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Nope... No can do.

NOPE!

NOPE! Healthier and Happier!!

This is me currently, but seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. This is the only thing I know for sure and it motivates me to keep moving forward with my quit. Thanks for sharing both of you!

Hi, @Angeleek. Thanks for raising this topic. It is something I think about a lot. Like you, I'm not a medical expert, just a recovering nicotine addict who is trying to make sense of my own personal experience. It's especially helpful to hear you talk about your experience of no-man's land. With something as complex as depression, I'm not sure what I think about causal factors. But I can say with certainty that smoking damaged my mental health. I'm still puzzling on this, but some things I am beginning to understand: I believe that smoking diminished my ability to experience pleasure. My brain became trained on one thing: getting a nicotine fix. Other experiences faded into grey, and my ability to feel joy receded... as if my nicotine receptors had cannibalized everything else. There is some science to support this theory, though researchers are still trying to understand exactly how long-term nicotine exposure disrupts production/uptake of dopamine and other neurotransmitters associated with pleasure and contentment. Smoking undermined my sense of self-efficacy. Being in thrall to nicotine (or any other addiction) is degrading and dehumanizing. That affected me more profoundly than I realized. I used nicotine to try and suppress negative emotions, like sadness and anger and grief. Such feelings (and their underlying issues) weren't cured by smoking, of course. Smoking just blunted them. Rather than addressing the root causes of my distress, I was pretending to "soothe" myself while feeding myself poison and ducking my own feelings. Naturally, this kind of self-betrayal was another negative force on my mental health. For me, stopping smoking did not automatically resolve these issues. I did not experience the quitting euphoria that some other people describe. And there's still a lot to untangle about why I smoked in the first place and what my baseline mental health is. Like you, Angeleek, I started smoking really young. I was hooked by age 13, so I don't really know what I'm like without nicotine. For people who got hooked when our brains were still developing, are the effects different? I don't know. But I certainly DO know that the psychological damage that smoking caused was real, and that quitting is the only way to heal the parts of me that were injured by it. Whatever else is present on my internal obstacle course, quitting will simplify it. And since I quit, repair is happening. My progress is slow and herky-jerky, but I am starting to cope better with my feelings, beginning to see glimmers of light and joy breaking through. Quitting will make every other good thing possible.

NOPE

NOPE!

G’day NOPE .....Not One Puff Ever.... (replace Ever with Min,Hour, Day as required).

To All the Beautiful Ladies in the world today ... Happy Mothers Day..XX

Happy Mother's Day in the UK

G’day NOPE .....Not One Puff Ever.... (replace Ever with Min,Hour, Day as required).

NOPE!!!

Nope

NOPE

Yeah...I think it's amazing how little is still known about how nicotine ruins the developing young mind and damages the psyche. Maybe if we had more concrete info on that, more evidence could be presented to young people about how smoking/vaping harms your cognitive and mental health NOW, as a deterrent. That might help some kids to quit or never start.

Hi Overcome! You will definitely make it through that phase. Just hold steady and try to distract yourself from it. It will get easier and easier, you will see!

NOPE

Haha it would be nice to just blitz it away, right? I actually do sometimes forget I ever smoked. Then I realize I did and think, wow, I'm over the 3 years clean woohoo! Other times I get a quick crave, and I marvel at it as it passes from one brain cell to another and then disappears!

Nope!!

Hey Quit Train Gang! This is not meant to be medical advice but just my opinion based on my experience. I think long-term, regular use of nicotine causes depression! I say this because I became a regular smoker at the age of 14, and I came down with a low-level depression around the age of 21. Not bad enough to stop me from living, but just enough so that I was less happy-go-lucky than usual. I also noted that my best friend in school, who became a regular smoker with me, came down with a much more pronounced depression only a couple years into our smoking careers. Neither of us had any bad events in our lives other than having started smoking as young girls. Fast forward all these years later, and having learned to live with the "background" depression so well that I forgot about it, I can now report that the depression is fully gone now after 3 years of being smoke and nicotine free! I remember going through a really intense period of the blues during months 5 through 9 of quitting smoking -- the "no man's land" phase I guess, where I felt really down and thought, "Gosh, this no nicotine thing is truly depressing!" But that was a short-term phase that can happen when people quit smoking, I've read. The other, nearly life-long, low-level depression that miraculously, recently lifted now that I have been off nicotine for a few years -- I am convinced I acquired it through smoking! Anybody else think smoking / nicotine made them depressed?

NOPE!

Hi DenaliBlues! Thanks for a very thoughtful answer. And congratulations on your first year smoke free! Your first 2 bullets really resonated with me. And I agree that there is no light-bulb moment where the depression or what have you is suddenly gone, but rather one day you realize that damage is no longer there, and you feel whole again!

Great posts...certainly gives food for thought... I too was a smoker from 11 years old . Interesting what my non smoker brain would be like ..

-4 (bc O did a -4, and mac shoulda done a -3) ….I mean sticks have to rely on chicks for everything don’t they

Confused what is life all about

Remember when remember when I lost my mind When you least expect it..

Wear clean underwear Remember when

NOPE…

How delightful to have 7 years as an exsmoker. Keep living the dream, Boo! Best to you and yours.

....deepened her resolve to keep the Sharpie markers away from her toddler. In case of an emergency, always...

Congratulations on the 7 year quit. Best wishes for you and your family.

-5...sticks losing it !!!

Late but still, Happy 7 years off the stogies, Boo! Thanks for all your support and wisdom here on the Train! Wow, much money saved, right! Woohoo never look back!

So sorry that the roller coaster has got you down today. I hope your breathing eases soon. As I was quitting, my emotions were very raw. Negative feelings I was used to suppressing with smoking went haywire for a while. But things evened out. Stick with your quit, definitely get support, be kind to yourself, and keep the faith!

I don't forget I used to smoke but I rarely think about smoking ever again. Plus, I rarely have any cravings to smoke at all.

A thought ... Im here everyday talking about smoking.. Do i ever feel like lighting up.. Never ..that speaks volumes ..!!

This has occasionally driven me nuts. Especially when it first started happening. It started a few months ago. Is anyone else having this? I smell cigarette smoke sometimes, when there is nothing there. It has happened at work. It has happened in my apartment and car. It has happened when I was shopping in a store. It has even happened while walking in the park with my dog, Sofia. At first, I'd think that someone was near me or had walked by me and that person was a smoker. It's happened often enough and in such a variety of locations and situations, that I think I'm imagining it. I Googled it, and apparently it is called phantosmia. I have tinnitus, so I hear something that isn't there. I supposed it's logical to think that I could be smelling something that isn't there, too. If I'm going to smell something that isn't there, why couldn't it be a pine forest on a hot summer day (childhood memory), instead of my old, dirty, smelly habit? One of life's mysteries. I'm going to work on that pine tree scent. I had summer weeks in the Sawtooth Mountains at a cabin when I was a child. I remember the scent. I long for the scent. I'm going to work on having that scent, instead of cigarette smoke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantosmia Interesting......

that dildo I only have room for