Smoking?

[TheEditor]

I've read a few of you quit smoking and it benefited your GAD or phobias. May I ask how so?

[forwells]

:o

Yes i would love to here this one also .

I smoke 50 a day and it makes me feel like shit but i am working a quit .

I recovered from anxiety but yet didnt quit ??

In fact i was warned not to quit while i was having huge anxiety as it would not be much help as it would add to the stress .

cheers kev :)

[Robbed]

I've never smoked myself. But from what I gather here, quitting smoking seems to have benefits when it comes to anxiety disorder. Many of these benefits probably have to do with eliminating the ups and downs associated with having nicotine levels in your body spike when smoking, drop after not smoking for a while, and then having them spike again after smoking again (and so on). However, some people are going to be affected by this MUCH more than others. Then there are psychological benefits. Quitting smoking means (among other things) not having to worry about needing to smoke in situations where you can't, not having to worry about running out of cigarettes, not having to worry about whether people might dislike you because you smoke, and not having to worry about the long-term dangers to your health resulting from smoking.

However, it should probably be emphasized that these are more long-term than short-term benefits. In the short term, quitting smoking is probably going to be a HORRIBLE thing for anxiety disorder. This is why SO many anxiety sufferers smoke and continue to do so despite the negatives. As far as quitting smoking with anxiety disorder, it is probably better to do so with a long taper rather than cold turkey. ESPECIALLY if you are a heavy smoker. Because if you try to quit cold turkey, the shock of doing so is probably going to make you both relapse and fear trying to quit again.

With all this said, it is certainly better to quit smoking than to continue to do so. Even if you CAN recover from anxiety disorder while smoking (and many people do), there are the other health benefits. Just be careful, though. I know that there is a popular notion that cold turkey is the ONLY way to quit smoking. But for an anxiety sufferer, it is probably not the best way. The REAL goal here is to be smoke-free. NOT to set a world's record for quitting faster than anyone else out there.