Smoking And Stress

Smoking And Stress

Many smokers say they smoke because of stress
In a survey carried out by Cancer Research UK (2009) 47 per cent of people said they smoked to cope with stress. Stress is often given as a reason why people who have successfully quit relapse back into smoking. It makes sense to understand how smoking and withdrawal affects stress.

Smoking creates stress
Nicotine from smoking actually causes stress. When smokers become addicted to nicotine, they then suffer withdrawal symptoms between each dose (each smoke). Irritability and bad moods are just some of the symptoms of withdrawal. Smokers may not even realise that their mood changes the further they get from the last cigarette. Withdrawal symptoms are experienced as stress.

When the smoker gets their next "fix", they feel as if they are getting some stress relief- when in fact they are simply getting rid of their withdrawal symptoms. This pattern is repeated many thousands of times for smokers, and understandably they begin to believe that smoking itself is a form of stress management. Once people quit, though, and they get over the first few weeks, their overall mood and stress levels improve.

The stress relief from withdrawal that nicotine gives (by increasing levels of the dopamine in the brain) is short-term. Research has shown that smoking causes other stress-related changes in the brain. It actually reduces the amount of another stress-relief hormone- serotonin. Smokers become deficient in serotonin and suffer higher levels of stress.

Nicotine acts on special "receptors" in the brain and in other body organs. This is how it becomes addictive. But other, physical reactions take place. These include the increase of heart rate and blood pressure. Nicotine also increases metabolic rate.

For those who are dependent smokers, the top-ups of nicotine from smoking are needed to just to feel normal, to counter-balance the hidden stress of being in regular withdrawal. Cigarettes don't make you feel better than you would feel as a non-smoker. In fact the science points to the fact that smokers are more stressed than non-smokers, and that stress levels are reduced after quitting.

It is the speed and dose of nicotine from cigarettes that lock the dependent smoker into this stress cycle. Nicotine replacement therapy (patches, gum etc) doesn't provide the hit that a cigarette does, and can be used to help you break the stressful Smoke-Hit-Withdrawal cycle.

If you smoke because it's a way of dealing with stress, you may find it harder to quit. So it makes sense to understand how else you can manage your stress, and that smoking won't solve whatever it is you are stressed about- it just adds to your stress in its own way.

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