The Cold Turkey Diaries: Days 1 and 2

As some of you may know I quit smoking yesterday (Dec. 21, 2010) and the body changes I'm experiencing, even already, are fascinating. So, I have decided to follow The Almighty Goldblum's example and keep a journal on how everything goes to help me and everyone else to understand what smoking really does. So, I am going to start by saying, last night I threw up a lot. Yes there was a lot of drinking involved but nothing I can't handle. I found out today that the nicotine patches I bought were too damn high in content and I suffered some sort of nicotine poisoning shortly after I took it off last night. I smoked camel lights for weeks up until this past weekend. The average amount of nicotine in a Camel Light is .7 to .9 mg. I smoked half a pack a day so I thought the step 2 patch of 14 mg was the right one...I was wrong. Pretty much via simple math I should have bought the step 3 patch of 7 mg. So, I'm totally patch-less today which isn't so bad. Fear and horror of nicotine is a wonderful quitting tool. So onto the science bits. I woke up today to see a face filled with acne. In day two of quitting my body is under stress, it also didn't help that my history of anxiety disorder went against me today causing even more stress. Now, onto the individual parts of the body.

circulatory
-Currently I'm experiencing some pretty intense dizziness. According to one website this is my brain adjusting to the rise in oxygen levels in my blood stream. More oxygen is reaching my brain and it's literally making me high.
- I'm experiencing minor leg pains and tingle fingers because my circulation is improving.

respiratory
-My chest is tight and I'm acquiring a cough. This is the cilia in my lungs fixing themselves and my body is pushing all the junk out.
-My voice is a little more hoarse than usual and my throat is sore. This is the skin in the back of my throat regenerating.

renal
-I'm peeing a lot. This is my body pushing poisons out of it.

mental
-There isn't that much irritability at the moment but anxiety is certainly at an all time high.
-Ansyness, I can't stop bouncing my foot up and down and actually it's the very reason why I started writing this. I also started writing this to help with the anxiety because if I can do research and understand the changes that are happening I won't think I'm dying.

That's it for now everyone! Stay tuned, I plan on updating this every other day if not every day.