JANE SYMONS – The Sun Newspaper | 17 Oct 2008
RUBY WAX gave up smoking 12 years ago but remained hooked on nicotine for another ten years.
The nicotine replacement gum that should have been the solution to her addiction became a bigger problem than cigarettes ever were.
Ruby admits: “I was really addicted. I used the chewing gum for about ten years.
“I was chewing it even though I had sores in my mouth and it was doing terrible things to my stomach.”
Ruby ignored the instructions to chew the gum a couple of times then leave it in the mouth to slowly release nicotine.
Instead, she chomped through piece after piece, demolishing two packs of gum a day -the equivalent of 48 cigarettes.
Health experts recommend using no more than 15 pieces of nicotine replacement gum a day and advise quitters to try to wean themselves off it within three months.
But Ruby, who is about to start filming a new sitcom in Kenya, ignored the warnings and developed the secrecy and sneakiness that often go hand in hand with an addiction.
She admits: “I would buy it from different chemists so they didn’t realise how much I was using. It was so hard. If I had one, I would eat the whole pack.
“It cost me just as much as cigarettes and it was just as dangerous -you still get cancer, just a different type of cancer.”
Ruby found it easy to keep her nicotine addiction secret.
There was no telltale smell of stale smoke and the constant chewing became part of her sassy American image.
Not even her own children realised she was hooked. Ruby finally conquered her gum habit with the help of counsellors from Allen Carr’s Easyway.
But she says: “It still lurks around the corner. If I’m in a pharmacy I’ll notice the gum, like an old lover.”