How Your Personality Changes When You Quit Smoking
Because you needed one more reason to quit.
fongbeerredhot / Shutterstock Smoking kills. This is not news. My late grandmother, an ardent devotee of her cigs, used to call them coffin nails.
If you smoke, you should probably quit. It's just something you have to do for yourself and the people around you.
If you don't care that you are slowly killing yourself, here's some more motivation to chew on: according to science, smoking is actually ruining your personality.
You may not even notice anymore that you have mood swings that just about gives everyone in your life whiplash whenever they are around you.
In the study conducted by the University of Missouri, a group of smokers was found to rate high for two fabulous qualities — impulsivity and neuroticism.
You know, acting without thinking and being anxious, moody, and paranoid. Fun times had by all!
The study also found that those who quit smoking in their study demonstrated a dramatic decrease in these qualities.
So yes, once you stop smoking, you can expect personality changes after quitting smoking.
How you come across to other people will change and you will become so much more approachable. Not to mention that quitting smoking will also make you feel so much happier!
You'd be surprised how much the drama in your life will decrease once you quit smoking.
A bout of impulsivity is fine every now and again, but it's no way to live your life. Once you quit smoking, you will have a much clearer thought process.
Oh my god, I promised myself when I quit smoking that I would never become one of those self-righteous people, and now here I am urging you to quit.
I wasn't nice when I smoked. I mostly attribute my attitude to being in my early twenties, moving to New York, and going to grad school. Those are conditions that do not lead to a naturally happy-go-lucky existence.
The study group researched by Missouri was made up of people between the ages of 18 to 35.
That's one heck of an age group demographic.
Think about how you were when you were 18 versus how you were even a handful of months later. That's an age rife with constant changes and lots of highs and lows!
Life is hard when you're actually becoming an adult, you don't need to add chemical stress into the equation at all.
Scientists say that once you reach the age of 35, your personality is essentially "locked".
That's part of what makes quitting cigs later in life so challenging. Stuff like cravings, impatience, and angry outbursts are no longer just side effects of the cigarettes, they have become part of who you are. It's this shift in identity that a lot of smokers have a real problem with.
Ditch the cigs.
And don't vape either, but mainly because I don't want you to look like an uncaring person in public.
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer, podcaster and former Senior Editor of Pop Culture at Newsweek.