Anger
According to the Ward study, on average, anger peaks at about 48 hours (after 2 days) and within 72 hours is beginning to return to near pre-cessation levels.
Adrenaline stimulation was a non-addictive but now missing element of our nicotine high. The rational mind can use anger to invoke the body's fight or flight response, thus stimulating an adrenaline release.
Anger can also reflect the boiling point of anxiety-driven fears, or a normal emotional phase of any significant sense of loss (see Chapter 10 - Emotional Recovery).
And never use anger or an argument as a sick ploy to get your drug back, allowing an addict to blame someone else. Remember the four words that can end almost any argument: "You are exactly right," without adding any ifs, ands, or butts.[1]
The good news is that it only takes a couple of days of recovery patience to begin sensing improvement. Look for ways to vent frustrations that won't cause needless hurt to family, loved ones, friends, co-workers, or pets.
Walk, run, vent into a pillow, find a punching bag, bend a piece of steel, or bite your lip if need be. Share your feelings with your family, friends, or other support network. And be sure to let every person you spend significant time around know that you've stopped using, as irrational behavior could lead them to believe that you're on drugs or having a breakdown.
Impatience
Whether impatience is an independent recovery symptom, or simply an expected result associated with anxiety, anger and restlessness, is subject to debate. What isn't debatable is the fact that as nicotine addicts we were each conditioned by our dependency to be super impatient when it came to satisfying wanting, urges, and craves.
As active users, we were each in full control in responding to and quickly satisfying those early urges announcing that it was once again time for more. Satisfaction within 10 seconds if a slave to inhaled nicotine, we didn't need patience.
Increasingly, neither do users of snuff, chew or dip. Nicotine delivery engineering is mastering the science of using alkaline pH buffering and abrasives to substantially shorten the time needed for nicotine to penetrate oral mouth tissues and enter the bloodstream.[2]
Nicotine laden smoke or vapor would travel into our mouth and throat, past our larynx (housing our vocal cords), down four inches of trachea or windpipe, and then branch into our left and right lungs via our two main bronchial tubes.
Once inside each lung, smoke descended down ten smaller bronchial tubes before striking an estimated 240 million thinly walled air sacs called alveoli.[3] Here nicotine passed through each alveoli membrane and into the bloodstream's pulmonary veins.
Inside the bloodstream, nicotine was pumped over to our heart where, between beats, it collected in the left atrium. The next beat would pump it through the left ventricle before being ejected upward into the aorta.
There, it branched and traveled up to our brain via either the carotid or vertebral arteries. A small molecule, it easily passed through the brain's protective blood-brain barrier.
The amount of nicotine from that first puff would be sufficient to occupy up to 50% of our brain's nicotinic-type acetylcholine receptors. Activating these receptors would trigger a burst of dopamine, which would elevate background or tonic dopamine, while simultaneously generating an "aaah" wanting relief sensation.
When smoked or vaped, the entire journey takes less than 10 seconds. If sucked, chewed or dipped, the oral nicotine user's impatience is satisfied in a minute or two, depending on the brand's pH buffers or added abrasives.
Is it any wonder that we nicotine addicts have very little patience when it comes to satisfying recovery-related wanting, urges, craves and anxieties?
So, how do we develop the patience to navigate the 3 days needed to move beyond peak physical withdrawal, the up to 5 minutes before a cue-induced crave episode peaks in intensity, or the duration patience needed to allow new nicotine-free memories and time to bury old replenishment memories?
We do so by staying focused on here and now, just one moment and challenge at a time.
References:
2. Benowitz NL, Systemic absorption and effects of nicotine from smokeless tobacco, Advances in Dental Research, September 1997, Volume 11(3), Pages 336-341.
3. Ochs M et al, The number of alveoli in the human lung, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, January 1, 2004, Volume 169(1), Pages 120-124.
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