So I got some Cytisine tablets, and I must say for me they do seem to work. I guess I maaaybe didn't have the biggest nicotine addiction since I haven't smoked daily for a long period in a long time, but ever since I discovered those fucking disposable vapes, the amount of times I'd just be sitting around doing nothing and then think eh... why not just buy one more. I know that they are absurdly priced compared to getting a proper box mod and just buying nicotine refills but my stubbornness in believing in my own will and not accepting the reality that I just kept buying those damn things stopped me from just buying a proper vape and saving some money (actually I did have a "proper" vape, but I dropped it one time and it stopped working)... also whereas actual combustion cigarettes have always been just a little disgusting it's a lot easier to keep vaping without feeling the immediate acute damage caused by inhaling too much smoke over a short time, which for me although I prefer it to smoking in isolation, actually might have made it harder to stop because there wasn't an immediate "punishment", so to speak, as there is with smoking too much... although especially with these cheapo disposables of very hazy origins I wonder sometimes if the health effects from heavy metals and other more subtle poisons that are more commonly found emanating from cheap vaporizers might offset a lot of the longer term cancery damage that cigarettes cause...
I will literally do ridiculous stuff with nicotine like the amount of times I've binned my just-bought disposable after a few puffs, then being like urghh, what am I doing, this sucks, then later I find myself thinking about picking it out of the bin (which I have done - that is if it's only "clean" rubbish, obviously, there are limits)... I don't know why but nicotine has a crazy hold on me for the subtlety and overall shitness of what it actually is, and I've withdrawn from kratom, multiple benzos, dissociatives, and a daily amphetamine habit and somehow although overuse and discontinuation universally sucked, once I decided that I probably needed to quit for a while the fact that mostly all of those substances are much more of a "commitment" than a lil dose of nicotine weirdly made it a bit easier to stick to the plan.
Anyway the version of Tabex I got comes in a lil blister pack with numbers, indicating how many you're supposed to take on each day to wean off I guess, starting with 6 x 1.5mg tablets every 2 hours. The first day I did indeed take 6 which maayyyy have been too many because I did not sleep well that night at all. Most days since I'm alternating between about 3 or 4.
I agree they do feel nicotine-like. Actually for me the nicotine-esque feeling has not gone away. I'm a bit hesitant to jinx myself and I can imagine situations that haven't tested me yet like hanging around with a bunch of people vaping or maybe a certain level of alcohol or something, but since starting these I have had zero cravings or any desire to acquire or use any kind of nicotine product, especially anything inhalable. It speaks to the sinister subtlety of nicotine I think that I cannot definitively point to any cognitive effects except that I am not ever thinking that "maybe nicotine is just the drug I need to make this day better" (it never is), but maybe I am a little more focused... some of this could be vaguely placebogenic of course, but, I don't think it is actually, I've been extremely unfocused recently and that situation has not dramatically improved the last few days of taking cytisine instead of vaping BUT I think I can pretty safely say that I am no longer suffering from the additional, induced cognitive deficit that is present during nicotine withdrawal, or the goal-hijacking manifestation of all addictive drugs that jams the idea of imbibing some more nicotine at a higher priority level than absolutely anything else that actually matters.
Curious to see how the actual tapering goes because obviously it is very early days... I think I do have a bit of a habit of pushing the envelope of overuse a little too far until I can notice obvious and undeniable negatives, and then getting spooked, throwing shit away, and cold-turkeying, believing this is the quickest route back to normality when actually some kind of controlled taper would probably be a better route to avoid a whole lot more suffering... Thus, I probably really don't know how to taper, or at least I do in theory but I've just never actually done it... so having the taper clearly laid out even if in a fairly one-size-fits-all approach, with a drug that for all it's faults is a fairly benign one as far as the maximum possible harm in the short term, is something that personally I find very useful and hopefully after 3 or 4 weeks or however long the taper is supposed to be I'll be more smoothly at a nicotine free baseline than I've ever been before and can apply that lesson about the usefulness of tapering elsewhere, if needed...
Also I don't think it is really possible to taper effectively with fast-onset short-acting drugs in general, but especially stimulants, and especially smoked stimulants... or at least, it is surely possible but far, far more difficult, so this is kinda like a longer acting, slow onset version of nicotine to break that instant-gratification-temptation loop psychologically alongside the actual physical, neuroadaptive stuff.
Currently trying to quit vaping nicotine via the white-knuckle method but this seems like it would be very helpful...
