Nicotine Withdrawal Symptoms When You Quit Smoking
Although there is no physical pain involved in nicotine withdrawal symptoms, this aspect of dependence can cause unnecessary anxiety. Smokers sometimes dread nicotine addiction withdrawal ‘pangs’ and imagine them to be an unbearable trauma, with images of the ‘cold turkey’ that heroin addicts suffer.
Or they believe they are stuck with a physical addiction like a terminal illness that they are helpless to do anything about, so resign themselves to a life of slavery. As with men who faint at the sight of a small vaccination syringe, it is the anticipation or fear of pain rather than the event of withdrawal itself.
Paradoxically, those who have made repeated attempts in the past usually admit that they relapsed because of a minor circumstance that triggered it, and that with better planning and menial strength they could easily have got through. Another day would have made all the difference. In most cases they simply cannot account for their relapse, not being aware of the other psychological factors at work that they were simply not prepared for.
It is usually the stimulus-response effect of a certain situation, person or environment that starts you smoking again – not the nicotine craving.
It is important to be clear in your mind about both the nature of your nicotine addiction and what it means to quit smoking. So-called nicotine withdrawal symptoms are not a feature of quitting smoking, but of the underlying cause – smoking. You get the craving between cigarettes, so in fact you suffer nicotine withdrawal symptoms continually, seven days a week, year after year.
Whatever the nicotine withdrawal symptoms, they result not from abstinence, but from the addictive drug nicotine that creates the dependency. The proof is simple: the craving stops after a few days without nicotine.
Putting blame in the right place
Although nicotine addiction is ostensibly a physical condition, it is important psychologically who you ‘blame’ for the nicotine withdrawal symptoms, especially when feeling irritable in the days after you stop smoking. If you place the blame on anything or anybody other than the drug, you will turn to a cigarette like an old friend at the first weak moment to gain the relief you perceive – however misguidedly – it provides. On the other hand, if you place the blame squarely on the cigarette you will not be inclined to turn to it when your defenses are down. It is now rightly the villain – the enemy. Hence the need to come to the point at which you are not “giving up’ anything whatsoever of benefit or value.