Please understand that smoking is an addiction, not a habit. A person is nicotine free in 72 hours and may be able to break a habit, or form a new one, it 21 days, but addiction recovery is not that quick for most people.

Nicotine is the most addictive drug known. The actual neurochemical processes of nicotine addiction are almost identical to cocaine addiction.

When you had your first cigarette, the nicotine stimulated an increase of the neurotransmitter dopamine in your brains pleasure/reward centers. This gave an ahhh feeling to the brain that may have been imperceptible to your consciousness. The pleasure/reward centers are in the most primitive parts of your brain; the places that instinct, reflex, and the fight-or-flight response reside. They are not the most intelligent parts. When the nicotine level in your blood dropped after finishing that first cigarette, the pleasure/reward centers lost their stimulation and the brain began wanting that ahhh again. Every time you fed nicotine to your P/R centers, your brain was happy. When it went into nicotine deprivation, it was unhappy. So you kept lighting up, increasing the frequency over time.

Eventually, your brain was over stimulated by nicotine and began shutting down parts of the P/R centers in an attempt to regain a normal level of pleasure/reward response. Well, this just made you smoke even more and the brain shut down more areas, and this process continued until a balance was achieved. This is typically around 20 40 mg of nicotine a day, about 1 2 packs a day. At this point you went into maintenance smoking, smoking to maintain the dopamine level in your brain to stave off the nicotine fit. True pleasure from smoking ceased.

Then you quit, the nicotine level in your blood dropped to zero in about three days. OMG!!! Without the nicotine stimulation, your dopamine levels dropped to lower than they had been in a long time. You literally went into a neurochemical depression and that is where you are now. You are now operating at dopamine levels below what never-smokers operate at. Things that used to make you happy may not anymore, at least not as much. They still trigger the P/R centers to release dopamine, but there arent enough receptors operating anymore (the brain shut them down, remember?) to reach the point you feel pleasure. So you are operating at a reward deficit.

The good news is, this will heal over time. The bad news is, it will take time. Theres a rule of thumb that you must be quit for a year before you can say you are truly quit. Some believe you must experience the memory triggers of all four seasons and I agree with that. But I also believe it takes about a year for the brain to reactivate the P/R centers that were shut down. So the best thing you can do is reward yourself often. Rewards do not have to be expensive or even cost anything at all. Window shopping, a walk in the park, taking time to watch a movie on TV, or taking the scenic route home can all be rewards. All a reward has to do is make you feel special and happy.

Just as physical exercise restores and rejuvenates atrophied muscle tissue, so will rewards help the brain rebuild its pleasure/reward centers. Just think of rewards as free weights for the brain.

Try not to get discouraged. I recommend focusing on the positive benefits quitting brings: to your health, to your finances, to you socially, to you personally - whatever the positives are for you, now is the time to keep them foremost in your mind. They will help you see that quitting IS worth it. It is also important to live in the moment, to take your quit one day at a time, or one minute at a time, and to resist the urge to rush ahead of the story and imagine that you are going to have a lot of negative feelings and experiences that you may not have. As Shevie said, it is really important to reward yourself for your quit - it will make the experience more pleasant and it will help counteract the downer moments.

Your Doctor will give you something for the depression, it happened to me last week and I been quit for 159 days. Do anything you can to protect your quit. Your life depends on it.

Hey Kate, I have smoked for 27 years, I'm 43 and have had many, many failed attempts! This time I'm gonna take 1 day at a time and not put pressure on myself, you need to look to the end of this evening and not as yourself as a life long non smoker, that will come in time! On the bright side you will not be outside in the rain and cold this winter, when you want to have a smoke when your out on the town!

Paul