Dain Bramage is what you get when you quit by using the patch, and my daugher’s got it in spades right now. Please don’t think I’m poking fun at my own daughter! I only know the syndrome because I myself used the patch as directed, and I instantly lost about 80% of my IQ points. The first 2 weeks of my Quit were like being strung out on some kind of mind-numbing drug.

Oh wait - the 21 mg patch is a mind numbing drug!

Thankfully my girl has a good job with a good boss and good people to work with. I contract my services out, which means if I don’t work, I don’t eat. Quite literally, my whole livelihood was at stake. If I am unproductive I don’t pay bills, I don’t have electricity, I don’t have internet, I don’t have anything unless I have the ability to work and get stuff done. So here’s what I did.

I wrote to every single one of my clients. I told them that, to my way of thinking, if I didn’t quit now I’d be smoking until I die, and that day would come too soon for my liking. I simply appealed to them to stick with me. I warned them that, realistically I could be looking at another 2 months of spotty performance of my duties. I told them I could be snappish or prone to tears. I told them that, even though I knew I could lose my very fragile new business, I still felt I had to go for it.

Every one of them stuck by me. Not one said “I’ll take my business elsewhere.” And, surprisingly, I learned that many of them have first-hand experience with quit symptoms because they smoked in the past as well.

I went through a period of slim rations, to be sure. It wasn’t easy in a lot of ways… but in all the ways that count, it has been wonderful. I’ve returned to being a productive professional, and I can say without hesitation that every day beyond that 2 week mark represented a steady improvement in my ability to function professionally.

From Day 9 on, every day was a great place to be. The worst is behind you by that point, so every day is a new discovery of how good it feels to be Quit. You begin encountering all sorts of benefits, without even anticipating them. The day my taste and smell came back… WOW. Then a week later — double wow — MORE taste and scent! No more yellow-stained fingers. My skin improved, my teeth get whiter and whiter and whiter.

It just keeps getting better and you’ve got even more good stuff ahead. Every crave’s voice gets weaker, and every day you feel the freedom more and more. People look at you and say “Did you do something different with your hair?” But you know it’s the wonderful smell of your shampoo they’re noticing.

Somebody looks at you one day and says “What kind of skin care do you use?” because your face is just so… radiant! Somebody else says “Did you take a vacation or something? Been to a tanning salon?” because your skin is much rosier and not so gray anymore. It just unfolds, and it is all so very wonderful, so liberating, and adds so much to your self-respect and self-esteem.

Please set aside your panic and fear and think long and hard about what is important, where to place your priorities. I don’t know what stage of life you’re in, what your quit motivators are, if you’re a kid or a parent or a grandparent like me. All I know is - somebody loves you.

To somebody, you are the sun, the moon, the starlit sky. There is somebody that you’re unaware of who thinks of you every day. There’s somebody who has always loved you. There are many who need you in their lives. People you know, people you went to school with, people you haven’t seen in years.

All of us who are addicted struggle to regain our freedom and learn to live smoke-free. We know we are addicts, and we do understand that recovering from an addiction means a period of detox. It’s part and parcel of what we have done to ourselves by starting to smoke. We help each other through and we survive. Stick with it - because oh MAN is it ever worth it!

Don’t let the whole “dain bramage” syndrome stand in your way. Work will always be there. I hope you will be, too.