Stop Smoking Forum - Stress And Quitting

One of the biggest reasons that makes a person hesitate when they consider quitting smoking is stress. Stress of their job, stress of their financial situation, stress of their relationship and just the general stress of life.

For years and most likely decades, the smoker has been able to deal with all the stress in their life with the help from their "friend" the cigarette. Smoking has been able to calm them when situations felt overwhelming and it was there for them to help them "concentrate" when they needed to regain their focus to resolve a situation. To the active smoker, the cigarette is their best coping tool when it comes to relieving their stress.

Unfortunately, this is one of the biggest misconceptions that the active smoker truly believes and until they realize the truth, it can make the person quitting feel that they are giving up a great stress relieving tool.

The truth is that smoking never relieved stress, ever in our lives. What smoking really does is create stress.

When a smoker smokes a cigarette. Nicotine enters the brain mimicing the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. This enables nicotine to reach the reward center of the brain where it releases large amounts of unearned dopamine. This is where the smoker gets that AAAHHHH sensation we are all so familiar with. But what happens when nicotine starts to metabolize and leave the body? Nicotine also has the ability to fit the smoker's adrenaline locks, as nicotine metabolizes, we are left with anxieties that are the same as if we were in a fight or flight situation. It is a false anxiety though. It is a lie. There is no outside variable creating this. It is only our brain and body being fooled into thinking that something is wrong. A smoker then smokes a cigarette which temporarily turns off this fight or flight feeling.

So you can see that this is why there is no such thing as just one cigarette. Only the first one.

At the same time

Everytime a smoker smokes a cigarette it raises the heartbeat by 20 beats a minute. It raises the blood pressure and makes the arteries constrict. This effect makes the heart have to work harder and the body releases its own stored fats and cholesterols to try and find the extra energy.

This is where a catch 22 happens. The heart now has to work harder to overcome these effects, but to do this, it needs extra oxygen to work harder. The problem is, the carbon monoxide from smoking is basically poisoning the amount of oxygen that the blood can carry. This in turn has to make the heart work harder to get more oxygen to itself to work harder, because it is allready working harder. It is just a viscious circle, over and over.

Imagine how much stress this puts on a smoker. Doing this 20,30,40+ times a day.

This is one of the reasones seasoned quitters talk of a comfort. It is because they are not putting this horrible strain on their mind or body anymore.
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THE ILLUSION OF RELIEVING STRESS

When people, (smokers and non smokers), are under stress. What happens, is a physiological reaction causes the persons urine to turn more acidic. To the non smoker this is really not an issue, but to the smoker, this physiological reaction becomes their biggest issue.

When a smoker's urine turns more acidic. What happens is that this reaction actually causes the nicotine to get pulled from the bloodstream into the urinary tract and into the bladder. The nicotine doesn't even really get metabolized. It just literally just gets pulled out. This will quickly put the smoker into withdrawal. So now not only is the smoker under stress because of a certain situation , but they are also going into withdrawal at the same time. This doubles the anxieies that the smoker is now dealing with. So the active smoker, smokes a cigarette, relieves the anxieties from withdrawal, "Feels better" and then thinks that smoking helped "relieve" their stress. When all it did was relieve the anxieties from withdrawal. The original problem is still there, but now the smoker is able to deal with it, because they don't have their minds occupied with drug withdrawal. Now they are able to focus on resolving the problem.

The problem is that the smoker has performed this "stress relieving" ritual for so long. That they don't differenciate the difference bewtween relieving drug withdrawal and relieving stress. The smoker becomes brainwashed into thinking that smoking relieves stress.

The truth is that the smoker can deal with life's stress without smoking. Happily what the person quitting comes to find out as they deal with life's stresses without smoking, is that the problems they used to think were really stressful, are not nearly as stressful now that they don't smoke.
This is because the situations are not being compounded by drug withdrawal.

Smoker's tend to not give themselves enough credit when it comes to dealing with life's stress. The fact is, is that smoker's can and do deal with life's stress just like a non smoker. Their only problem is that the active smoker first must put a stop to drug withdrawal before they deal with the problem.

Once the smoker removes this useless middle man and starts dealing with life's issues on their own, without cigarettes. They start to realize that they can relieve their own stress as just them. Not only that, but they find out that they deal with life's stress in a more calming manner and that life is not as stressful as it was as a smoker.

Nicotine is an odd drug. It's addiction is not like other drugs. People drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, snort cocaine, shoot up heroin for the purpose of altering their conciousness. To feel different, as an escape.

Nicotine addicts on the other hand smoke cigarettes, because they want to feel like everyone else. They are just trying to get back to that inner peace of feeling "normal". They are basically triyng to get to that inner peace that non smokers are already at. It is a false sense of accomplishmnet. Unfortunatley, as long as they are in this viscious cycle of smoking, that feeling is only temporary. They will need to ritually smoke to get back to that feeling of inner calmness.

Nicotine does have something in common with those other drugs, though. Once a person breaks this cycle and starts to live without the need for this addiction, they will find a clarity just as other drug addicts find. The longer they are clean from smoking they will truly start to see what a lie smoking really is. That it never relieved their stress, but created it over and over.

Quitting smoking can be a temporary adjustment, but afterwards you will start to feel a calmness that you haven't felt since before you started smoking.

Eric