Nicotine and Anxiety: Does Nicotine Cause Anxiety?

You know there’s a relationship between nicotine and anxiety. But does nicotine cause anxiety or help ease it? That’s the tricky thing. Technically, both.²

A lot of people get in the habit of reaching for pouches when they feel anxious. It’s a trap. While the pouch may provide some short-lived relief, the anxiety only comes back - worse than before. You then have to quiet the mental noise and physical restlessness with another pouch. It’s a slippery slope, and before you know it, you’re popping a pouch all day long just to feel normal.

We’re here to dig into the psychological and physiological explanations behind nicotine causing anxiety and show you how you can break the loop. It may not be the answer you’re hoping for, but the only way out is by tapering off nicotine altogether.

The good news is Shift’s low-dose nicotine pouches are designed as part of a gradual step-down program ranging from 40-100 days. Discover how Shift can help you manage your nicotine usage today.

Key Takeaways

Nicotine can create a sense of calm in the short term, but chronic use raises baseline anxiety.
It activates your stress response, raises cortisol, and trains your brain to associate nicotine with feeling normal.
One study found that the effect of quitting nicotine is comparable to antidepressant treatment.
Withdrawal anxiety peaks around the third day and slowly improves from there.
Tapering through lower strengths can soften the discomfort of quitting. Shift provides structure to help you get started.

Does Nicotine Cause Anxiety?

Whether your weapon of choice is pouches, vapes, or cigarettes, the end result is the same - nicotine dependence. So does nicotine cause anxiety? The short answer is yes, but we think you deserve the full story because it is quite a bit more nuanced.

Short-Term Anxiety Relief

We’d venture to guess you’ve used nicotine before if you’re here reading this guide, which is to say, you’ve probably felt that wave of relief come over you before from smoking a cigarette, a hit from a vape, or tossing in a ZYN or some other nicotine pouch.

Nicotine triggers a small dopamine release every time it hits your brain. It also temporarily boosts GABA, the neurotransmitter behind calming your nervous system. That’s the relaxation you feel from nicotine.

The calming effect can last anywhere from 15-30 minutes. A lot of people don’t actually try nicotine because they hear it’s good for anxiety (and be clear - it’s not). They just happen to try it and notice how good it feels. Then one day when they’re really anxious, they reach for a cigarette or pouch and discover the chaos fades away - albeit temporarily.

Nicotine Users Have Higher Cortisol Levels

Nicotine also activates your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. That’s the body’s central stress response system. Activating the HPA axis ramps up cortisol - the main stress hormone.

Cortisol is a problem. It messes with metabolism, weakens immunity, and interrupts sleep. That’s not to mention the strain it puts on your cardiovascular system over time.

Research shows that smokers have higher cortisol levels than nonsmokers on both workdays and weekends.1 The interesting part of that particular study, though, was that cortisol dropped back down to a healthy level when those same people quit.

Norepinephrine Stimulation

Norepinephrine gets stimulated by nicotine as well, and this sends the body into fight-or-flight mode. You might feel this in the form of “alertness.” It’s why so many people use nicotine to boost focus during the day.

But over a prolonged period of time, your nervous system spends more hours per day in a heightened state. That’s not normal. It takes a toll in the long run.

The Temporary Relief DOES NOT Outweigh Long-Term Consequences

The calming GABA effect from nicotine lasts just a few minutes. It’s very short-lived. The elevated cortisol and norepinephrine can stick around much longer, and the effects compound with each dose.

It’s a vicious cycle that only gets worse over time, according to Prof. Jayashri Kulkarni of Monash University. “The relationship between anxiety reduction and smoking is commonly seen in people who have an addiction to nicotine - hence the urge or craving to smoke is experienced as anxiety, which is relieved by smoking.”²

It’s a loop that plays out multiple times a day, every day, until you get a grip on nicotine and anxiety. You feel anxious because you need nicotine, so you use nicotine and feel better. But the anxiety comes back the moment the nicotine wears off.

What’s happening behind the scenes is more concerning. Your body dials back its own GABA production and turns its attention to stress hormones because it has learned that you’ll feed it nicotine when you feel stressed.

So, does nicotine cause anxiety? Yes, and there’s enough evidence at this point that it’s hard not to arrive at that conclusion. A systematic review of 47 studies showed links between nicotine and anxiety, panic disorder, agoraphobia, and PTSD.³

Does Anxiety Get Better When You Quit Nicotine?

This is probably what you really want to know. Will you feel less anxious if you break free from the nicotine cycle? Yes. But it tends to get worse before it gets better. That’s what keeps a lot of people stuck in the loop we described above.

A meta-analysis from back in 2014 pulled insights from 26 studies. It showed that people who quit smoking experienced a massive decrease in anxiety - a reduction on par with antidepressant treatment.4 Another review in 2021 confirmed that quitting for at least six weeks was associated with measurable improvements in anxiety, depression, and stress.⁵

Dr. Gemma Taylor was the lead author behind both reviews and summed it up for us. “Smokers often believe that cigarettes are the crutch they need when they feel low, but there is good reason to think that smoking is actually making them feel worse.”⁵

There’s this fear, whether you’re aware of it or it’s entirely subconscious, that quitting will make your anxiety worse. After all, it’s the only thing that helps you feel calm these days. But Dr. Taylor’s team found no evidence of that happening, even among people with existing psychiatric diagnoses.⁵ Nicotine-induced anxiety tends to resolve once you stop using the substance.

Now, we’re not saying it’s easy. The withdrawal window can be rough. But it’s the only thing standing between you and finally putting nicotine-caused anxiety in the past.

Tips on Managing Nicotine and Anxiety

Stop putting up with nicotine causing anxiety and then telling you that you need more to fix the issue. By now, you can clearly see the relationship between nicotine and anxiety. It won’t get better until you make meaningful changes in your life. Here are some tips to get started.

Preparing For Withdrawal Symptoms

Anxiety is one of the most commonly talked about nicotine withdrawal symptoms, but others include:

Irritability
Depressed mood
Difficulty concentrating
Increased appetite
Insomnia
Restlessness

Withdrawal typically starts within 4-24 hours of your last dose. This is why you usually don’t make it half the day before giving in and having another nicotine pouch. But the peak comes around the third day and tends to start easing from that point onward. You can do it!

Why Cold Turkey Isn’t the Way to Go

The withdrawal feels worse when you cut nicotine out cold turkey - meaning, you go from your normal habit of a handful of pouches or cigarettes every day to zero, overnight.

This is not the way we recommend attempting to quit nicotine. It has a much lower success rate, and even if you are successful, you’re making yourself more miserable than you need to.

Think back to the circular cycle of nicotine and anxiety: you use nicotine because you're anxious, quitting abruptly makes you more anxious, and you go back to nicotine. The better approach is to taper down using less and less nicotine over time.

Tapering on a Structured Schedule With Shift

Tapering replaces one large withdrawal event with a series of smaller steps. You’ll still feel withdrawal symptoms, but they tend to feel more manageable than if you’d quit cold turkey.

Shift takes all the uncertainty out of tapering down with structured reset plans:

40 days
60 days
100 days

You choose the terms of engagement, pick your nicotine starting strength, and our plans give you everything else you need to step down at your chosen pace. There are even zero nicotine pouches if you want to keep the habit for when cravings come around.

Learn more about how Shift works today, and see what a difference it can make in your journey.

Frequently asked questions

Does nicotine actually increase anxiety?

Yes, over time. A one-time dose might make anxiety feel better in the short term, but you’re slowly but surely raising your baseline stress levels and creating a dependence loop.

Will quitting nicotine reduce anxiety?

Yes, according to research, you can lower your baseline anxiety level by quitting nicotine. The link between nicotine and anxiety weakens as you shake loose the substance’s grip on you.

How long until nicotine anxiety goes away?

The withdrawal anxiety you’ve heard about (or perhaps felt firsthand) peaks around the third day of quitting. It starts improving from there, and you should be clear of it by the second or third week.

Is it safe to quit nicotine cold turkey?

Yes, it’s physically safe, but whether it’s the right approach for you is another story. We’ve found that many people prefer tapering down to lower dosages before trying to quit cold turkey.

How can I ease anxiety right away?

Physical movement, slow breathing (4 seconds in, 7 hold, 8 out), and cold water on your face. Any of these things will activate the parasympathetic nervous system and bring about a sense of calm.

Why do I feel so anxious about quitting?

Your brain has learned that nicotine solves discomfort, and the idea of removing it creates anticipatory anxiety. That itself is a symptom of dependence. We’ll leave you with one more quote from Professor Kulkarni: "If the addiction is overcome by using successful quitting techniques, then the craving disappears and hence the 'anxiety' is also relieved.”²

Related Resources

How hard is it to quit nicotine? | Nicotine and testosterone | Nicotine and sleep

References

Steptoe A, Ussher M. "Smoking, cortisol and nicotine." International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2006;59:228-235. ScienceDirect
Jayashri Kulkarni. "Quitting smoking reduces stress, depression and anxiety." The Conversation. The Conversation
Moylan S et al. "Cigarette smoking, nicotine dependence and anxiety disorders: a systematic review." BMC Medicine, 2012;10:123. BMC Medicine
Taylor G et al. "Change in mental health after smoking cessation: systematic review and meta-analysis." BMJ, 2014;348:g1151. PubMed
Taylor GMJ et al. "Smoking cessation for improving mental health." Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2021. University of Bath
Hughes JR. "Nicotine Withdrawal." PMC. PubMed Central