Nicotine Withdrawal and Beyond
By Terry Martin, About.com Guide to Smoking Cessation
Quitting tobacco takes strategy, effort and plenty of patience. While smoking cessation is not an easy task, at least initially, you can make the process less painful and set yourself up for long-term success through education and preparation. Remember: the discomforts you experience as you heal from nicotine addiction are all temporary, but the freedom you're working to achieve will last you a lifetime. Smoking cessation is worth every bit of work it takes. Your life is worth the work.
Nicotine Withdrawal
Symptoms of nicotine withdrawal can and do include just about every irritation you can think of. While this is an intense stage of recovery that every ex-smoker must weather, there are measures that can be taken to minimize the discomforts.
- All About Nicotine Withdrawal
- 10 Things to Avoid When You Quit Smoking
- 5-Minute Craving Busters
- 101 Things to Do Instead of Smoking
Stress Management
As smokers, we thought we needed our cigarettes to calm us. The truth is, however, that smoking created more stress than it ever dispelled. Learning how to cope with the ups and downs of life without a cigarette is difficult when we first quit smoking, but with a few tools and some practice, we can all overcome the obstacles.
Weight Control
For most people, quitting smoking and weight gain go hand-in-hand. While a small amount of weight gain is normal, excessive gain is unhealthy and can undermine your quit program. Learn about what happens to your body when you quit smoking, and how you can counteract the potential weight gain that might occur.
Healing the Mind
True freedom is a state of mind, and as we begin the journey to break the chains of nicotine addiction once and for all, we must do the work to heal both body and mind. Use the resources below to help you learn how to decipher smoking urges and reprogram them with new, healthier choices.
- Don't Settle for Less in Your Life
- 4 Steps to Defeat the Urge to Smoke
- Nicotine Addiction: Myths vs. Facts
Knowledge is Power
Education is a powerful tool that can help us change how we think about smoking. Build the foundation for your smoke free life by reading everything you can find about nicotine addiction and the recovery process. When you know what to expect and have a plan in place to manage the bumps in the road, it’s empowering. Education takes you out of the role of being a helpless victim of addiction and puts you in the driver’s seat with your quit program.
- 20 Shocking Smoking Facts
- How Smoking Harms Us -- From Head to Toe
- Mind Over Matter: Does How You Quit Affect Your Success?
- After The Last Cigarette
Relapse Prevention
When we quit smoking, most of us go through a fair amount of junkie thinking - the internal battle that goes on between our will to quit and the addiction we're tied to. It is a common facet of recovery, but one that can easily trip us up, leading back to full-time smoking. Having the ability to recognize faulty thought patterns and redirect them is critical to moving through this phase of smoking cessation successfully. Use this section to help you do that.
- There is No Such Thing as Just One Cigarette
- Why Do People Relapse Years Later?
- I Slipped and Smoked...What Now?
Our Stories
There is no better teacher than the voice of experience, and when it comes nicotine withdrawal, there are no better teachers than the members of the About.com Smoking Cessation forum. They are an important resource for the new quitter, and their tips on managing nicotine withdrawal are some of the best -- creative, practical, and real. Settle in and do some reading. You'll come away inspired and the next thing you know, you'll be the one sharing the tips that helped you most -- with smoking comfortably in your past.
