Cigarette Substitutes

When I kicked the smoking habit last year, there were times I needed something in my mouth to replace the cigarettes. Most often, I popped a nicotine lozenge. Hard candies also worked well. A couple of times, I sucked on unlit cigarettes. I bit my nails too, but I do that anyway. (I know. I know. My nails always look terrible. I need to get that nasty-tasting substance used to get kids off of their thumb-sucking addiction.)

I found that having something that had to dissolve very slowly in my mouth helped me forget cravings. The nicotine lozenge should not be bitten into or swallowed, so it was a good smoking cessation aid for me. Of course, there was the time that I nearly choked on one.

I drafted the following list of cigarette substitutes last year:

Substitutes that Feel More Like Cigarettes

• A plastic straw cut to the length of a cigarette
• Cinnamon sticks (the real deal, available in the spices section of most grocery stores)
• Carrot or celery sticks
• Sugar-free hard candy sticks
• Licorice sticks

Other Oral Options

• Crunchy fruit or vegetables
• Sugarless gum, mints or candy
• Your little finger

A reader said she’d used glue sticks. The size is right, but I’m not sure if they’re toxic.

New Additions

• Get a sampler pack of herbal teas and try all of them
• Sunflower seeds, pistachios or pumpkin seeds
• Pretzel sticks or wands
• Jerky or fruit leather
• Drink a lot of water

I’ll keep thinking about substitutes. It would be great to have your ideas, too.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 5:07pm and is filed under Quit Smoking diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.