From so many in the training and coaching sessions I get asked about smoking and the fact that they would like to quit it. Therefore, I have been thinking a lot about starting a discussion topic on this subject. There can be a lot of reasons why you started smoking, maybe because it was "cool" or everyone around you was doing it, but doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that now you want or you think you should quit, but don't know how, or can't seem to do it. Why? Because smoking is both a physical and psychological addiction. Quitting smoking isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible either.
You really can give up smoking. How can I be so sure? Well, just for a moment...consider these facts now and please really focus on them:
1. Already since 1972, over 80 million people in the USA alone have successfully given up smoking.
2. At one stage over 60% of the European adult population was addicted to this drug. Today it is 28% and dropping.....
3. If all these people can do it ( MILLIONS OF THEM!) - and they include EVERY TYPE of person imaginable - surely that is PROOF that IT IS POSSIBLE to successfully give up smoking. In fact, according to the National Cancer Institute, nearly half of all adult smokers have already quit.
4. We now know from the latest scientific research, that although nicotine is one of the world’s fastest acting drugs --- the actual PHYSICAL withdrawal pangs when you give up ARE SO MILD, YOU WILL HARDLY NOTICE THEM WHEN YOU STOP.
The problem
Most people believe that the biggest problem in giving up will be..." How will I handle those horrible withdrawal symptoms, when I stop? My life will be a misery!"
But at the end they don’t exist! So we should much rather look at which forms of addiction a smoker is confronted with:
Physical Addiction
When you puff on a cigarette, nicotine peaks in the bloodstream and enters the brain within seconds. Once in the brain, nicotine triggers a number of biochemical changes, including the release of adrenaline and dopamine. The stimulating effects of smoking, such as feeling more focused and alert, are caused by this shot of adrenaline. At the same time, the increase in dopamine—the brain’s “pleasure chemical”—creates a feeling of satisfaction and relaxation. But nicotine’s levels in the brain, as well as the pleasurable effects the drug causes, dissipate within a matter of minutes. This fuels the cycle of addiction, as you need another cigarette in order to keep feeling good.
If you stop smoking and break the cycle, you will experience a number of physical symptoms as your body withdraws from the drug. Nicotine withdrawal begins quickly, usually starting within thirty minutes to an hour of the last cigarette and peaking about 2 to 3 days later. Withdrawal symptoms can last for a few days to several weeks and differ from person to person. Common nicotine withdrawal symptoms include:
Psychological Addiction
In addition to being physically addicting, smoking is often psychologically addictive as well. If you’ve been smoking for any length of time, lighting up has become habitual and ingrained in your daily routine. It may be an automatic response for you to smoke a cigarette with your morning coffee, while taking a break from work or school, or during your commute home at the end of a long day. Perhaps friends, family members, and colleagues smoke, and it has become part of the way you relate with them.
Because of nicotine’s “feel good” effect on the brain, you may also have become accustomed to smoking as a way of coping with stress, depression, anxiety, or even boredom. In other words you are escaping reality, running away from your emotions. The difficult part about just quitting is that recent studies have linked smoking to anxiety disorders, suggesting the correlation (and possibly mechanism) may be related to the broad class of anxiety disorders, and not limited to just depression. Current ongoing research are attempting to explore the addiction-anxiety relationship. Here some facts:
• Data from multiple studies suggest that anxiety disorders such as depression play a role in cigarette smoking. A history of regular smoking was observed more frequently among individuals who had experienced a major depressive disorder at some time in their lives than among individuals who had never experienced major depression or among individuals with no psychiatric diagnosis.
• People with major depression are also much less likely to quit due to the increased risk of experiencing mild to severe states of depression, including a major depressive episode.
• Depressed smokers appear to experience more withdrawal symptoms on quitting, are less likely to be successful at quitting, and are more likely to relapse.
• Quitting smokking can cause a state of emptiness and depression
• Neurologically, rodent studies have found that nicotine administration through smoking causes lowering of reward thresholds--a finding opposite that of most other drugs of abuse (e.g. cocaine and heroin). This increase in reward circuit sensitivity persisted months after the self-administration ended (smoking), suggesting that nicotine's alteration of brain reward function will therefore lead to a lack of “feeling happy, satisfied and in some cases a lack of focus” for a long lasting period.
Which means it is actually an evil circle, If you’ve therefore been using cigarettes to regulate your emotions and maintain a steady “good feeling”, giving up smoking may be particularly difficult. In order to successfully do so, you will need to be honest with yourself in exploring and understanding your motives for smoking (where and when do you escape from stress, run away from depression, anxiety, boredom or just dope yourself to feel better) so that you can create an effective plan that incorporates alternative coping strategies.
