Smoking rates higher among the mentally ill

THIS IS CRAZY TALK. 

 

CAN I BORROW YOUR LIGHTER ??

So if I smoke weed AND cigs, does that mean I'm twice as crazy?

That's why obama smokes!

It's because people with mental illness don't have good coping skills and substance abuse is a way of coping.  Yes, cigarettes are legal but people who are smokers are substance abusers, pure and simple. 

 

It's no different than us commenters on these news stories.  Commentating is a way for us to unwind and get our tensions out.  I have a feeling that most of us who are regular commenters have some form of mental illness or another. 

it's a 'comfort' response.

It is a well-known fact that people with depression, anxiety, personality disorder, etc......all have brain chemistry imbalances and usually, other hormone imbalances.  Probably the same imbalances that cause us to become more "hooked" on substances, especially cigarettes.  I do know that it was found (back in the '90s) that most people who are VERY hooked on cigarettes (and also smoke more, more times of day or night) that these people are more lacking in naturally occurring dopamine in the brain.  Dopamine is also the substance lacking in Parkinson's disease, which causes all those symptoms you've either seen or heard about.  Many people in the U.S. and elsewhere have been treated for depression, mania, and the like.  Depression is one of the expected symptoms of not only nicotine withdrawal, but of withdrawing for the rest of your life from the habit or action of smoking.  I am not a professional, but have studied up, mainly on account of my own block of time in the past, where I suffered from extreme anxiety, depression, and further hypomanic bouts.  What they found, years after this time, was a slow diseased thyroid gland, that had formerly been running past full speed ahead, later slowing down.  This is typical of Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, specifically that form of thyroid disorder, and, no, it can't be cured.  Grave's Disease (the thyroid running at an ungodly clip) is also becoming very suspect for full blown mania and hypomania, and, no, that one can't be cured either.  Either way, the thyroid will run in an up-down up-down fashion, sometimes for many many years, sometimes for a few short months, before it finally collapses into a state of never working correctly again, with nodules and such inside of it.  These are both autoimmune diseases, with "self" destruction immune factors.  They have found that stopping smoking in an already active smoker of some years will cause the discharge of thyocinate (we know what cyanide is, right?).  I'm probably being overly serious and long-winded about this because thyroid disease is one of the most common diseases around, but one of the least understood among so many doctors, that it is often overlooked by doctors of psychiatry and every other doctor in practice, for ANY cause.  I am one of these people, and, many many years ago, I thought that I was losing my mind for a very long time, at least until the thyroid completely failed.  Before that, mania, after the failure, depression, and no, it was the thyroid disease FIRST, not the other way around.  I had become a VERY heavy smoker because my body chemistry raced along all the time, even when I was supposed to be sleeping.  I consider this important enough, for other people, to be very long-winded about it.  Sorry if you're asleep now, lol!

What a bunch of crap.

There are people that have written some comments overall, and I have to wonder if any of them are smokers, after reading this new study and reading their comments!