[video available on spotify] quitting nicotine has made me realize just how intense my oral fixation is - i might have the worst one i’ve ever seen. so today, i thought it’d be fun to go through every single oral fixation i’ve had throughout my life and break them down with you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: How did Emma start her journey to quit nicotine?
Probably about a year ago now, I woke up one day and I decided, you know what? I think I'm ready. I think I'm ready to embark on the journey to quitting nicotine. After six years of addiction, about a year ago, I woke up and decided, you know what? I think I'm ready to embark on the journey to quitting.
And I say embark on the journey to quitting instead of just quitting because unfortunately, nicotine is a little bit too addictive to just wake up one day and decide to quit, okay?
Most of us who have nicotine addictions have to wake up one day and decide, all right, starting today, I'm gonna embark on the journey to quitting because quitting nicotine is incredibly challenging and it's not something that happens overnight. So if you want to quit, you have to commit to the journey because quitting is going to be a journey. And so for the last year, I've been on that journey.
And unfortunately, I'm not ready to sit here and say, I fully quit. There's no chance I'll ever relapse. I'm done. I'm done for life. Because when I see people with a vape, I'm like, you're going to let me hit that, right? And then I hit it. And then I ultimately had nicotine. So you know what I mean? I haven't fully quit. right?
And one day I'd like to be at a place where I see someone hitting a vape and I don't ask to hit it. When that day comes, I'll sit down here and tell you how I got there. But until then, all I can discuss is the journey because that's where I'm at right now. I'm doing really well, but I haven't fully quit yet.
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This journey has taught me a lot, a lot about myself, a lot about addiction. I've learned a lot, but I'd say through it all, the most significant thing that I learned was was how truly intense my oral fixation is. Okay, I knew I had an oral fixation. I sucked my thumb as a kid, I love the vape, the vape is like a pacifier for me, like, you know, calms me down or whatever.
Like, I knew I had an oral fixation. But I didn't know how severe and intense and extreme it was until I embarked on this journey to quitting nicotine. And then I had months at a time where I didn't have any nicotine and the oral fixation didn't go away. The nicotine, I was able to quit for months at a time. The oral fixation has yet to waver, okay?
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Chapter 2: Why is quitting nicotine so challenging for Emma?
I would have an absolute fit. But that's when I started to have to, you know, have some restraint with the thumb sucking because I wasn't allowed to do it, you know, in preschool. And then obviously when I got to normal school, I really couldn't do it. It really wasn't allowed. But then I also started to have some sort of self-awareness. And I was like, ooh, no one else is doing it.
Like, this is embarrassing now. And so it was just sort of this thing I did after school when I was home in my bed relaxing and there was nothing quite like it. I was a very anxious child. I had horrible separation anxiety from my parents and there was just nothing like getting home and sucking my thumb and rubbing Biggie Big's ears on my upper lip.
OK, it's like the same fucking idea as getting home from work and cracking open a cold one. Do you know what I mean? It's the same fucking vibe just for like eight year olds. It's the same vibe. That's the vibe. Just a little something to take the goddamn edge off. And it was cute and it was charming until I started to get into the younger tween sort of ages. Right.
We're talking about 10, 11, 12. Then it started to get a little bit weird. Right. It's like, what's going on? Right. She was supposed to grow out of this and she's not growing out of this. What's going on? Right. And in tandem with with that sort of concern, my jaw and teeth were getting all fucked up because during my developmental years, I was sucking my thumb.
My thumb was in my mouth for half of the day. OK, not the full day because at school they wouldn't let me. But the second I got home, my thumb was in my mouth. OK, and I was sucking along. that's half of my life. I slept with it in my mouth. Like my thumb was in my mouth so much that it messed with my mouth. It messed with my jaw.
And so I had this overbite and I had this, like I, all this, I had a bunch of issues with my teeth. Okay. And my jaw and the orthodontist I started going to is like, if you don't stop sucking your thumb, you're gonna have to get surgery, okay? So they ultimately put this metal cage in my mouth.
I don't know how to describe it other than that it was a metal cage in my mouth and it prevented my thumb from going in my mouth, okay? And then I had to get neck gear and head gear. There's all this shit, okay? After years and years and years of braces, they fixed my jaw, everything was fine, and I stopped sucking my thumb finally.
For years following that, my mom would sometimes find me in my bed with my thumb in my mouth, and she would gently pull it out of my mouth, or so she told me. But then that was kind of the end of it. And for a long time, I thought that that was the end of it until the vape. But I was so wrong, because after I stopped sucking the thumb... I started sucking on cherry flavored cough drops.
Yeah, Luden's cherry cough drops. Okay, I remember one day I found these in my dad's drawer somewhere. Like he had this like little medicinal drawer and I don't even remember why I was in there. I wasn't doing anything like crazy going in there, but I was sort of a snoopy sort of kid. I just sort of snoop around and I found Luden's cherry cough drops. And I became addicted to those.
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