If the patch didn't work for you, try the spray.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/health/23NICO.html?ex=1080622800&en=ff53a3ca2114d98e&ei=5 062&partner=GOOGLE

Habits: A Patch to Match Your Genes
By ERIC NAGOURNEY

Published: March 23, 2004


When it comes to quitting smoking, men and women may not be the same.

A new study reports that among women, the effectiveness of nicotine patches intended to help people quit seems related to an individual's genetic makeup. In men, this does not appear to be the case.

The study, which appears in the online version of the British medical journal BMJ, followed up on research on the patch conducted a decade earlier.

This time, the researchers, led by Dr. Patricia Yudkin of Oxford University in England, drew blood samples from 752 volunteers who took part in the first study. The researchers then conducted a genetic analysis to see what kind of brain receptors the subjects had for the messenger chemical dopamine, which appears to play a role in tobacco addiction.

Assessing how well the smoking cessation device worked over the course of the first study and in the years since, the researchers found that the patches were much more likely to help women with a relatively unusual variant of the receptor than women with a more common version.

Dr. Yudkin said more research was needed to confirm the results.

"If confirmed," she said, "they could affect the way practitioners help people who want to give up smoking in future."

She said doctors might eventually be able to test women easily and inexpensively to see if they were genetically suited for the patch.

I quit using the patch, stayed quit for 2 years, went to visit a friend of mine who is a chain smoker and smokes in his house. 7 days later, I'm hooked on the second hand again, and didn't manage to deny that gnawing urge to go buy more cigarettes.

I didn't get back to my old pack a day Camels habit though, I currently smoke about 5 cigarettes a day, ultralights. And NEVER in the house (kinda sad when a smoker says they dont' like the smell of it in the house).

I tried the patch and the gum to get me off this latest round, only trouble is that they're both too strong for me, and make me sick. I've been wondering if the losenges are any better. Maybe the spray would be more controllable.

bah. cigarettes are da debil.

Spooky... we were just having a very similar discussion in the Second Life forums.

I'm a non-smoker, but my uncle quitted just by always having a packet of Werthers Original on standby. Every time he wanted a cigarette (or a 'fag' as our lot call 'em, but Americans have a slightly different definition of the word) he'd suck on a sweet instead.

(Yes, now you can see why I didn't use the British term *ahem*)

Hehe ) Just slightly different terminology.

trying to quit myself , not going great lol, i've tryed the patch but anywhere i put it it irritates and makes my skin burn so thats a no no, tryed the gum but it seems to make me sick, tryed cold turkey but i just ended up going and buying more like i was in some kind of trance, now i'am bassicly just buying lifesaver's and Suckers, when ever i wana smoke i suck on one of them, i still smoke, but i've slowed down alot.

Ever since I was seven, my mom has been a smoker. And when I was fourteen, she re-married and my step-dad is a smoker. Yet I've never had the urge to even pick one up just to see what it's like. The smell disgusts me. I dont know how people can stand it.

So he's sucking on sweets instead of fags? Well he's either a reformed british smoker or a reformed gay!

I forgot about how my sister quit smoking.... We often joked she should open her own Stop Smoking Today clinic.

She was in a small airplane crash and broke both her arms. She couldn't hold a cigarette. :p

I already posted this in another thread recently.

I like the effect of nicotine on my body.

I don't particularly like the delivery system.

I don't want to quit.

If they sold the nicotine inhalers the same way as a pack of cigarettes and for the same price, that would solve at least 98 percent of the health problems associated with smoking.

There is no excuse, aside from some cabal, that they are not available.

I don't think nicotine, in appropriately small quantities like you get from smoking, is actually harmful. In fact, they found out it helps Parkinson's patients. It's all the other crap you inhale along with the nicotine, those teeny weeny particles.

Yeah, it seems to me the real crime is why don't they develop a inhaled form of nicotine other than a cigarrette? You'd be cutting down the risk by an enormous factor!

add legalizing marijuana to that....

for my glaucoma, of course.

Oh boy, don't get me started on the drug war policy.

does anyone remember either a Twilight Zone show or story where this guy decides to quit smoking and goes to this program where he signs some big fat contract...and when he gets caught smoking a cigarette, the dudes he signed the contract with cut of one of his wifes fingers, or something like that...

anyone?

btw, the end of the show, he has quit smoking for some time, but they show his wife and she only has 1 or two fingers left...ROFL

Cat's Eye.

Stephen King anthology flick. Ya, thought crossed my mind sometimes. heh.

I chained smoked tobbaco pipes. I like cherry or vannilla flavored tobbaco. My mother was approaching death due to ovarian cancer and I decided to quit for a variety of reasons that were related to my health. The two weeks from which I quit were the worse two weeks of my life. I still feel the desire for a big old nasty cigar... Though I resist having one.