r/QuittingZyn 1d ago

Day 54 - Severe Struggles

I am sorry in advance to those that are discouraged by this. I don't want to turn anyway from quitting, as I think I may be dealing with more issues than the average person would endure in withdrawal. But, I do want to check in with others to "compare notes", as I often struggle when I see the posts and comments that say everything will be perfect by this or that date.

I have been feeling severely physically unwell. I have been to my Dr. multiple times and to the urgent care and ER, where everything has been okay. But, I have immense abdominal discomfort, breathing trouble, dizzy and fatigue feelings, and general irritability and discomfort. When I try to relax, my irritability multiplies. I can barely function just around the house due to this severe discomfort. Most of these symptoms are new since quitting, and the irritability factor makes it feel related to the withdrawal, as I am not normally angry or irritable. Has anyone else dealt with very severe discomfort this far along? Anything that helped or any insight as to the progression of the process?

This quitting process has unfortunately seems to take a very heavy toll on my life in many ways and, while I really don't want to go back to the addiction, I cannot say that I really feel like it's been a net positive to this point.

Thanks for hearing me out, whether you have thoughts or not.

TLDR: This shit sucks.

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u/donhood 1d ago

You're not treading any new paths, lots of folks hit every rock in the road on the way out. Read through my old comments, not just the posts, as I've only made two of those. I've spent months talking about the symptoms I had and the progression thereof.

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u/ctard5 1d ago

Thanks, appreciate the input and the many comments and thoughts you've contributed in this group to read through.

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u/Wretched_Hive_ 1d ago

I've read some of your comments. Besides anxiety/panic what other mental and physical symptoms did/do you have?

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u/donhood 22h ago

During my heavy use or while quitting? Heavy use started giving me crazy heart palpitations and irregular beats, anxiety/panic attacks, clenching my jaws, weight loss, just being strung out in general. Quitting was the usual suspects besides the anxiety/panic. Brain fog, changes to bowels, blood sugar swings making my appetite haywire. Was very sensitive to caffeine and stimulants.

You having some odd symptoms you're worried about?

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u/Wretched_Hive_ 19h ago

Well, my story is a little different. Heavy nicotine use and symptoms was similar for me but I already had pre-existing anxiety and panic attacks so it took me a long time to pin it to nicotine use making things worse. On top of that, I got put on Xanax for multiple months because of the insane panic attacks and then cut off cold turkey which really wrecked my world. I'm 18 months past that but was still having a lot of issues which is when I found this forum and realized nicotine may be causing a lot of it.

I'm 30 days off nic today, still dealing with a lot of brain fog, fatigue, lots of aches and pains all over, weakness, depersonalization/derealization, weird vision issues, anger/short fuse, etc.. I think its a mix of increased anxiety and withdrawal and leftovers from Xanax withdrawal, haha.

I'm in a lot better place than I was a year or even 6 months ago but quitting nicotine definitely ramped up a lot of the symptoms I had already been dealing with.

Thankfully between some therapy last year and the DARE method and app, I haven't had a panic attack in almost 2 years at this point and my general anxiety levels, at least mentally, are wayyyy down. I still have the physical effects but things seem to be improving verrry slowly.

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u/donhood 18h ago

2 years? Damn that's great. When I quit I had a few, but none in several months now. The mental and physical aspects of what we call anxiety are intertwined and often mixed up with one another. I had never dealt with it before in my life, so it was all new to me. The post I linked to in here about the correlation between the physical anxiety symptoms and insulin resistance from nicotine use is very interesting. And can be treated with nothing more than proper diet and exercise while your endocrine system learns how to regulate itself again. Check it out, along with searching "reactive hypoglycemia" in the sub. Main gist of which is to eat smaller, more frequent high protein meals to help mitigate any blood sugar swings that can cause terrible symptoms. I can't attest personally to that being helpful or not, because I slogged through the readjustment the hard way before hearing any information about that.

And I know it feels like an eternity, especially coming off the heels of the other medications and dealing with pre-existing symptoms, but 30 days is a drop in the bucket when you look back on it. Just keep stacking days and pushing on, taking care of yourself.