Nicorette Addiction

[Tips]

I've been chewing Nicorette for about ten years. I chew between nine and eleven pieces of the 2mg a day. What are the harmful effects of the gum (beside, obvious addiction). And, do you have any suggestions as to how to get off the gum?

[HautemarneChris]

Day 8. Only very mild, short-lived and occasional cravings trouble me now. I can't believe it was this easy. Health-wise the only difference I notice is that I'm falling to sleep easier at night (often in front of the TV) and waking a little earlier. BUT I'm left with the problem that several other people mentioned: I need to chew and if I don't chew I get chew cravings. I've become a chew-a-holic. So I'm addicted to the Nicotine delivery system without the Nicotine. So I guess the next step is to spend some time going chewing gum cold turkey. I wonder how long that takes. Would hypnosis help? This has become more complex than I expected. And, of course, there is the eating / hunger issue which I shall not go into now.

[HautemarneChris]

Day 4 . Cravings are becoming less frequent and weaker. Bad news is that I've injured my foot and therefore can't take my daily walk which definately helped to cool things out. Also, I'm eating way too much chocolate and other  'treats' as a 'reward' for sticking to my plan for a nicotineless future. My appetite definately seems to have increased and without remedial action I shall be piling on the pounds. I've decided to ignore this issue until I'm a week into the Plan. My reasoning being that the Plan will not work unless I subordinate everything else until I feel the worst of the addiction is well and truly over. Anyway, overall I'm pleasantly surprised - I expected it to be much more difficult than this. It's easier than stopping smoking that's for sure.

[HautemarneChris]

My dear Fellow Nico Gummers

I was "turned on" to Nicotine gum by my landlord who hated me smoking in his house. He brought me a pack of Nicorette back from Sweden in 1985 and a long love affair with the gum begun soon afterward. I've tried patches, lozenges, etc and once or twice went back to smoking for short periods but they've never really hit the spot in the way that gum does. Over the years I've tried most of the NRPs available in Europe (I live in the UK but spend a lot of time in France).  I've settled on Nicotinell mint flavour 2mg chewing gum. Depending on how busy I am or my level of fatigue consumption is around 12 bits per day.

There is no doubt that - healthwise - gum is far, far better than smoking or chewing tobacco. The carcigens and carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke are the cause of heart problems and cancer. Nicotine in the quantity existing in NRP or tobacco smoke for that matter is relatively harmless.  There seem to be some issues around the mode of ingestion (eg. can excessive chewing cause jaw problems? or even Tinitus). Personally I worry about excessive saliva production and the impact that may have on digestion, tooth enamel and  the urological system. But these anxieties may be unfounded - after all, we Nicogummers are no strangers to irrational anxieties caused by being over-hyped on Nicotine.

By using Nicotine gum (or patches, lozenges, inhalers) you are not "creating" a new addiction - you're already addicted to Nicotine - but finding a way of satisfying your addiction that does no significant damage to your health. Many forum contributors although expressing some reservations have noted the pleasurable, satisfying aspects of gum chewing.

I am not ashamed to say that I love Nicotine gum but for financial and some other reasons I feel it is time to give it up. My method is somewhat unorthodox but seems to be working. When the first craving of the day arrives I chew on an "exhausted" piece of gum whilst going about my business. I then go for a one hour walk removing the "dummy" gum from my mouth as I leave home. For the next chewless hour I walk at a fast pace feeling increasingly spaced-out but not unpleasantly so. In fact, it's actually quite pleasant. On returning home I wait as long as I can before submitting to the cravings and chewing on the "exhausted" piece of gum. So far so good. If the cravings get really bad I promise myself a piece of gum at 10pm that night. I have kept back three pieces of gum for that purpose (I'm assuming that after 3 days I shall have broken the back of the addiction and can then progress to 100% Cold Turkey).

Judging from other comments here and from previous experience the problem will then be giving up chewing gum. A few years ago I tried the mix and match approach (sorbital chewing gum slowly replacing Nico but this didn't really work - amongst other things the Sorbital acted as a laxative and I just spent a lot of money on chewing gum and a lot of time on the toilet anxious that I'd contracted some version of food poisoning or worse).

Once I've broken the worst of the Nicotine addiction then I shall probably get hypnosis to help with the chewing problem if I can't deal with it in a more conventional way. Perhaps it will be esier than I expect it to be.

I'm 48 hours in and feeling good. Will keep you posted.

[serendipity7000]

I came here looking for help.  The Nicorette addiction is terrible!  And I have money problems now.  I have now been chewing it for nearly five years,since stopping smoking.  Every time I have tried to stop it, I get such bad withdrawal symptoms that I am unsafe to myself and society.  The worst is dizziness and drowsiness (to the point I am not safe to cross the road).  I also get a foul temper and am unbearable to be around, and it nearly caused my partner to walk out on me I was so awful - it was like going mad!  And anxiety attacks, shakes - you name it.  Even mental confusion and weirdness.  My teeth have gone yellow, and evening whitening toothpaste won't whiten them up.  Now this is such an irony - when I smoked I always managed to keep my teeth white - now and then using smoker's toothpaste or a whitening toothpaste.  But with this gum - they have just gone yellow and nothing changes it - because it isn't an external coating - it seems to have just changed the colour of them somehow.  And yes I get a lot of gum abscesses and infections.

So I have tried quitting the gum numerous times.  Cutting down, with a religious timetable in my diary as to when to have a piece, reducing it each day.  But I don't get past 2 or 3 days because life is busy, and I need to get things done, and then I lose focus and lose track of how many pieces I've had.

I think cold turkey is the only option, but I reckon you need support with this - I say to my family - yes I want to stop buying and chewing this stuff, but I would need to go to bed for a week and be left alone completely.  That's pretty drastic.  Surely there must be some kind of medication that will help you with the withdrawal symptoms for the first few days.

The other thing is wanting to stuff my face with food constantly and then feeling ill.

[steve197]

Nicorette gum contains nicotin a type of medicine. Not so worried to have it but if you really want to leave just try to drink a glass of water.I am sure it will work.

[rocklemon]

Thanks so much for your story - it helped me & nicotine part company.

Sure I'm only 4 days nicotine free so far, but I'm coping well - and never managed even one day before.

My story

I smoked 25 cigarettes a day since I was 17.  I tried patches in 1998 but always found myself smoking as well, so discontinued.  I might have tried
quitting with Nicorette gum or maybe I just used it on long airflights.

After 30 years of smoking, in 2007 I started coughing up blood, which turned out to be just pneumonia (Klebsiella - currant jelly sputum) and that was the motivation to switch to the gum, and I succeeded.

Only now I've had a 20 piece of 2mg gum habit for the last 6 years and want to quit because I have high blood pressure and receding gums.  One comment is that as a gum chewer, I had a strong brand and flavor preference.

My doctor prescribed a Champix starter pack which I started a little over 2 weeks ago.  I had some nauseu when the dose increased to 1mg in the morning as I am used to skipping breakfast - taking it on a bowl of muesli fixed that.

I had Day 10 planned as my quit date and when it finally came around to stop chewing but there was no way I could resist the urge to chew.  I got the idea that maybe it would be easier from patches, so I bought some step 2 24 hour patches and tried them for a couple of days.

I still had this crazy urge to chew, so I went and bought some Step 1 24-hour patches and tried those for a couple of days, but still chewed as much nicotine gum than ever, despite my body being fully dosed with nicotine.

That's when my searching lead to your post - thank goodness.  I went and bought a bunch of different flavors of regular sugar-free chewing gum.  I was still chewing this like crazy with the patches, but at least I was not over dosing on nicotine any more and I realized that ordinary gum would satisfy my urge.

So the next order of business was to set another quit date and may start tapering the patches down.

As I researched this I came across a British Medical Journal article that debunked quit dates based on a UK study and another abstract of an article on a USA study that duplicated the UK result.  Though debated, those studies conclude that stopping immediately is about twice as effective as planning to stop at some future date. (Sure, maybe this makes sense for Champix, while serum levels build, but my serum Champix level should be stable after 2 weeks of the starter pack.)

I realized chewing regular gum was satisfying my urge, so I decided to cease the patches immediately and rely on Champix plus regular gum.

And it's been working well for 4 days.

I used 2 step 2 patches, then 5 step 1 patches in my switch to become nicotine free.

Some folks say Champix makes them sleep poorly, but I already have that issue (could be the nicotine).  Anyhow the short term fix for that is 3 x 10mg Temazepam 30 minutes before bedtime.  I don't get a great night's sleep but it's good enough.  Temazepam is good for initiating sleep but not that good for staying asleep.  I used to find taking 15 or 30 mg of Mirtazapine with it helped with staying asleep, but it worked too well, so I stopped it (e.g sleeping 10-11 hours, hard to rouse)

Last night I ran out of Temazepam and only had 2 x 10mg tablets left, so I took 3mg of melatonin an hour before bed time and my sleep was just as good - perhaps slightly drowsier on waking.

I plan to use the full 12 week course of Champix and hope to find an alternative to Temazepam.  Maybe some exercise, to work off all those calories in the sugar free gum.  Sorbitol may not rot your teeth, bit it has calories.