silvercamaro wrote:
Fantine, from what you've said here, I'm not convinced that Chantix is for you. First, from the standpoint of cost, you would not be ahead of the game for a long, long, time. Chantix usually is prescribed for a three-month course, with the price at anywhere from $115-165 per month. A heavy smoker in a high-tax state might save money by buying the pills instead of buying cigarettes, but at two cigarettes a day, you are only paying for about three packs a month. (Your insurance may cover the whole tab. If so, the cost may not be important. My insurance company did not.)
I don't have insurance, so that point is moot. But I still wish I had Jesse's Girl. Ha!
I can do two cigarettes a day in a controlled environment (in like 27 different sessions). Unfortunately I can not always control my environment, so I average a pack to pack and half a week (sometimes less). It isn't so much about the money as it is just being done with it. But, I think you're right in your assessment. Because,
silvercamaro wrote:Chantix does not provide a guarantee. The success rate is only a few percentage points higher than Wellbutrin. For me, it worked to make me stop feeling the "need" to smoke, but it never did take away the occasional desire to smoke.
You have hit on it exactly! I don't need to smoke anymore, but I just want to. So it sounds like I've pretty much accomplished what Chantix will do in the first place.
Your sniffing the cigarette story makes lots of sense to me. I will occasionally take an old snipe out of the ash tray, light it and wave it under my nose like I'm smudging.
When I am not in my 'safe place' I spend a lot of time playing with them instead of smoking them. I'll pick it up, put it down, pick it up, sniff it, put it down, pick it up, stroke it lasciviously (they're 120's whoo!), etc. etc. People around me get to the point where they can't stand it "Are you ever going to actually LIGHT that damned thing?" "Eventually, but in the meantime the rest of you have smoked 4 cigarettes each." Ha!
silvercamaro wrote:At only two cigarettes a day, I would suggest you keep on taking your Wellbutrin, which I assume you'd be taking anyway, in hopes that someday you'll simply forget to smoke again.
Since my raison d'Wellbutrin isn't about the smoking, it stays no matter what, so any continued benefit from that is a happy accident. You're right, though, I do sometimes find myself forgetting to smoke. "Oh, yeah, I was going to go have a drag a couple hours ago..." Ha!
ladysoleil wrote:Agreed that it isn't a magic bullet, either. It's making it a lot easier, but I know I'll get to the point where the initial willpower stage wears off and I'll want to smoke even if I'm not getting anything out of it at all. Most of my family smokes, so I get it from all sides even when I'm not, but at least I can not add to it myself, right.
I can say that gets better the longer you practice at it. I can sit in my mom's house and watch her smoke 5 or 6 cigarettes before I go out on the back porch for my two drags. Although she smokes in her house, I won't. It makes it too easy to just light up every time she does. So, there's possibly a trick for you that might help because, by the time you get out on the porch by yourself and away from all the smoking frivolity, you don't really want to smoke anymore.
The one thing that probably helped me more than the Wellbutrin was deciding not to smoke in my new house when I moved 3 years ago. I've broken a lot of habits that way, like the coffee/cigarette or dreaded computer/cigarette marriages.
