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.

Smoking and Shame

Does the Symonds Method make smokers feel ashamed? Smokers, if they’re honest with themselves, are already ashamed by their apparent inability to stop poisoning themselves with tobacco fumes – a [...]

Gabriel Symonds2023-07-17T00:57:42+00:0011 March 2023|Categories: Nicotine Addiction, Quit Smoking, Smoking and vaping, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms, The Symonds Method|

Why Don’t People Just Stop Smoking?

This is the question posed by one Michael Burke. He has a doctorate in education and is a Certified Tobacco Treatment Specialist, no less. But I was set wondering what [...]

Gabriel Symonds2024-05-06T03:28:58+00:004 December 2022|Categories: Smoking and vaping, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms, Stop smoking|

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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