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April 09, 2001
Go me!
I haven't had a cigarette since about 11 o'clock last night, thanks to the lovely patch glued to my left arm. The patch is my new best friend. I think I'm going to draw little happy faces and hearts and flowers on it. The patch makes me happy. I think I'll call it George.
I quit with the Wellbutrin, for the second and final time. I stopped taking it a few weeks ago because, while it was curbing my cigarette cravings, it was also making me itchy. Itchy hands, itchy feet, itchy arms and legs. All the scratching and twitching was making people look at me funny -- they probably all thought I had fleas or something. So I stopped for three weeks or so. I started taking it again recently, and felt sick all the time, and was loopy and disoriented and had a killer headache every day, and was crushingly depressed. And I was still smoking like a chimney. So, no more of that crap. I bought a box of nicotine patches on Saturday, with the help of a very nice -- and terribly cute -- pharmacist. I also bought a large supply of gum and mints, most of which I have already compulsively eaten. I decided to start with the patch today -- I finished off almost all of my cigarettes over the weekend, and put the patch on first thing this morning. And no cigarettes today! And I have lovely minty breath, what with all the gum-chewing!
My roommate is doing the patch too, but her method is to wear it and not smoke during the day, and to take it off and smoke at night. Not a very good idea -- the (very very adorable) pharmacist explained that the nicotine still creeps through your skin even after you take the patch off, and so smoking could make her very sick. Plus, it just seems kind of half-assed; if I'm going to quit, I'm just going to do it, damnit. Or so I say now -- talk to me later tonight, and I might not be so optimistic. But I'm paranoid enough that I think I'd be too scared to smoke, even if I did take the patch off. One puff and I would be convinced that I was going to have a heart attack. (Yes, I am that much of a hypochondriac.) So, one day down (almost) and eight weeks of patch-wearing to go...
Posted by Mary Ellen at April 9, 2001 03:46 PM