Quitting Smoking Causes Clinical Depression in Some People-Help me Prove it-Please : ) ?
Q.Im new to the newsgroup so if you'all have solved this question..bear with me. Only two people in my family have had Clinical depression. Me and My sister. We both smoke. She tried to quit first...using the patch. She became clinically depressed and didnt go for treatment for a year and a half(big mistake..well we didnt know what her problem was).
A.I have clinical depression too and it did get worse when I quit. The "worse" part of it went away, but it lasted about 5 months. I smoked over 25 years. What I do know is that our neurotransmitters sends the chemicals to our brain that we need...like dopamine. When we smoke, we damage them but they replenish (I think - you gotta ask a neurologist this kinda stuff to get the facts ma'am). Anyway, I know that it lightened up after about 5 months for me. People that don't have clinical depression before they quit sometimes get a case of quit depression. That is the rejeuvenation of the neuro's...(so I surmise) and it goes away in a shorter time. From what I was reading, it lasts 1 or 2 months on average, and if it lasts longer than that, then you could have clinical or manic depression. I think that is what you read when the term "underlying" depression was used. That is all it means. Smoking masks all kinds of ailments. Nicotine and carbon monoxide are 2 of the addictive chemicals in cigarettes, but geez, there are 4000 different ones that could be in that cigarette, so who knows? There is a list of what could be in your cigarette, and I am not sure if the link is here....but you might wanna check this link out for some other resources: http://www.ash.org.uk/html/factsheets.html I am just guessing though about the above, and you might want to call the American Cancer Society for some answers too. Also MayoClinic.com is a good source of info. As I understand it, Nicotine has anti-depressant properties. So if you are a depressed smoker and you quit smoking, you may feel more depressed. We smoke as a coping mechanism. Well, that's why we start smoking anyway. The truth is, we smoke because we are addicted to nicotine. We may kid ourselves into believing that it helps us, but it doesn't. It doesn't taste good. People say it relaxes them. That's not true either. Nicotine increases respirations and blood pressure...that doesn't sound very relaxing.
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