NICOTINE ADDICTION-
Anyone who starts using tobacco can become addicted to nicotine. Most smokers started when they were teens. Those who have friends and/or parents who smoke are more likely to startsmoking than those who don’t. Some teens say that they “just wanted to try it,”or they thought it was “cool” to smoke.
How powerful is nicotine addiction?
It may be harder to quit smoking than to stop using cocaine oropiates like heroin.This is because smokers not only become physically dependent on nicotine.There’s also a strong emotional (psychological) dependence. Nicotine affects a smoker’s behavior, mood, and emotions. If a smoker uses tobacco to help manage unpleasant feelings and emotions, it can become a problem for some when they tryto quit. The smoker may link smoking with social activities and many other activities, too. All of these factors make smoking a hard habit to break.
How nicotine affects you?
Nicotine and other chemicals in tobacco smoke are easily absorbed into the blood through the lungs. From there, nicotine quickly spreads throughout the body. When taken in small amounts, nicotine causes pleasant feelings and distracts the user from unpleasant feelings. This makes the tobacco user want to use more. It acts on the chemistry of the brain and central nervous system, affecting the smoker’s mood. Nicotine works very much like other addicting drugs, by flooding the brain’s reward circuits with a chemical called dopamine. Nicotine also gives a little bit of an adrenaline rush – not enough to notice, but enough to speed up the heart and raise blood pressure. Nicotine reaches the brain within seconds after taking a puff, and its effects start to wear off within a few minutes. The user may start to feel irritated and edgy. Usually it doesn’t reach the point of serious withdrawal symptoms, but the smoker gets more uncomfortable over time. This is what most often leads the smoker to light up again. At some point, the person uses tobacco, the unpleasant feelings go away, and the cycle continues. If the smoker doesn’t smoke again soon, withdrawal symptoms get worse over time. As the body adapts to nicotine, smokers tend to increase the amount of tobacco they use. This raises the amount of nicotine in their blood, and more tobacco is needed to get the same effect. This is called tolerance. Over time, a smoker reaches a certain nicotine level and then will need to keep up the usage to keep the level of nicotine within a comfortable range. Smokers can quickly become dependent on nicotine and suffer physical and emotional (mental or psychological) withdrawal symptoms when they stop smoking. These symptoms include irritability, nervousness, headaches, and trouble sleeping. The true mark of addiction, though, is that people still smoke even though they know smoking is bad for them – affecting their lives, their health, and their families in unhealthy ways. In fact, most people who smoke want to quit.