How Strong Nicotine Addiction Really Is?
I like to eat chocolate and drink coffee but I can go without these for days or even weeks without any discomfort. Some people are addicted to chocolate and coffee as I used to be to cigarettes.
They can’t go a day without their fix. We are all addicted to something so is it only the chemicals that control us or is it something else.
Nicotine has been studied extensively and in addition to being a great pesticide it has mind-altering qualities. According to studies nicotine activates reward pathways making you feel good. Nicotine stimulates a feeling of happiness.
First few years I did feel this. Later I had to take a brake from smoking for long period of time to be able to feel anything like that. Maybe you still can feel these effects but my personal experience was different.
Cigarette was not so much making me feel good as I felt bad without it. You might think that it is the same thing but it is not. It seems to be the same story with all drugs. Even exercising is actually a drug.
Runners start running to improve their health, achieve a goal. As it becomes a habit they can’t stop. They need to exercise because if they skip a day they start to feel bad physically.
People exercise because they feel better and even euphoric. I’m talking about the so called “runners high”. It is called this way because it really is the same thing as drug “high”.
The key is endorphin. It’s the “carrot” of your body. It’s the happiness drug that you get every day. Not always it is in high doses. Tasty cake triggers your pleasure but if that cake produced a drizzle, drugs produce a flood.
This is important because you need to get one thing out of your head – nicotine is not as strong a stimulant as morphine or cocaine. When I smoked I actually searched for exactly this in Google: “nicotine addictive as cocaine” and I was extremely happy to find an article that "proved" to me that quitting smoking is the same as quitting hard drugs.
But it is not! I never tried morphine but I imagine it should have a much stronger high than I used to get while smoking. Face it, nicotine is just not that strong of a stimulant. That doesn’t make it less addictive but realizing this will help you quit.
If you ever had hallucinations due to smoking please let me know but I never experienced that. The only way smoking will make you hallucinate is if you get dehydrated to a dangerous level.
But that was not the question. The question was why smoking is so addictive. Nicotine is not as strong of a stimulant to get you hooked only on the merit of being a drug so it must be something in addition to that.
As you smoke day in and day out, year after year, you form the second ingredient – the habit.
My day used to start with a cigarette. That was my morning ritual and that's how I told myself and my body that the day has started. At work it was the same story.
At regular time intervals I would stand and go for a smoke. The immediate question when planning on quitting was “So, now what? I won’t do brakes?” Should I now work without taking a brake, as it seemed that there was not much else to do except to have a smoke.
You form every habit and you can stop any habit or you create a new habit to replace your old ones. To tell you the truth, it felt weird for the first few days not to smoke at work. As my eyesight could use some improving I substituted cigarettes with carrots.
It does take willpower to break the habit. I substituted smoking with a carrot. Think of what you could substitute a cigarette with.
By the way, carrot was a short term solution. Now I just make a cup of tea or chat with colleagues.
It is very common to get an advice to come up with a habit that will take the place of smoking but don’t force anything. For a habit to stick you need either to use a lot of your will power or for that activity to feel easy and natural.
Portion of your willpower is used up by quitting smoking so I recommend to look for something that is easy, enjoyable and won't require you to fight yourself to do it.
Sport is a habit that requires willpower. As you start doing exercises your whole body is resisting this “torture”. It takes time and effort for it to become at first comfortable and even more time to get pleasure from doing it.
Smoking became a habit because it was easy. But is it really comfortable and does it really give you any pleasure?
Let’s look at comfortable. On a nice day it is comfortable but even when the conditions are great you still experience discomfort as you are not allowed to smoke in public spaces. How comfortable is it to smoke in a cold of winter, in a rain or while sun is burning you?
I’m an ex-smoker and trust me – it is fun to watch smokers during bad weather. If you’re having bad weather right now look at those smokers. See how funny and pathetic it looks when you look at it from a side. It’s cold or it’s raining and you sit comfortably as you watch a smoker fight the elements.
The only thing that makes such moments a bit less fun is the thought: “Damn, I used to be one of them. Why was I doing that to myself? “.
So, smoking is not comfortable but what about the pleasure. You can find a ton of publications that prove that nicotine is a stimulant that works like cocaine.
Yes, nicotine does affect the brain in a similar way to opiates. But that’s meaningless. My body works same as the body of Michael Phelps. My car works the same way Nascar car does. One is more powerful than the other.
If eating donuts would give me an orgasm and a piece of cake would make me feel happy – I would have a much harder time giving up donuts. Nicotine is just not that strong.
Effects like better ability to concentrate and pleasure which are attributed to nicotine are very short term and those aren’t even actual positive effects at all.
I mentioned that I felt that smoking wasn’t about feeling good but about not feeling bad. This is a huge difference. One thing is to do something because you enjoy it and completely different to do it because you don’t want to feel bad.
Smoking is the latter. As soon as you are done with a cigarette, withdrawal kicks in. For you this is good and bad news.
Good, because when you quit smoking it takes on average only three days for your body to get rid of all nicotine. Bad, because as long as you keep on smoking this means that you need to smoke very regularly.
Take notice of this fact: it takes only three days for your body to get rid of all nicotine. You won’t have any nicotine left in your system by just three days.
Just three days for a thing that controlled you for so many years to be gone from your life. Think about it – this is an amazing thing.
Remember, you had to smoke not to "calm down" or experience pleasure. You had to smoke regularly to temporarily stop the cravings. What you were experiencing was not pleasure. It was only a relief.
Smoking doesn’t increase your ability to concentrate or improve your mood. Nicotine just temporarily removed the symptoms of withdrawal which are caused by nicotine itself.
Nicotine only perpetuates the addiction. It doesn’t give you anything positive in return. Quit and stop being a slave to this habit.
Nicotine is addictive because it keeps you on a short leash. It made you consume nicotine very regularly thus forming a strong habit.
This is very good news. It makes quitting so much easier because that short leash means that you won't have to run far to get away.