starting to wonder if the heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, chest pains, lightheadedness, increased anxiety and every other shitty weird symptom that has been making me feel like a lump/super panicky lately is completely because of cutting back on cigarettes. i went from i-don’t-even-want-to-admit-how-many-a-day, to quitting cold turkey, which lead to some really crazy anxiety attacks, so then i decided to taper and smoke less than 3 daily, which has been working. now most of the time it’s only one or two a day, and more frequent stretches of zero. (in the past week-ish there have been like 4 days where i haven’t had a single one, including today, and now i’m having terrible chest pains).. it probably helps even less that even though i’ve cut back significantly, i’m not completely consistent. i would just stop completely right now, but i’m terrified of feeling as fucked up as i did when i tried cold turkey a few weeks ago. maybe i just have to do that though. i’m trying to google stuff to find out if other people had such severe symptoms and it looks like maybe they have. i can’t help but wonder what’s wrong with me and freak out about all this shit happening in my body at once, so maybe i should just go get my lungs x-rayed or something, but i’m starting to think maybe all of these things are just withdrawal symptoms and not something more serious. i hope that’s all it is! but i still don’t know what to do about it cause this sucks! i have constant nausea, and the constant nausea gives me constant anxiety, and constant anxiety gives me panic attacks. not to mention feeling like someone is squeezing my lungs 24/7 and having chest pains is really no fun. the past week i’ve felt like i’m totally losing my mind, and extremely hypersensitive and anxious, and even though i have a lot of shit going on in my life right now i don’t think any of it is enough to induce this kind of insanity, so it’s gotta be chemical. i guess from what i’ve been reading it seems like maybe this just happens to people who abruptly go from being heavy smokers to barely smoking at all/not smoking in a short period of time and it’s part of the healing process, but i don’t know how to deal with it in the meantime :( i do have other less severe symptoms, like a nasal drip and frequent headaches, that don’t bother me that much but are in keeping with everything else maybe just being a side effect of withdrawal. i hope this is all i’m going through and not a more serious health problem.