Before he met me my boyfriends lifestyle was a complete nightmare. He smoked, drank a lot and even did some drugs. In fact before he met me he had actually had a drug problem. He took himself off drugs though and was fine.

Since he met me though he said he was impressed by my lifestyle. I have never smoked, don't drink much and try my best to pay attention to nutrition obviously. So he decided he wanted to get healthy.

He gave up smoking a month ago, he has also given up coffee, white bread and red bull. His aunt whom he lived with for 3 years and was very close to has died of cancer recently. But now he has changed so much, hes grumpy, distant, moody, in another world and generally not himself at all. I feel like he's been replaced by an imposter. We've been together 10 months and he's never been like this before. Last time he gave up smoking years ago for 2 months he said he was a complete grumpy nightmare. However at the time he wasnt taking nicotine replacement patches like he has been recently. Also this change in mood came about after his aunt died and he'd given up smoking for 2 weeks already.

I'm wondering is he going through a healing crisis that Diana Schwarzbein talks about in her books and if so what should he do? Or is it just his aunt? He's also being very hard on himself and has now announced he wants to give up alcohol completely also!!!!!!

Any suggestions on supplements etc. he could take or whether people think this is a healing crisis or not?

I recommend that he see some sort of practitioner to help him with his issues and take the guess work out of supplementing. I bet giving up smoking just on its own is a major undertaking and he's trying to quit alcohol and has the stress of his Aunt's death to boot, no wonder he's grumpy. Who knows how his system has been damaged from his lifestyle.

I can relate to his mood as you describe it. Every time I have a baby, my world falls apart. You would think it would get better as the baby sleeps more, but for me it just gets worse and worse. I went to see a ND and she thinks I have pretty bad adrenal fatigue. That explains why even though my lifestyle habits have improved, my behavior hasn't. He may have some healing to do, and if he does, you will probably have to get used to the grumpiness. Personally, I have been trying to do all the right things myself and I've been feeling worse the whole time. It may be a relief for him to have someone to work with and a plan of action to follow, if he would go for that sort of thing. He could also get his hormones checked then. Maybe he could use the money he's saving on not buying cigarettes and booze.

I sympathize with both of you, it's awful being in a bad mood all the time, and I don't think others are enjoying being around me much either. Healing is really hard.

Remember that SPP says to go off chemicals slowly. I would think that taking the caffeine away would be a big problem on top of everything else. What I would do is have him look at her plan and start doing caffeine again. I would tell him not to go off the alcohol until the side effects of the ceasing smoking are better. Then lastly the caffeine.

But firstly is he eating nutritionally? That needs to be number one.

Hope things get better. I was really lucky when I found SPII because I had already began a pretty clean lifestyle so I had less to overcome.

Hope this helps! Marianne