know the demon to fight the demon - No Smoking Day

No Smoking Day

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know the demon to fight the demon

nsd_user663_40088 profile image

Hello folks,

I quit smoking back in october/november 2013 cold turkey. It was awful lol not going to lie i felt rough for about a month BUT it did get alot easier one the 3 month mark arrived, its so slight the process that one day you wake up and think....oh i dont feel like crap anymore, brilliant! anyways, i went on to the ecigarette about 7 months into my quit (dont ask me why) and continued to use the ecig until about 18 months into my quit. I relapsed back in May 2015 and was smoking ever since.

One thing i noticed though is that at first my mood felt alot better when smoking but bit by bit has gone really flat and i got interested as to why. working in mental health (student nurse, 1 year from qualifying now!!) i learned that anti-depressants flatten mood, its kind of how they work. as a stabilizer rather than a 'happy' pill. interestingly, did you know when tobacco is burned, and when they chemicals in tobacco synthesis they create MAOI? (an anti depressant for those who dont know). this is a very clever mechanism the tobacco industry know about and know will keep people hooked. It makes me so angry. god knows what that does to your brain chemistry over the years! it also sets you up to become depressed once you quit, its not nicotine withdrawal, its MAOI withdrawal. It explains why people using NRT still feel alot of the irritability and mood changed associated with giving up smoking (which i could never wrap my head around why this was tbh). anyways i know i babble when it comes to science lol but with this in mind im going to use the ecig to quit to withdraw from one thing at a time!

I can vouch for this because when i quit cold turkey smoking, it was REALLY intense and lasted the duration your told it lasts, low mood for 3-4 weeks etc. but during my use of ecig, i also quit once for 3 weeks and once for 4 weeks back in the winter and the withdrawal so slight, it was literally over at day 4, i kid you not.

so the moral of my story is, know yourself and know your mood. cold turkey is brilliant if you have the sheer determination and 'no matter what' mind set and you can really cope with a battle for a month, and more so if your prone to depression (others might find they can do this easily regardless). If your a patient person and want a more drawn out, lower level fight i would use NRT to detox one thing at time, chemicals first, nicotine second. its so important to know your body. I wish i had just quit ecig cold turkey and not smoked the last 6 weeks because it would of been so much easier!

good luck everyone, knowledge is power, have a read up on MAOI yourselfs xxx

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3 Replies
Canwes profile image
Canwes1000 Days Smoke Free

Thanks Nikki, good info. Appreciate you sharing it. Good luck with your quit.

Interesting post, Nikki, particularly the antidepressant info you give. There are a lot of us on here who relapse or hold on with gritted teeth. This fascinates me, especially as I'm nearly 4 months in and I'm facing the most difficult time. I want to smoke. I would enjoy smoking; I know I would. so where does all that emotional stuff come for some of us? Is it our chemical balance? I don't know. I do know that situations, say for the first three months, I could cope wiith, and now my resolve is so much lower. It's not the nicotine withdrawl. It's something else. Why would I want to smoke again? Crazy.

nsd_user663_64134 profile image
nsd_user663_64134 in reply to nsd_user663_58050

It might be something about the novelty of stopping has worn off. I don't know rally - I'm only 2 weeks in - but I have read of people who feel that there's a novelty and focus around the quit date - and even the days and weeks following, then you hit a stage where you're not stopping any more, you've stopped - and what's there then??? Nothing - that's quite an anti climax given the enormity of the task that is quitting. Just a thought . . . . .

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