I posted this ages ago and it needs to be nearer the top of the pile.
Great thanks to Chris Holmes for being the guinea pig.
This is the diary entry of a man sticking on a patch having now been smoke-free for many years.
It's no wonder that the industry claim that they stop craves. Stopping breathing stops craves too...
So in the end curiosity got the better of me and I asked if I could try one, for research purposes only, and after looking at me as if I was nuts my friend handed over a nicotine patch.
I fetched a pen and some paper upon which to make notes of the experience, and immediately noted down that it was a NiQuitin CQ 21mg 24-hour patch. I didn't intend to leave it on for 24 hours, but I did aim to leave it on for most of the day, just to monitor the experience. As it turned out, it didn't quite happen that way.
This was at 10.15 on a Sunday morning, April 22th 2007. We were planning to take the kids to the park at about eleven, which I was looking forward to because it was a nice day. This is an exact transcript of the notes I made at the time.
10.15am. Stuck patch on inside upper left arm.
10.20am. Tingling in both hands, mild tightening feeling in the throat.
10.25am. Feel nauseous, patch burning skin a bit.
10.30am. Feel like blood pressure is up, not a pleasant feeling. Tense. Uncomfortable, want to take it off actually. More nauseous, feel a bit ill. Patch really burning. Bowels upset a bit.
10.35am. Head fuzzy. Feel rather sick. Got that feeling like I don't know where to put myself. Feel really uncomfortable and irritable now.
10.37am. Took patch off. Don't feel safe. Big red mark on arm. Hands/wrists aching. Feel sick and faint, balance and even speech abnormal. Wrists and hands quite red. Bowels churning. Feel rotten, very definitely ill. Poisoned. Really want to feel normal again, regret trying this.
10.50am. Still feel just as rotten, but feeling of real alarm that made me take it off now subsiding. Just feel ill.
The patch was only in contact with my skin for 22 minutes. Before I began the experiment I felt fine - healthy and in good spirits. Now I felt absolutely terrible, really unwell and although I don't usually scare easy, actually afraid to leave the patch on any longer.
But here's the thing - according to the BMA, nicotine:
“stimulates the central nervous system, thereby reducing fatigue, increasing alertness, and improving concentration.”
So, did nicotine make me feel more alert, able to concentrate better, as the BMA described?
Well, by the time I took the patch off I was anxious, irritable and no longer able or willing to hold a normal conversation - so I would have to say no, it certainly did not.
Well, why not?
If that is what nicotine does, that is what it does. I would have noticed.
It just made me feel poisoned, and actually it did remind me of the first cigarette I ever tried, when I was eight. My pal stole a single Embassy No.1 from his mum, and we hid at the bottom of his garden and smoked it. It left me feeling pretty much like the experience I described above, but with a foul taste in my mouth as well. It was years before I tried one again, and even then it wasn't because I liked it the first time. It was just because I wasn't allowed to, and because smoking makes you look grown-up and cool, despite being twelve and pimply with awful hair and silly clothes.
At eleven o'clock, we all left for the park. Sure enough I felt very queasy, delicate and anxious I might suddenly need the toilet - that IBS feeling.
I really didn't want to go out at all now, I felt more like going for a lie down, which I only ever feel inclined to do if I am quite ill. Of course some fool might suggest that the dose was too high for a non-smoker, or that I was irresponsible to try that without medical advice, as if that were the reason it made me ill. But that's ridiculous: none of us took medical advice before we tried our first cigarette, did we? And very few kids start with a low-nicotine cigarette, certainly not my generation anyway, or the previous one. So it was, in fact, an experiment that roughly replicated most initial, real smoking experiences but this time focussing entirely on nicotine itself, and guess what? Nicotine just makes you feel ill, because it is nothing but a poison.
I'm not saying you can't get used to it - boxers get used to being slammed in the face, and I'm sure that stimulates the central nervous system too, but that don't make it medicinal.
:eek:
