You could be dealing with anxiety or withdrawl symptoms from stopping smoking. I smoked for 16 years and quit cold turkey and ended up in the emergency room with anxiety and panic attacks. My throat tightening up hurting in my chest and in my back. It has been 4 months and I am just now starting to feel like myself again. I am on depression and now anxiety meds. After I had quit smoking I ended up with this odd obsession and parinoia about my breathing and my friends and families as well. I would worry that the damage was already done to me and that I was going to sufficoate to death. I was always asking my friends and family if they were breathing okay for the the first month I had quit and shortly after I had a huge panic attack and ended up in the emergency room. I thought I was sufficating to death and it was a panic attack and I am now on medication for it and being monitored by my doctor. Good luck to you all. It will get better.
Its been exactly three months since my last cigarette. Yes, I am more conscious about what I eat and how I should now start the long awaited healthy lifestyle I had forever dreamed about. I smoked for 30yrs. and now I am so depressed, angry, and anxious more often than not. I want to thank you all for sharing what is happening after your quit.
After reading some of the posts here I am somewhat relieved to know that there are people going through the same. I think I want to relate my depression to the weight gain and continued grieve. I have been asking for a divorce from my husband which I know is obsurd. I cry as I type this posts I could never have imagined how emotionally painful it would be to quit, and what makes it harder is no one understands me.
I pray for all that are taking their place and living a lifestyle that as smokers we dreamed of daily and that is to quit smoking and pursue a healthy way of life as I did. I pray this feeling of helplessness will soon disapear.
After reading some of the posts here I am somewhat relieved to know that there are people going through the same. I think I want to relate my depression to the weight gain and continued grieve. I have been asking for a divorce from my husband which I know is obsurd. I cry as I type this posts I could never have imagined how emotionally painful it would be to quit, and what makes it harder is no one understands me.
I pray for all that are taking their place and living a lifestyle that as smokers we dreamed of daily and that is to quit smoking and pursue a healthy way of life as I did. I pray this feeling of helplessness will soon disapear.
I am a 26 year old girl who has smoked for about 8-10 years a packet a day. I have managed to quit for 5 months now due to feeling tight chested, unable to breathe, feeling of phlegm but not being able to bring it up. I have however had a cigarette about 4 days ago with a friend. Only one puff actually and i haven't felt like another since. I started experiencing tight chest, feeling of phlegm and not being able to bring it up, tickle on the throat. My question is does anybody else have these symptoms, its almost like asthma but ive been checked and it is not asthma, COPD or any other respiratory illness. I am extremely uncomfortable and have been dealing with it for days.
I do not know what to do ?
We stuffed up, that's it, gotta put up with it, keep healthy, regular visits to the doc, understand your body, also change of job and life style money isn't everything, also keep away from freinds that smoke, another one if your feeling down and out, meditation, listen to some classical or relaxing music
I ralize this is over a year old but arg!! I get so mad when I read these posts and it seems to me as if you are all looking for reasons to go back on the smokes. I've been smoke free for over a month now and it's getting better in most ways. Some of your problems I too have. If health issues scare you, go to a doctor and don't you dare you them as an excuse to light up!!!! If you stop looking and blaming things on being clean you mjight actually feel better soon.
So glad i found this place i quit 4 days ago and thinking i'm going to die of some lung infection i never coughed or hacked up anything like i have last two days i am using the patch and have no real no desire to smoke. (eating sunflower seeds when i do have a desire). But i remember a friend telling me it took her a full year to get threw the sickness of quitting because our body is detoxing. I pray these flu like systems disappear soon. I take the patch off at night and still the worse night sleep. I just keep looking at daily total i saved not smoking and that's helping but this is really hard on the old gals body.
You can 'only wonder what heroin addicts are going'. Well as Nicotine is about 100 times more addictive than heroin not as much as YOU.
Quit smoking in April with the help of Bupropion (Wellbutrin/Zyban etc). Worked amazingly... just didn't care and had a bit of a spacey feeling. After I started coming off the drug I started having exteme short fuze issues. It has slowly been improving, but there are ALWAYS relapses... I also seem to have this wired feeling ALL THE TIME (like I've drank WAY TOO MUCH COFFEE) and often have trouble going to sleep until I am completely exhausted. I haven't had a cigarette or chew (I also chewed tobacco) since April and have been off the drugs for a couple months. I still get extremely irritated way too easily for things that just shouldn't bother me that much. Last week I had a particularly bad day and decided to try an experiment. Not wanting to smoke/chew again but curious about the brain imbalance thing related to heavy nicotine use for 25 years I bought some nicotine gum.... guess what... WOW! The wired feeling and extreme irritability immediately vanished! When I say immediate I mean it was seconds. I had been discussing all this with my doctor over the last couple months and he mentioned that Nicotine affects the brain in more ways than just being an upper. That there are real calming effects that effect the nerve receptors not unlike some of the SSRIs and other newer head drugs out there (Oh yeah, that's why wellbutrin works so well). He mentioned that he has wound up prescribing Prozac and the like to many x smokers due to constant anxiety (he offered this option to me as we however I declined) Guys Nicotine is a WAY NASTIER DRUG than anybody ever tells... lung cancer etc etc we all know about.. but it ain't just the lung cancer... this thing is really bad and seems to mess with peoples head in more than just an addictive way. I personally have not had any other health issues from quitting (coughing hacking heavy chest etc) Just the psychologicals effects of the cure/withdrawal combo. Anybody else here read/experienced/talked to their doctor(s) about the 'other' problems nicotine causes?
I don't have to be convinced about just how Evil and Addictive a drug Nicotine is. My Doctor considers it 100% harder than heroin to give up and says you cannot consider you're free until you've quit the wellbutrin, patches and gum - then, one year after if you drug and Nicotine free you can say you've quit.
LD2009, given this post is over a year old, I doubt you'll ever receive this reply, but I figure if nothing else maybe someone else can learn from this.
I've no idea if I have Lyme disease. I live in Canada where doctors are as likely to believe I've been infected by a Unicorn as I have by a tick.
That said, 5 years ago I was at my peak physical condition. I ran/biked to work, bike another several hours after work, weight train every day, run 20km every other day, blah blah blah. At extremely healthy, and decided to kick smoking while I was at it. Huge frikkin' mistake.
Two weeks after quitting, I got an eye infection which wouldn't resolve with ABX eye drops, followed by extreme abdominal distension, followed by alternating constipation/diarrhoea, followed by resolution of constipation, followed by cognitive disfunction (brain fog, loss of consciousness, shaking, anxiety attacks) as well as cardiac issue (arrhythmia/palpitations/tachycardia/bradycardia). I also developed a plethora of autoimmune diseases and allergies over the next two years. 3 months in, I was in the ER waiting to see a doctor again, and decided to call my dad to ask about family med. history. Turns out he was also in an ER on the other side of the country with the same symptoms which had begun 2 weeks after quitting smoking. He started smoking again after 4 months and go almost entirely better. A 18 months later, I decided to give smoking a go as well, and I also got significantly better. Stupidly, I decided I must have deluded myself into believing that smoking was somehow helping my health and I quit again, and again I relapsed hard. Story goes on for a while but I'll just skip it for now.
I recently found out that my id**t brother never thought to mention that he's also been extremely ill for the past 10 years. To keep thing as blind as possible, I listed off about 300 symptoms to him. About half of which I have, and the other half I just made up. He has 100% of the symptoms I have. When I asked what major changes preceded the initial onset, and told him to not leave anything out, he told me it started after he'd decided to quit all his bad habits. He started by quitting drugs and alcohol, then two months later, he quit smoking. Two weeks later was the initial onset of all his symptoms.
Also, my mother has the same mystery disease.
That said, after much hounding, my dad finally got tested for Lyme disease. His GF is a genetic toxicologist. His test, according to his doctor was negative, but his GF, who works in research on.. just this subject, said the test was a resounding positive.
I've spent a lot of years now in medical research and found a few interesting points.
1. Nicotine has a known strong antibiotic effect against many bacteria, though as far as I've been able to research, I've found no studies on it's efficacy against Lyme related bacteria.
2. Nicotine binds with nicotinic-acetycholinic receptors in the gut lining as well as in the blood/brain barrier (also binds in other locations but not relevant to this discussion). When bound, it causes a decrease in permeability between epithilial cells. When you quit smoking cold turkey, gut and blood/brain barrier permeability increases dramatically (temporarily) thus possibly allowing entry of some pathogens.
3. Nicotine is also used to treat ulcerative colitis (many Lyme sufferers have this) with an efficacy nearly 8x higher than corticosteroids.
At this point, I still haven't managed to convince any Canadian doctor to seriously consider Lyme disease in my or my families case and can't get properly tested here. This late in the game, it would probably require a cerebro-spinal extraction to test properly.
I've been on the electronic cigarettes which seem to help ("seem to" doesn't do it justice. It DOES help dramatically), but does not offer the level of sypmtomatic resolution I saw from smoking cigarettes. I'm contemplating starting smoking again for the 3rd time (another test).
I've no idea if I have Lyme disease. I live in Canada where doctors are as likely to believe I've been infected by a Unicorn as I have by a tick.
That said, 5 years ago I was at my peak physical condition. I ran/biked to work, bike another several hours after work, weight train every day, run 20km every other day, blah blah blah. At extremely healthy, and decided to kick smoking while I was at it. Huge frikkin' mistake.
Two weeks after quitting, I got an eye infection which wouldn't resolve with ABX eye drops, followed by extreme abdominal distension, followed by alternating constipation/diarrhoea, followed by resolution of constipation, followed by cognitive disfunction (brain fog, loss of consciousness, shaking, anxiety attacks) as well as cardiac issue (arrhythmia/palpitations/tachycardia/bradycardia). I also developed a plethora of autoimmune diseases and allergies over the next two years. 3 months in, I was in the ER waiting to see a doctor again, and decided to call my dad to ask about family med. history. Turns out he was also in an ER on the other side of the country with the same symptoms which had begun 2 weeks after quitting smoking. He started smoking again after 4 months and go almost entirely better. A 18 months later, I decided to give smoking a go as well, and I also got significantly better. Stupidly, I decided I must have deluded myself into believing that smoking was somehow helping my health and I quit again, and again I relapsed hard. Story goes on for a while but I'll just skip it for now.
I recently found out that my id**t brother never thought to mention that he's also been extremely ill for the past 10 years. To keep thing as blind as possible, I listed off about 300 symptoms to him. About half of which I have, and the other half I just made up. He has 100% of the symptoms I have. When I asked what major changes preceded the initial onset, and told him to not leave anything out, he told me it started after he'd decided to quit all his bad habits. He started by quitting drugs and alcohol, then two months later, he quit smoking. Two weeks later was the initial onset of all his symptoms.
Also, my mother has the same mystery disease.
That said, after much hounding, my dad finally got tested for Lyme disease. His GF is a genetic toxicologist. His test, according to his doctor was negative, but his GF, who works in research on.. just this subject, said the test was a resounding positive.
I've spent a lot of years now in medical research and found a few interesting points.
1. Nicotine has a known strong antibiotic effect against many bacteria, though as far as I've been able to research, I've found no studies on it's efficacy against Lyme related bacteria.
2. Nicotine binds with nicotinic-acetycholinic receptors in the gut lining as well as in the blood/brain barrier (also binds in other locations but not relevant to this discussion). When bound, it causes a decrease in permeability between epithilial cells. When you quit smoking cold turkey, gut and blood/brain barrier permeability increases dramatically (temporarily) thus possibly allowing entry of some pathogens.
3. Nicotine is also used to treat ulcerative colitis (many Lyme sufferers have this) with an efficacy nearly 8x higher than corticosteroids.
At this point, I still haven't managed to convince any Canadian doctor to seriously consider Lyme disease in my or my families case and can't get properly tested here. This late in the game, it would probably require a cerebro-spinal extraction to test properly.
I've been on the electronic cigarettes which seem to help ("seem to" doesn't do it justice. It DOES help dramatically), but does not offer the level of sypmtomatic resolution I saw from smoking cigarettes. I'm contemplating starting smoking again for the 3rd time (another test).
I quit smoking 2 weeks ago. I have been trying to quit for about 5 months. I used to smoke 5-10 cigarettes a day. When I told myself that I had to change my life and seriously try to stop I smoked 0-5 a day. Within the last 2 months I was smoking 0-2 cigs a day.
Needless to say, I dwindled down a lot.
I am studying skin care and it has motivated me to change. My teacher says that the skin tells the truth. Anything a person intakes has an outward affect on the skin because it is the largest organ of the human body. Toxins execrete through the skin. I am a woman so my vanity has driven me to quit. I don't want to be ugly when I am old....so there.
My symptoms are:
Night time awakeness
High energy one day, Low energy the next day.
Unusual Muscle spasms and aches ( I am a dancer and I am limber and I stretch everyday)
Sore feet
Nasal allergies (with nasal drip sometimes)
Abdominal pains
Kidney pains
Frequent urination
Some migraines
Itchy skin
Increase sweat secretions
Constipation
Gas
Confusion in communication sometimes
Irritability in public
I was a smoker for almost 10 whole years. Started when I was 18. Quitting is difficult, but I am happy I don't depend on cigarettes to complete my day anymore. Also nice to channel my stress by just dealing with it naturally and logically thinking instead of dodging my problems by going outside and having a cigarette. I also like not smelling like smoke. My teeth feel cleaner already. My skin looks much smoother, clearer, and brighter. I have noticed the wrinkles on my forehead are almost gone. The dark circles around my eyes are gone. I am excited to have nice healthy skin and to feel good about myself because I chose to change my lifestyle for the best. I can finally be honest with myself and others. I used to sneak around and hide the fact that I smoked. Then I would spray perfume all over me and eat lots of mints and gums to disguise the smell. Now I can be myself and not worry about the inconveniences of smoking.
Another big thing that has helped me is I go online every night and research the effects of smoking. I scare myself by learning what the internal damages cause. It has created a bigger picture for me.
That is how it started for me. The first two weeks were fine. My lungs felt better, I could run farther without fighting for air.
The GI symptoms are to be expected for the first 2-4 weeks as your body needs time to adjust to the lack of nicotine by starting to produce more acetylcholine again. Same goes with irritability/cognitive disfunction/muscular symptoms (again, you're dangerously low on acetylcholine and it is required for any neuro-electrical transmission).
Allergies and increased perspiration however are not symptoms of smoking cessation (at least not commonly associated). I'd be a little concerned if these symptoms all started 2 weeks after cessation as opposed to starting from day 1. The first day you don't smoke you should expect irritability, and by day 2-3 you can expect some confusion and the onset of GI issues, but none of this should last longer than 2 weeks regardless of how long you smoked. The frequent urination is also out of place. I guess see how things progress over the next 2-3 weeks and come let us know where you're at at that point :)
The GI symptoms are to be expected for the first 2-4 weeks as your body needs time to adjust to the lack of nicotine by starting to produce more acetylcholine again. Same goes with irritability/cognitive disfunction/muscular symptoms (again, you're dangerously low on acetylcholine and it is required for any neuro-electrical transmission).
Allergies and increased perspiration however are not symptoms of smoking cessation (at least not commonly associated). I'd be a little concerned if these symptoms all started 2 weeks after cessation as opposed to starting from day 1. The first day you don't smoke you should expect irritability, and by day 2-3 you can expect some confusion and the onset of GI issues, but none of this should last longer than 2 weeks regardless of how long you smoked. The frequent urination is also out of place. I guess see how things progress over the next 2-3 weeks and come let us know where you're at at that point :)
I quit 4 months ago and 2 months into it had a bad asthma attack , I was admitted to hospital with it , it was 22 yrs ago the last time I had an asthma attack , the doctors explained it was basically because I had stopped smoking , I have been ill ever since ,but trust me I will never go back to it as I remember how I felt the day I quit, that keeps me going . I did it the cold turkey way as I have tried all the cessation aids , doctors state it can take 10 years for the withdrawal symtoms to cease
wow, glad to hear i am not along in my excessive sleepiness, 6 months off cigs and feel so drousy, if I manage to undertake a variety of household jobs the next days i cant get out of bed with exhaustion. I am unable to fall asleep til 3/4am mornings and unable to break the cycle
I have smoked now for 42 years and a couple years back I noticed a worsening in my lungs, along with a hypothyroid now being diagnosed. I am beginning to wonder if cigs aren't the actual cause for mine becoming low.