Mayo Clinic and other institutions had made an important discovery, my doctor said. People weren’t wearing strong enough patches. There was a system of matching up patch strength to amount and duration of smoking, and then a step-down procedure, to less and less powerful patches, and it was all listed on the packages, but because of great nervousness over medical complications by a very few individuals who overdid the patch and then chain-smoked on top of that, the result was that the patches as marketed weren’t strong enough, many doctors felt. The advice was to start strong, with the strongest patch available (and perhaps there was even a patient or two who doubled up, ahem). 

--Longer patches. Start strong—and go long. The whole nicotine replacement plan is supposed to last a month or two. Phooey, said Dr. Joe. No telling in advance how long the process will take. There is no set timetable. How long would I be wearing patches and tapering the dose? As long as it took, Dr. Joe inferred, for me not to need them anymore. He seemed prepared to keep me on patches the rest of my life, if it kept me from picking up a cigarette. In the end, when I took off my final, tiny patch, I had been using them for a little less than six months. The recommended five-star treatment plan in the literature and on the packages calls for only 10 weeks, tops.

--Pharmaceuticals. It is admittedly hard to separate out placebo effects from drug effects, in the case of something as elusive as cigarette urges. But I do believe that Zyban took the edge off the worst of my cigarette cravings. It did not eliminate them, anymore than the patches eliminated them. But the medication effectively dissipated the grip of that moment of panic, when you have risen from your chair and set about finding your coat and car keys for a run to the gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes. Or at least that’s the way it felt to me.

--Exercise. Trite? You bet, and you can be sure that I winced and offered a tired smile when I heard my doctor bore in on the subject. Since I knew him to be a crazed bicyclist, I was prepared to disregard most of what he had to say. But his insistence sent me back to the research literature on exercise and its effect on dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, and endorphin levels. So I took him up on that firm suggestion as well, and found that, at the least, it helped with a period of rocky sleep in the beginning.

--Diet. No huge changes, just watching the sweets in an effort to avoid surging blood sugar levels. Fruit helps, since constipation is a common side effect of nicotine cessation—just the opposite of how it works with heroin. I continued to drink coffee, but for a while it didn’t taste as good.

--Relaxation. Quitting smoking makes you tense. You think I’m being funny? Quitting smoking makes you tense all over, mentally and physically. During the first few days you’ll notice that your body is clenched, held rigidly. Your posture is likely to be anything but relaxed; your physical movements can be jerky and awkward. A few minutes a day spent sitting with eyes closed, in a relaxed upright posture, thinking of nothing or concentrating on your breathing or meditating either formally or casually, can bring partial relief from all that tension. And on some days, that can be crucial.

--Determination. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until everyone around me—my wife, children, parents, close friends, work associates—had all, I sensed, basically given up on me, silently condemning me to the category of Lifetime Smoker, that I finally managed to make a successful run at a major life problem. There are better ways to work up your determination. Find and employ them.

With time, an involved partner, nicotine replacement, and the right medication, the deal can be done. There has never been a better time in history to be a smoker who has decided to quit.

Graphics Credit: http://adoholik.com/