Quote:
Originally Posted by BeyondtheRainbow
Icare, you'l find this interesting I think....
I'm a non-smoker. I have never even tried one puff of a cigarette in my life. When I was about 33 I had a very bad episode where I started craving cigarettes to the point that I was really fighting to not borrow them from co-workers. If I hadn't known I'd be embarrassed trying to smoke the first time in front of co-workers I probably would have done it, I was very, very badly craving it.
I didn't and got on a new AP and when the dose went up enough I stopped craving it. Nobody had an explanation for this although my pdoc was intrigued.
I think my body knew somehow what might help. It was so weird. I've been on hefty doses of APs since and it never has repeated.
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Very interesting. The likely explanation is that you inhaled someone's cigarette smoke (everyone must've done that) and it had positive effects.
But another not unlikely explanation would be that some exposure to nicotine from inhaling someone else's cigarette smoke has made you ever so mildly addicted and any addiction gets worse when manic.
It's probably a combination of both. But just to not overly complicate things: it calms you (and only non-smokers might think that it has primarily to do with slow breathing: while true that that probably helps, it's nothing compared to what nicotine does; it just relaxes some processes and your muscles in your body) and that helps to counteract overactivity due to mania/psychosis.
Mania can be like a slow panic attack, spread out over months, non-affectual psychosis can start very much like a panic attack, still spread out a bit more though sometimes, only your anxiety is somewhat lessened, attenuated, by changes in perception and rationalising/representation of emotions.
But it modulates the activity of some messengers, like dopamine, and it's not at all unlikely that that helps in effect the same way as dopamine blockers, antipsychotics.