Can CBD Help You Quit Smoking?

Have you tried everything to quit smoking?  If you’re wondering if CBD can help you quit smoking, there is a lot of interesting research that suggests that it can.
CBD gives you a different way to curb your addiction, all without having to use any kind of tobacco substitution. Plus, it’s affordable, available in all 50 states, and you don’t even need a prescription. 
According to the CDC, an estimated 14% of Americans over the age of 18 – which equates to 34.3 million people – are smoking cigarettes, while another 8 million are using smokeless tobacco. And at this point, we’ve all heard how bad it is for you, so just saying that out loud doesn’t make it any easier to quit. But if you haven’t tried using CBD to quit smoking, then you haven’t tried everything. 

You’ve tried going cold turkey, chewing the gum, using patches, and you’ve read about the benefits of Chantix. With all the information out there on how to quit, as the stats from the CDC shows, a lot of us are still smoking.

Nicotine Addiction

Many of the solutions listed above, including the nicotine gum, patches, and, of course, Chantix, are Big Pharma solutions meant to curb nicotine intake. A lot of these “solutions” have been around for decades, and unfortunately, their results are quite mixed. Many of these cigarette replacements still involve giving your body nicotine. While nicotine isn’t the primary cause of tobacco-related health issues, it is still an addictive chemical that can cause withdrawal symptoms.

Withdrawal symptoms are wide-ranging and run the gamut from physical to psychological. If you’ve been smoking for years, you’ve likely tried to quit more than once and know all about the withdrawal symptoms. From headaches and nausea to insomnia and even depression, quitting smoking is not easy. 

While CBD is not a cure-all, there have been studies done that show CBD may ease your withdrawal symptoms and reduce your urge to smoke.

CBD May Calm Nicotine Withdrawal Symptoms

One way that CBD can help you with your withdrawal symptoms is by easing your anxiety. Anxiety can be devastating for our mental and physical health, and it’s an unfortunately common withdrawal symptom felt by many people. Luckily, a good deal of research done on CBD has pointed to its ability to treat anxiety. In fact, CBD has been found to treat general anxiety, anxiety in children, and anxiety related to PTSD.

What’s more is that another study has found CBD oil can treat another withdrawal symptom: vomiting and nausea. That’s because CBD helps regulate your body’s endocannabinoid system, which is part of what controls nausea and vomiting in humans. While the study is only preliminary, the authors - a group of psychological and neural researchers at a University in Canada - suggested CBD may even be strong enough to help chemo patients overcome their sick feelings.

The more CBD comes under scientific study, the more we’re finding out its positive effects on our body’s regulation. Consequently, we’re finding out that CBD may be an effective anti-smoking remedy.

CBD May Help You to go Smoke Less

But it’s not just withdrawal symptom regulation that CBD can help with. CBD may significantly reduce your urge to smoke.  This time, the study comes from the experts at the Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit at the University College of London. Their study gave smokers a CBD inhaler, while another group was given a placebo. Both groups were told to use the inhaler when they felt the urge to smoke. 

The result? The group using the CBD-infused inhaler smoked an incredible 40% fewer cigarettes over the course of the study. The researchers concluded that their study, along with the rationale for using CBD as an anti-smoking supplement in the first place, “warrants further exploration.” We wholeheartedly agree!

Another Interesting Study About CBD and Tobacco

An interesting and somewhat related study to the one above was done in 2018 by a range of researchers in England. They found that, when given CBD orally, participants paid much less attention to tobacco and cigarette-related pictures than those who were given a placebo. Further, those with the CBD rated tobacco-related pictures as less pleasant than those who took the placebo.

This study, combined with the one above, points to an interesting phenomenon where CBD may leave us simply less interested in tobacco and cigarettes overall. That’s awfully helpful if you’re trying to lay off smoking.

So, Can CBD Help You Quit Smoking?

A lot of the early evidence points to CBD being a potential quit-smoking aid. In particular, CBD seems to help with quitting smoking in two important ways. First, it helps alleviate some of the horrible withdrawal symptoms you experience when you quit smoking. And then, it may help decrease your urge to smoke in the first place.

If you are interested in CBD products from CBD coffee, to CBD gummies, and oils, we have an incredible selection of CBD products to choose from. If you are a beginner to CBD start by reading our beginner's guide and then explore all of our CBD products.