You should not feel discouraged, LInda. There is no shame in having difficulty with a cold turkey quit. Four years ago, I quit cold turkey. For me, it was absolutely horrid. I had terrible withdrawal for the entire first month. I think the only reason I made it through was because I had upcoming major surgery and the sugeon said that he would not even perform it if I was not quit for at least two months. Unfortunately, I replapsed two years later. I'm not going to go into that but suffice it to say that I was very disappointed in myself and knew that I did NOT want to be a smoker. However, I just couldn't seem to get a cold turkey quit to stick a second time around. Finally, after smoking for 1 year, 7 months, and 22 days, I started using the patch. I did still have smoking thoughts but I had virtually no physical withdrawal symptoms. I had no withdrawal symptoms while I was on the 21 mg patches. When I stepped down to the 14 mg patches, I had a little bit of brain fog after a few days of the reduced dose. I didn't notice any change when I stepped down to 7 mg. I was very nervous to go to 0 mg (no patch) but it was a total non-event. For me, the patches made quitting seem like a piece of cake compared to cold turkey. I didn't find it too difficult to redirect my smoking thoughts to other things. But that's me...we're all different. If you are going to use the patch, I would recommend that you use it as directed. If you feel pretty secure in your quit, you can stop early. I stopped using the 7 mg patches a few days early because I had some plans with others coming up and wanted to be alone on my first 0 mg day.
Regardless of how you do it, Linda, stick with your quit. Down the road, you'll be so glad that you did!
