Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms

What kinds of smoking withdrawal symptoms can smokers feel after they quit smoking? What is the degree of these quit smoking symptoms? It it intense enough that it force otherwise rational people to go back to smoking?

I explore these questions and many others in the articles below.

Let me set the record straight.

There is no such thing as the tobacco withdrawal syndrome.
The real reason smoking seems hard to stop is because of nicotine addiction.
The quoted withdrawal symptoms in many publications are nearly all grossly exaggerated or untrue.
Emphasis on the difficulties of quitting and awful withdrawals symptoms is discouraging, pointless and counter-productive.

Why it’s almost impossible to quit tobacco

You could be forgiven for thinking that it's almost impossible to quit tobacco if you look at the website of the cheerfully named American Cancer Society: A subheading raises the ominous question: Why is it so hard to quit tobacco? Well, that’s encouraging for a start. Quitting tobacco is so hard. Now we find out why: Stopping or [...]

Gabriel Symonds2022-01-21T01:07:40+00:0026 May 2020|Categories: Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

The Tragedy of Smoking – Part II

One of my smoker patients said to me, ‘The pleasure of smoking may be an illusion, but it’s a very nice illusion!’ It is really? It’s no illusion, and certainly wouldn't be nice, if you contracted a smoking-induced disease. Yet it’s extraordinary the lengths to which smokers will go to justify their smoking. Here’s what some of them [...]

Gabriel Symonds2022-12-06T00:36:20+00:0019 September 2019|Categories: Nicotine Addiction, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

Why Doctors Should Quit Being Involved in Smoking Cessation

As part of my continuing efforts to keep up to date in the practice of medicine I subscribe to a generally very good online publication from America called, appropriately enough, UpToDate®. They send bi-weekly reminders of the latest research, and in today’s issue a section on e-cigarettes caught my eye. In America they are, rightly in my view, [...]

Gabriel Symonds2022-01-20T01:26:36+00:0012 January 2017|Categories: E-Cigarettes, Nicotine Replacement Therapy, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

The Fear of Not Smoking

A little while ago I was waiting in a queue to change some money at Haneda Airport when I noticed a strong smell of tobacco. At first I thought it was coming from someone nearby, because the clothes of a heavy smoker can reek of tobacco, but then I realised I was standing outside the Smoking Room. Periodically, [...]

Gabriel Symonds2023-02-19T23:47:52+00:009 January 2017|Categories: Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms and Readiness to Quit

What are nicotine withdrawal symptoms? I have done a survey of the records of the last one hundred patients I treated for smoking cessation in face-to-face sessions. These records contain near-verbatim accounts of what patients say in reply to open-ended questions, since I have found this is the best way to gain an understanding of what is going [...]

Gabriel Symonds2018-06-14T07:43:32+00:003 January 2017|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

Why Cigarettes ‘Go With a Drink’

Except they don’t. But this is what smokers often say. Let me put it slightly differently: why cigarettes go with a drink—or with anything else you happen to be doing (or not doing)—every forty minutes of every day if you’re a twenty-a-day smoker, or pro rata if you smoke more or fewer than twenty cigs daily. Gentle reader, [...]

Gabriel Symonds2020-06-06T23:55:22+00:0017 July 2016|Categories: Smoking Health Effects, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

How Not to Stop Smoking – Part II

What does the US National Cancer Institute have to say about stopping smoking? On their website there’s a long section titled ‘How To Handle Withdrawal Symptoms and Triggers When You Decide To Quit Smoking’. This implies that you may indeed suffer such symptoms and that ‘triggers’ are also something you will need to be aware of. These are [...]

Gabriel Symonds2019-05-10T01:34:46+00:0026 June 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Patches, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

Why Do Smokers Smoke?

The other night I was eating with a friend in a local restaurant—non-smoking of course—and had occasion to observe my fellow diners. There was a party of what are known in Japan as ‘salarymen’ (company employees), consisting of about ten middle-aged people who were evidently enjoying themselves with good food and drink and animated conversation. But in the [...]

Gabriel Symonds2021-01-16T12:25:28+00:0024 May 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

Oh the Pangs, the Pangs!

I stopped smoking more than fifty years ago when I attended a teaching round on the chest ward of the hospital where I trained. Nonetheless, for professional purposes I subscribed to the NHS ‘Smokefree’ motivational emails. Except they aren’t. This is discussed in my new book, Smoking is a Psychological Problem. Once you’re on their mailing list they [...]

Gabriel Symonds2023-03-30T07:16:15+00:004 May 2016|Categories: Smoking Health Effects, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

How to Keep Smoking

On opening the cover of the august organ Tobacco Control of November 2015, I was confronted with what at first glance looked like an ad for a packet of washing powder. Closer inspection, however, revealed it’s an illiterate puff for 'extra strength gum for enhanced craving relief'. In other words, it’s for chewing gum containing 6mg of the poison nicotine [...]

Gabriel Symonds2022-02-09T05:07:48+00:0022 December 2015|Categories: Best Ways to Quit Smoking, Nicotine gum, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|