Anxiety Disorder and smoking
While I'm fighting with my anxiety and smoking issues, I want to write down my thoughts and experiences before getting started, so it might be inspiring for others as well as for myself. I hope I will read this again few months later, and will smile realizing how scared and hopeless I was, when I started... and how much I could change my own life with a simple but hard decision: I don't need pain, I don't want to worry anymore for my life!!
For few years now I have been smoking like a real addict, I have my rituals of smoking: on the way to work, on the way back, after lunch, after dinner, and if there is a party with friends...
Since 2015 I started to feel chest pain and started to worry about my well being, so in October that year I stopped smoking until Christmas, when I went home and started to smoke again with my parents while we had a few drinks as celebration. The bad feeling was gone totally at that time, and didn't think about it for very long. In 2017, on Christmas I didn't spend my vacation at home, and that occured me bad feelings again, which made me go to hospital, see psychologist, so I tried to change my life with healthier foods, drinks and started to swim, to do yoga and more exercises at home, I travelled a lot as well. It didn't seem that I have any issues with my health, but I occasionally have panic attacks that last for days. I feel pain and numbness in my arms and legs (mostly on the left side), sometimes chest pain and headache.
Right now I made a decision, I will try to quit smoking before my next birthday, I will be 28 on the 10th of January, 2018. I chose the "Cut down" method, and I will definitely stick to the plan. I am afraid, I am scared, I do not want to worry about my health, especially when all my doctors say that I have no physical problems. I want to keep myself healthy and balanced.
Follow my stories to get inspiration, and let's have a better life!! :)
Well done!! I have anxiety too and couldn’t give up by myself so I tried champix and it has worked for me. 40 days no smoking now.
You will do quit one day but don’t allow fear of your health to be the reason for quitting. Sounds weird but us anxiety sufferers always return to our “coping” mechanism of smoking once our specific fear disappears. Which it will. Your mind will focus on another body part to worry about soon. Any who I’m blabbing now but all the best again!!
You have taken the first step toward freedom from nicotine! I quit 81 days ago, after several attempts over the years. i have an anxiety disorder as well. I always thought that cigarettes calmed me down, but now I know smoking only stops the nicotine receptors in the brain. Their signals to smoke made me more anxious.
Now that I am free of nicotine, I am not nearly as anxious. Oh, I still occasionally get upset or in a cycle of worrying, but I tell myself that nicotine never helps take away my anxiety or worries, it only adds to them.
You can do this, because you want a life without cigarettes!