After one stops smoking, it might be difficult to quit. They undergo extreme symptoms of withdrawal, which is one of the more difficult health effects of smoking. Withdrawal symptoms come up in people as changes in their mood/mood swings, their behavior, as well as their body language. They appear after you stop smoking and start smoking again. Many of these occur when you don’t get the amount of nicotine—the additive that it was getting while you smoked. Many opt to use nicotine patches, gum, lozenges, mouth sprays, and inhalators to diminish the power of the withdrawal symptoms.
Major symptoms of withdrawal and the effects of smoking are:
- The urge to smoke
- Depression
- Difficulty in sleeping
- Anger, irritability, and frustration
- Anxiety
- Difficulty in concentrating
- Restlessness
- Decreased heart rate
- Increased appetite and weight gain
- Decreased adrenaline and cortisol
A few of these symptoms may appear at quitting. Some show mild symptoms while others show severe. The withdrawal symptoms appear within the first 24 hours and peak during the first week. Most of the symptoms fade or disappear after a month. There are a few cases where the smoker has continued to feel the withdrawal symptoms and its ups and downs for several weeks. They feel the same even after six months of quitting smoking.
Other signs
- There are other symptoms and effects of quitting smoking that have been reported by some people like coughing, sneezing, headache, earache, sore throat, deafness, and feeling slightly off-color. A few also experience mouth ulcers, bowel disturbance, constipation, drowsiness, or fatigue.
- Cravings and the desire to smoke can be because of nicotine withdrawal. It can be triggered by things you may have heard or linked smoking to.
- Triggers are linked to places you smoked or people you smoked with, habits, routines, meals, drinking coffee, or talking on the phone.
- Some have an occasional urge to smoke long after they have given up smoking. When you are doing other things, the trigger and craving to smoke become less.