Today will be my first day with no NRT. I have dreaded quitting smoking and cutting down on NRT in the past, but today I woke up feeling strangely excited for this. Excited to be completely free! I’ve only been completely free from nicotine for about 7 weeks at the longest in my whole adult life. I picked up the nicotine lozenges when I quit vaping in 2018 and never really gave them up. I (ahhhh!!!!) started smoking again and used them to reduced how many actual cigarettes I was smoking for several years. Then I started smoking full time again. Then I “quit” cold turkey for some months but was sneaking puffs here and there, and that was the most miserable time of all. On this quit, I’ve cut back on 1 lozenge roughly every 3 weeks, going from 4 to 3 to 2 to 1 and now finally—none. It’s been a little hard for a few days to a week to cut down, with some cravings for cigarettes, sadness and irritability. But I am able to do it and after that first week I really don’t even miss that lozenge I cut out. This whole wanting to quit smoking journey started about 8 years ago and there’s been ups and downs and successes and failures. This feels like a milestone though, and as I get through more cravings without smoking I gain more confidence.
