Smoking Relapse

You've made your plan to quit smoking. Your support network is in place; you've thrown away the cigarettes; the calendar is marked; you're confident that this time will be the time you quit smoking for good. No longer a prisoner to nicotine. The plan will work.

After one day you start having withdrawal symptoms. By day three, you're about to pull your hair out. The symptoms seem too strong. They are coming at you from all sides. First of all, you're starving. "That can't be good," you think. Then you start to feel anxious and nervous. The hands get a little shaky. Now you're starting to feel depressed. Then you start thinking about the cigarette. "If I could only have one cigarette, it would make everything go away." The urge starts to become greater and greater.

In confusion you address each symptom in the order it arrives. You order a pizza and then try yoga to calm down. Next you play some kind of video game to keep your hands under control, but the game starts to make you feel more anxious. Then you reach for the nicotine gum and hope the urge will subside.

Does this sound familiar? Do you start to think, "It can't be done. Anyone suffering like this can't quit successfully, right? I'm a failure." Then you pick up a cigarette and feed the beast within you. The symptoms go away and so does your motivation. You convince yourself that you'll try again in a couple of months; maybe next year.

But what if I told you that withdrawal symptoms were normal; what if I said that they would pass over time? What if I told you there was only one symptom you really needed to worry about? Could you hang in there; could you see it through to the end?

Some researchers have discovered that one symptom in particular seems to be the one we should be worrying about the most. They looked at hunger, physical symptoms, negative affect, and urge to smoke as the most common symptoms associated with smoking cessation. So which of these fell out as the one most directly related to relapse, both in the short term and long term?

It turns out that urge to smoke was the most troublesome issue which led to relapse in the most cases. Makes sense when you think about it. The urge is the toughest part of smoking cessation. Not only is there a physiological dependency at work with nicotine, but a behavioral one as well. This is what makes addiction so difficult to master.

But what is nicotine? Why is it so good at keeping us wanting cigarettes after we've decided to quit them? These are great questions which need answered if you're going to have any hope of quitting successfully. You have to know what you're dealing with and then you'll be empowered to achieve success.

Fortunately, we've got the answer to the question: ' what is nicotine?' We provide all the information you need to quit successfully. We help with all the aspects of smoking cessation from designing a quitting smoking timeline, to showing you how addicted to nicotine you are with our addiction quiz. There is so much for you. Give it a try. You'll be glad you did.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tim_Frymyer

Posted in: Smoking