Depression and Smoking

I smoked a cigarette Saturday. The day was rainy and gloomy, daylight was waning and the winter months loom. I was so low you’d need a shovel to scrape me off the floor. I didn’t care about how hard I’ve worked to quit or if I disappointed anyone.

I’ve mentioned before that, for many years, I’ve had major depression. Unfortunately, significant efforts to treat the disorder have been only moderately successful–at times. I knew well before my quit date that depression was going to pose a major obstacle to my efforts to kick the habit.

Nicotine in Action
Smoking and depression are strangely interrelated. Following are a few interesting facts:

• Nicotine stimulates the brain’s reward system and triggers the release of dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter. Thus, smokers may use nicotine to self-treat depression.
• In a study of major depression at Columbia University, 60 percent of the participants were smokers. Only 18 percent of the general population smokes.
• Smokers who’ve had at least one episode of major depression are less likely to quit successfully and more likely to relapse.
• Several studies have shown the people who’ve never experienced major depression are twice as likely to develop depression after they start smoking.
• In people who’ve experienced major depression, kicking the habit can trigger severe depression.
• A study at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati found that smoking teens are four times more likely to become clinically depressed than nonsmoking teens.

I’ll be very honest in saying I’m not sure how to manage this situation now that we’re heading toward winter, a sure-fire depression trigger for me.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 5:27pm and is filed under Quit Smoking diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.