re: #15 Anymouse 🌹

My assumption is the state uses volunteers as quit coaches for people who use the state programme.

My wife received nothing but encouragement and such from the last coach, and was cutting down the pipe. During the trip over Memorial Day, she rarely used it at all.

My mother finally quit a couple of months ago after 50+ years of smoking. It was a combination of the following: She started out on Chantix, and was cutting down the number of cigarettes she was smoking. I was very encouraged. Then she stopped taking the Chantix because it was aggravating an aspect of her schizophrenia (she was experiencing more hallucinations). I was disappointed and thought she would go back to smoking.

I was wrong.

She got my brother to put her on the nicotine patch. (She can’t hardly see to put them on, so she put him in charge since he sets out her other medications.) She slowly cut down on her cigarettes until she completely quit. Then my brother started going down on the nicotine dose in her patches. Finally, while I was in Japan, she went 5 days without changing her patch. She remembered and went to my brother who told her, “you’ve had this patch for five days.” “But I need another.” So he put a new one on her, but a few hours later she peeled it off and hasn’t asked for one again.

I honestly never thought I’d see the day when my mother would stop smoking. I used to bug her about it until I read that schizophrenics often smoke as part of self-medication. I decided that mom being mentally stable was more important than bugging her about cigarettes. But she took herself off the cigarettes in the end.