I read this about 3 weeks into my quit. It made me really angry because I never knew all the subtle ways that nicotine robbed me of my emotional health and growth. It also helped my resolve by opening my eyes to the truth about what nicotine had done and would do to my body if I continued to smoke.
This is from Joel Spitzer's "New Reactions to Anger as an Ex-smoker"
Dealing with emotional loss has similarities to dealing with anger in regards to smoking cessation and its aftermath. When smokers encounters a person or situation that angers them, they initially feel the frustration of the moment, making them -- depending on the severity of the situation -- churn inside. This effect in non-smokers or even ex-smokers is annoying to say the least. The only thing that resolves the internal conflict for a person not in the midst of an active addiction is resolution of the situation or, in the case of a situation which doesn�t lend itself to a quick resolution, time to assimilate the frustration and in a sense move on. An active smoker though, facing the exact same stress has an additional complication which even though they don�t recognize it, this complication creates significant implications to their smoking behavior and belief structures regarding the benefit of smoking.
When a person encounters stress, it has a physiological effect causing acidification of urine. In non-active tobacco users, urine acidity has no real perceivable effect. It is something that internally happens and they don�t know it, and actually, probably don�t care to know. Nicotine users are more complex. When a person maintaining any level of nicotine in his body encounters stress, the urine acidifies and this process causes nicotine to be pulled from the bloodstream, not even becoming metabolized, and into the urinary bladder. This then in fact drops the brain's supply of nicotine, throwing the smoker into drug withdrawal. Now he is really churning inside, not just from the initial stress, but also from the effects of withdrawal.
Interestingly enough, even if the stress is resolved, the smoker generally is still not going to feel good. The withdrawal isn�t eased by the conflict resolution, only by re-administration of nicotine, or, even better, riding out the withdrawal for 72
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