I had hoped, more than just about anything, that I would tackle this new quit with the "cold turkey" method. Somehow, I wanted to feel the pride that surely comes with strangling this addiction, bare-handed. But, reality is guiding me to a more honest decision: I will be using the nicotine lozenge to help save my life.
I know that I am a seemingly insatiable morning smoker. I know that I will be entirely erasing my current sunrise rituals and creating new start-of-the-day routines (more on this later). While I am adapting to these new changes and coming to enjoy them and accept them and value them, I really do think it would be smart to use ONE lozenge in the morning in order to calm and soothe my urges so that I can fully focus on strengthening these new, fledgling health habits.
The lozenges will come in a pack of 20, so for the first 20 days of my quit I'll use ONE lozenge in the morning. (From 8:30am to 11:00pm, my urges are not nearly as strong, so I'll be using alternatives and distractions and visualizations to handle those.) After 20 days, I will be eager to reassess the NRT, with equal honesty.
Please, please believe that I do know there is no "shame" in using NRT. Far from it! I'm just expressing a bit of remorse that "cold turkey" is not going to be the smartest plan for me, after all.
