Due to a combination of poor health and flat-out laziness, it’s been a month and a half since I last updated y’all on my nicotine trials. To make a long story short, I was convicted on all counts. No, wait! Not that kind of trial!

The last time I posted about the nicotine trials, I said the next phase would be to try a 7 mg patch. And so it was. This time, I again felt a short-term increase in strength and energy, though not as much as at the higher doses. The “nic sick” symptoms I had experienced at higher doses did not occur at this dosage. However, after about a week of the 7 mg patches, my tremors and general anxiety had become significantly worse. At this point, I gave up on the whole nicotine scene. There was only one consistent benefit I noticed with nicotine. For quite some time now, about once a week, I experience Restless Arm Syndrome (RAS) during the night. RAS makes it impossible to sleep until I’ve had a dose of Levodopa. However, I did not experience RAS at all while my nicotine testing was going on. So, I may try nicotine again at a still-lower dose at some future time. For now, here is a summary of my nicotine results:

Method	Dose	Result
Patch	21 mg	It tried to kill me!
Patch	14 mg	It tried to besicken me!1
Patch	7 mg	It worsened my tremors & anxiety.
Lozenge	6 mg	Nothing – acquired but not yet tested
Gum	4 mg	It irritated my throat and tasted awful.

1. Author’s note: “Besicken” is a perfectly cromulent word. ↩︎