Nicotine Addiction
Monday, December 28th, 2009Tobacco products contain the drug nicotine. Nicotine is an addicting drug that stimulates the reward centers in your brain. The acute effects of nicotine include increased heart rate and blood pressure, increased ability to concentrate. Nicotine enters and leaves your system very quickly, leaving people who smoke with unpleasant withdrawal symptoms after going a few hours without smoking. These withdrawal symptoms (including irritability, difficulty concentrating, nausea, and anxiety) are unpleasant to go through, and can lead to strong “cravings” for tobacco.
Most people who use tobacco products began experimenting with smoking or dipping as teenagers. Unfortunately, many who experiment with smoking go on to be addicted to nicotine by the time they reach young adulthood.
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How addicted are you? Hear are two simple “tests” to see if you are addicted. First, those who smoke more cigarettes tend to be more dependent on nicotine than those who smoke less. Second, how soon after waking do you have your first smoke? Those who smoke soon after waking (like within the first 5 or 10 minutes) tend to be more dependent on nicotine. |
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Besides the physical addiction to nicotine, there is also a strong learning component to the nicotine addiction. For example, people begin to develop “conditioned cues” for smoking after smoking for a few years. These cues are situations that have become associated with smoking. For example, many smokers report strong cravings for smoking at certain times (such as after meals, with coffee, while relaxing, when stressed out, and others). Note that a pack a day smoker puffs on a cigarette over 70,000 times each year! This means that there are a lot of opportunities for a smoker to become “conditioned” to smoke at certain times and situations. Importantly, these situations can be environmental (such as while driving), physiological (like craving a cigarette when you haven’t wanted one in a while), or emotional (like smoking when you are “stressed”). Each time that smoke in one of those situations, it helps to occurs again, it triggers the desire for a cigarette.
Research has indicated that the most important factor in success at quitting smoking is a person’s desire to quit. Regardless of how you choose to quit smoking, none are likely to work if you are not ready to quit. Once you get over the hurdle and are ready to seriously commit toquitting, your odds of success increase dramatically.
Another important thing to remember is that even though most effective quit strategies reduce the cravings for nicotine, none will remove all of your cravings. Because of this, you need to be prepared and motivated to push through the discomfort associated with quitting. If you are, then consider one of the quit strategies described below. If not, you need to review your reasons for smoking or not smoking until you are ready to quit.


