Day 13 after quitting smokingFlat days

By Yevhenii, who smoked for 26 years · Updated 30 Oct 2026 · 2 min read

In shortOrdinary pleasures can feel grey for a while, because the brain's reward circuit has turned its sensitivity down. This is part of withdrawal and fades. If low mood deepens or fills most of the day for over two weeks, talk to a doctor.

What's happening in your body

Nicotine releases dopamine in the brain's reward circuit, dozens of times a day, for years. The circuit adjusts to that supply by turning its own sensitivity down. When the supply stops, ordinary pleasures register more weakly for a while. Researchers call this anhedonia and now treat it as part of tobacco withdrawal, separate from sadness or irritability.

What to expect

Music, food, a good evening, all a little grey. A sense that nothing is quite worth the effort, that you are going through the motions. This is the symptom most likely to produce the thought that life was better with cigarettes. The thought is a reading from a temporarily miscalibrated instrument. Like the rest of withdrawal, the flatness is strongest in the first weeks and fades as the circuit resets its sensitivity.

It helps to tell it apart from two other things. Irritability is a short fuse; flatness is the absence of a spark. And depression is heavier and longer. If the low mood deepens instead of lifting, if it fills most of the day for more than two weeks, or if you have thoughts of harming yourself, talk to a doctor, and in the last case do it today.

Stopping smoking does not have to be carried alone, and help with mood is part of stop smoking care.

Try this

Do one thing you normally enjoy even though it does not appeal right now, and do it fully rather than half watching a screen.

What else you could do

Physical activity is the most reliable choice, especially outdoors and with other people. Plan small pleasures in advance instead of waiting to feel like them. It might be a meal out, a call with someone you like, an hour of something you are good at. You are not waiting for motivation to return before acting; acting is part of how the circuit recalibrates. Each evening, notice one thing that went slightly better than expected and put it in the day's line in the Diary.

Sources. Cook JW, Piper ME, Leventhal AM, Schlam TR, Fiore MC, Baker TB. Anhedonia as a component of the tobacco withdrawal syndrome. J Abnorm Psychol, 2015.