Nicotine Gum

With Nicotine Gum, you can definitely feel like you are getting a good dose of what you need. It burns the mouth too, which some may say is unpleasant, but hey, that’s what a cigarette feels like, isn’t it?

Chew the gum as soon as you feel a craving. Once the gums is well worked in, roll it into a sausage with your tongue. Then work the sausage into a place between the your teeth and gums. My favourite place was the top above my front teeth, between the gums and the inside of my top lip.

There’s little point persisting with the same piece of gum after about 15 -20 minutes, as the useful levels of nicotine will become exhausted.

The gum itself tends to come in standard or extra strength. Even thought I was a heavy smoker, I was a little put off by the potential side effects (e.g. becoming addicted to the gum itself!!). Therefore, I played safe and just used the standard version.

Just one word of advice – get ordinary mint gum too, or you’ll find you go through the nicotine stuff too quickly and feel really, really awful for hours afterwards. You have been warned!

Nicotine Inhaler

Now, Gum is all very well when you are in the car or in the office, but what about when you are in a wine bar? You can’t have a piece of gum in your mouth when you’re having a relaxing drink. For one, you’ll be stopping the gum do it’s work anyway if you’re having lots of drink. Another reason is that your drinks will take god awful if you’ve still got you nicotine gum in your mouth.

I found the solution to this is the nicotine inhaler. It’s basically a discreet (ish) inhaler that contains a specially formulated pad that will issue the chemical you crave so much every time you inhale on it.

I’ll be honest here. The thing looks like a cross between a cheap hotel pen and a tampon applicator, and you’ll find yourself shielding the thing itself so no-one can see it whenever you take a good pull on it. However, the effects are startling. I actually got light-headed the first time I used it – the power of the kick is proportional to how hard you suck on it. Me, being a heavy smoker tended to really pull on a cigarette and so the gum (whilst passable) never really sated my mad appetite for a belt of nicotine. This device solved the problem. It even burned my throat like a real cigarette used to! (My god, I just re-read that last sentence. I am praising something as being great because it burned my throat. Just show how mad us smokers can be).

So, all you have to do now is make sure you don’t get addicted to your nicotine alternatives!