Does the use of nicotine relieve stress?
My brother is currently quitting cigarettes. We've talked a little bit about our quits recently and discussed the urge to "use" during stressful events in life after quitting. I believe that everyone who uses nicotine has come to view it as a stress reliever. But I believe that the stress relief we've come to believe it gives is really just a conditioned response we've learned over years of use. After using NIC to relieve the stress of withdrawal day after day year after year; when the ordinary non-withdrawal related stress of life hits us, due to conditioning, we just automatically reach for NIC to relieve that stress as well. Here's a good movie that talks about this at minute 2:50.
What is the single best thing you can do to quit smoking (Beware, this vid endorses NRTs, take what you can use and leave the rest).
Under the "Nicotine and Science" topic here at KTC I found a link to this article
A neurobiological basis for nicotine withdrawal Midways, down into the article is the following, (I think the last sentence sums up the entire quote):
"NICOTINE, STRESS, AND NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
There is a strong correlation between stress and cigarette smoking, and it is clear that stress results in increased cigarette smoking (2, 18). Although cigarette smokers report that they smoke to help cope with stress, this perception does not necessarily mean that smoking actually reduces stress compared with nonsmokers not smoking. There is evidence that smoking helps to modulate mood (perhaps through serotonergic actions), relax skeletal muscles, and relieve pain, and that it has other effects that may be stress-reducing (2, 10).
However, smokers may perceive and report that smoking reduces stress because abstinence from smoking causes stress and because cigarette smoking relieves withdrawal effects in smokers (i.e., negative reinforcement) (19). Therefore, smoking may be stress-reducing compared with the stress of withdrawal, but smoking might not reduce stress compared with controls (i.e., smokers not smoking). Benwell and Balfour (20) reported that nicotine withdrawal results in increased corticosterone, but the importance of that discovery to the understanding of nicotine abstinence (i.e., the connection between mechanisms of stress and mechanisms of nicotine withdrawal) was not fully appreciated at the time. Other investigators suggested that stress alters nicotine pharmacokinetics (i.e.,
nicotine self-administration increases under stress because stress decreases the availability of nicotine) and that stress alters nicotine pharmacodynamics (i.e., nicotine becomes more rewarding under stress) (2, 15). A few investigators (e.g., refs. 21 and 22) have focused on nicotine withdrawal, and there has been speculation about the biological commonalities of stress and drug abuse (2). However, most of the neurobiology of nicotine emphasizes the actions of nicotine rather than the actions of abstinence from nicotine. The brilliance of George et al. (3) was to pick up on the connection (as has been done with other drugs of addiction) between stress and withdrawal and to conduct careful and programmatic experiments.
Smokers may perceive and report that smoking reduces stress because abstinence from smoking causes stress."
Day 121
Nicotine is a stimulant, the only stress nicotine relieves is the stress it causes, withdrawal.
