I stepped down to the second stage nicotine patch yesterday, cutting my daily dosage of nicotine by one third in the process. This morning, I thought it would be interesting to gauge how severe my physical addiction is by attempting to not wear a patch at all. I got into the office on time, and we had a network issue that sucked up the first two hours of my day. During that time, I became grumpy, irritable, and even went so far as to snap on a couple of co-workers. Needless to say, I put the patch on almost immediately after that, and felt my grumpiness disappear. The moral of the story is that I have some ground to cover before I have the physical addiciton kicked. Still, I feel so much better. My breathing is clear, I can taste my food, and I am kicking it in the gym like I haven’t since college.