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Did quitting smoking improve your mood?

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Sideways

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Looking for insight from others & supportive comments...

I quit smoking and increased my anti-depressant (pristiq) in August. My mood has improved substantially (albeit gradually) over those months.

Tbh, staying quit is still a daily struggle. My physical health has improved, but I still miss the anxiety relief I used to get from having a smoke.

My pdoc obviously wants to put the improved mood down to the combination of quitting and the increased meds and keeps encouraging me to stay quit. But it’s bloody hard work. My addicted-brain keeps telling me “Nah, it’s the just the meds that helped, you should keep using smoking to relieve your anxiety...”

Has anyone else found their mood increased substantially from quitting smoking? In theory, quitting should have been an opportunity to increase my exercise as an alternative anxiety regulator, but because of spinal issues my exercise is increasingly limited, so anxiety is still a big problem.

Thoughts? Words of encouragement? Or has anyone found that going back to smoking actually did make things easier?
 
The bad news?

I have never in my life found that quitting any coping mechanism, no matter how bad for me, has increased my mood, decreased my symptoms, or made life easier.

i’m using absolutes, sadly, because I've had a lot of coping mechanisms over the years, and to date, its been true with each and every single one of them. The good, the bad, and the ugly. There may be an exception out there, somewhere, but I havent found it, yet. One of those times a cognitive distortion would come in handy. But, sadly, no.

The good news?

If you look at it that way, via Stress Cup & Coping Mechanisms, instead of an indivudal coping mechanism and immediate/long term results ...like quitting smoking... it not only makes sense why things tend to get worse (instead of better, like neurotypical people sing about from mountaintops) by removing a coping mechanism... but it straight up gives you a solution which isnt returning to the bad-for-me-coping-mechansim... IE import more coping mechansims, this time healtheir ones.

The Murphy's Law Component?

Did you notice the plural?

I usually have to import at least 2 or 3 healthy coping mechanisms for every unhealthy CM I kick to the curb.

Which also makes sense, because there’s rarely a straight up trade that meets all the factors of what I’m removing, all by itself.

To use smoking as an example... here’s some of what I gain from it :

  • Stimulants (both a baseline dose delivered throughout the course of the day, and the occasional nudge PRN)
  • Breath control / breathing regulation (once an hour I’m spending 7 minutes focused on regulating my breathing??? Yeah I’m sure that does nothing for me :rolleyes: Dammit.)
  • Sensory Imput (for me’self, mostly tactile, although there are visual and other components as well. Fingertips have a helluva lot of nerve endings, as do lips. Rolling sandalwood beads between my fingers help on one side, lip balm & straws & stuff the other. Kissing, whistling, and others not to be forgotten! :sneaky: )
  • Pain Management (one of the reasons smoking is sooooo bad for you is that it numbs the tissues it comes into contact with, so you can’t actually feel the damage it’s doing. I happen to have a fair amount of lung damage from other things, and smoking fixes that. To the degree that I started smoking after being quit, again, because my pulmonologist gave me 2 options : a fetanyl patch for the next 6-18mo, or light up. Because I needed to increase the volume of air I was moving, and my lungs were in too much pain to allow it. I figured ciggies would be easier to quit than 24/7 opiates. It’s been 2 years. I don’t “need” them anymore. Haven’t for months. But I’m a big baby about pain. And I need to find a way to manage what’s left.
  • An Excuse To Take A Break / “Mindfulness” / Grounding (again, that 7 minutes once an hour thing, or 15 every 2 hours. Helps sooooo much in keeping me present, engaged, and on top of my emotional monitoring and regulation.
  • Flashback Groundig (I have a lot of olfactory flashbacks, smoking is sooooo not the only way to supersede them. But since I do it all the time, I don’t have to have other things to hand -like camphor, perfume, cloves, etc. to make my nose pay attention to now instead of then)
  • Et Cetera In A BIG Way.

^^^ This huge giant novel approaching list of facets of that make up why/how smoking works for me as a coping mechanism? Is just the tip of the iceberg. There are probably about 2 dozen, all told. The UPSIDE is that I don’t have to import 2 dozen different coping mechanisms! Phew! Thank stars for that!!! (I already need a 36 hour day). Because each and every single CM will have a handful to a few dozen facets of their own. What I need to do is Venn Diagram that shit, and add CM’s into my life that overlap enough to meet all the unmet need/wants. <<< Cravings post acute withdrawal? Whether for something truly addictive like smoking, or something simply useful as f*ck (literally, sex) ... I’ve found indicate that there is a facet going wanting. That I’ve either missed in my replacing things, or have let slide for one reason or another. If I shore up what’s missing, my brain stops screaming at me for what it knows has it. Like craving steak, but a spinach salad fixes the craving, when all I really need is more iron. But if I’m in need of fats? Spinach won’t touch the steak craving, but guacamole will! :D
 
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I quit 30 years ago and my brain will still tell me little lies about smoking that make me want to smoke. The cigerette makers spent tons of money researching how to grab your pleasure center in your brain so hard that their pull never really lets go. Hard to believe how much crap the Surgeon General of the US got when he wanted every pack of cigs sold to say "more addictive than heroine" on the side. Because they are that addicting.

But I can't say my mood improved, but I can say my self esteem certainly did. There's a commercial where a guy says no to his smoking co-workers to go outside for a smoke break. When he says no a little tiny rock band appears on his desk and they start playing the song "celebrate" and the man starts dancing and smiling all proud of himself. That's how I describe quiting smoking. It was so empowering to my self esteem. I have been regressing recently (due to therapy) and so I bought a pack of cigs so I could smoke with the "bad ass" people in the smoke lounge at work recently. I was dealing with insane adolescent anxiety, off the charts. I thought smoking would help. haha. it's kind of funny. I found it really hard to smoke, my lungs would not allow it, and then I HATED the odor on my clothes. So smoking is out for an anxiety reducer for me.

A new guy on this site, I can't remember who, said hard candy works well for a "soother' for anxiety. That make help give you something to "do" because the ritual part of smoking also missed. So I created new ones like making serious cups of ceremonial matcha tea and that kind of stuff. good luck. Hang in there, because the increase in self esteem does bolster the mood, I think.
 
My mood improved so much I had a hypomanic episode and pdoc told me to smoke.

I've been smoking about 6 cigarettes a day (median) sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less.
 
Initially, it didn't improve my mood one single bit as I was stressing like a mofo over how to make it through the day w/o the cigs. I always chalked them up to and joked about having them be my best ever nervous system regulator....and for saving many lives of others who pissed me off. The first couple months I had folks begging me to let them buy me a pack, or a carton.

Once I finally got my replacement addictions lined up, it smoothed itself out. However, my replacement addictions included lots of candy, "comfort" food, and chocolate bars....so my mood lessened again, over and over, as it literally got weighed down by a whole lot of excess consumption.

Then I learned how to more healthily choose what I consumed to keep my hands and mouth busy, figured out how to breathe on purpose and connected that to how often I felt the need to inhale and exhale nicotine, etc., and learned how to make the dreaded exercise into something fun rather than simply an obligatory hell, it all fell into place and began to actually benefit my overall health and mood. Felt like it took forever, though, and I still question if it's all worth it, especially on days that are a struggle.

I also dove into the research of how smoking effects everything inside of me (and others), both short term and long term, and how quitting could help reverse much of the damage I may have already done. I kept those timelines and graphic photos posted in plain sight so I'd see them daily for some added motivation.

The expense factor played a big part in my quit, too. I could no longer connect the dots in my brain that made me feel okay anymore with spending that much each week just to take myself out of commission in some very unpleasant ways, albeit slowly, which often makes it really hard for me to see any benefit worth pursuing, as I prefer instant rewards whenever possible.

The shitty job of having to scrub the walls of my rental property after quitting and seeing the thick hard to remove residue on each and every damn thing hanging on my wall, each dust collector I had sitting around, and having to shampoo the carpets, wash all my clothes, curtains, etc. over and over to get the smell out sealed the deal in a big way, too. Never again.

I still get cravings on occasion (I quit over 11ish years ago), but all I have to do is smell it and the craving is automatically squashed. My sense of smell and taste improved more than I realized was humanly possible once I quit, which became both a blessing and a curse.

My moods are better regulated now, mostly, but I feel it's been the result of more than just quitting cigs. It's been a cumulative effect of all the things I learned along the way and finally reaching the point of feeling I had to. I have rarely, if ever, gently or gracefully entered into beneficial and therapeutic things, but rather have to be catapulted by emergent needs.
My moods don't stay in a good space all the time, nor has life become any "easier" now that I've quit, though, except maybe for the breathing part. I still have super shitty days no matter how health conscious and mindful I try to be. If that isn't a real mood pisser, I don't know what is. Best wishes in getting it more comfortably sorted out for your own needs. It was no doubt one of the most difficult and challenging things I ever attempted to do. Be gentle with yourself.
 
Ten years ago I quit smoking because the thought of going to the store to buy more was more frightening than quitting my twenty year habit. Crazy but I'm glad I did. The stress of buying more, finding places to smoke, finding the money, along with being a stimulant probably outweighs whatever relaxation I got from smoking.
 
I smoked 2004-2011 and recently started again. But I think not smoking probably did improve my mood long term. Quitting had little effect on my mood, it was a few months later that I started to miss being able to leave situations to smoke etc. It was the excuse for a break outside I missed most and even in the 7 years I quit I still went out with friends to smoke for the break.

I did have other benefits from not smoking though (breathing/skin related etc) that I forgot until I started smoking again.

So long term I think not smoking had a good benefit on things but I'd be lying if I said it was anything immediate or even noticeable near the time
 
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