Part of what I do with smokers who want to stop is teach them emotional management and stress management techniques, and the reason that I do it is to improve their chances of remaining smokefree. I’ve been basing this on anecdotal evidence – that is, most people who come to me to stop smoking have stopped before, and most of them report that they went back to smoking because of a stressful time in their lives. A recent study provides some further backing for the idea.
It’s a University of California study into nicotine and aggression by Jean Gehricke and colleagues, published in Behavioral and Brain Functions 2009, 5:19 (Nicotine-induced brain metabolism associated with anger provocation, doi:10.1186/1744-9081-5-19). It was a small study (20 participants), but it included brain scan data. This showed that the parts of the brain related to anger and aggression were affected by nicotine patches, but not by a placebo patch, in a within-subjects study on nonsmokers. (“Within-subjects” means that all the participants experienced both conditions – nicotine and placebo – in a random order.)
The researchers’ theory is that at least some smokers are using nicotine to normalize the balance of their brains when it is disturbed by an anger reaction. It’s well-known that people with mental illnesses often use nicotine to self-medicate, and many smokers also claim to smoke to calm themselves down (despite the fact that nicotine arouses the body’s stress response). Irritability is a common complaint among people giving up smoking, and is reduced by nicotine patches.
The researchers found correlations between the behaviour of the participants in a simulated anger/retaliation task and the measured effects of the nicotine on the activation levels of particular brain areas related to emotion. This suggests that they are on the right track with their theory that nicotine contributes to emotional management for at least some smokers. They concluded, “Novel neurotherapeutic and behavioral treatments (e.g., anger management training) that affect the cortical and limbic brain areas may aid smoking cessation efforts in anger provoking situations that increase withdrawal and tobacco cravings.”
“Secondary gains” – what you get out of continuing the behaviour that you want to stop – are always important to look at any time you approach behaviour change. If emotional management is a common secondary gain from smoking – and it seems that it is – then teaching non-chemical emotional management techniques is a useful thing to do for people who want to stop smoking.
(That’s why my free stop-smoking ebook, How to Stop Smoking, recommends my free stress management course, Simple Stress Management Techniques.)
Technorati Tags: anger management, smoking, smoking cessation, nicotine, emotional management, stress management, brain scan, PET
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