I'm Addicted

Some smokers say they smoke because they are nervous. Others say they smoke to celebrate. Some think they smoke for energy. Many smoke to look sexy. Yet others smoke to stay awake or to sleep. Some think they smoke to think.

None of these reasons satisfactorily explain why people continue and not to stop smoking.. However, the answer is, in fact, quite simple. Smokers smoke cigarettes because they are smokers. More precisely, smokers smoke cigarettes because they are smoke-a-holics.

A smoke-a-holic, like any other drug addict, has become hooked on a chemical substance. In the cigarette smoker’s case, nicotine is the culprit. They are at the point where the failure to maintain a minimum level of nicotine in the blood stream leads to the nicotine abstinence syndrome, otherwise known as drug withdrawal. Anything that makes them lose nicotine makes them smoke.

This concept explains why so many smokers feel they smoke under stress. Stress has a physiological effect on the body which makes the urine acidic. Whenever the urine becomes acidic, the body excretes nicotine at an accelerated rate. Thus, when a smoker encounters a stressful situation he loses nicotine and goes into drug withdrawal.

Most smokers feel that when they are nervous or upset cigarettes help calm them down. The calming effect, however, is not relief from the emotional strain of the situation, but actually the effect of replenishing the nicotine supply and ending the withdrawal.

It is easy to understand why the smoker without this basic knowledge of stress and its nicotine effect is afraid to give up and stop smoking. They feel that they will be giving up a very effective stress management technique. But once they stop smoking for a short period of time, they will become calmer, even under stress, than when they were smokers.

The explanation of how physiological changes in the body make them smoke is difficult for some smokers to believe. But nearly all smokers can easily relate to other situations which also alter the excretion rate of nicotine.

Ask a smoker what happens to his or her smoking consumption after drinking alcohol, and you can be sure he or she will answer that it goes up. If asked how much his or her consumption rises, he or she will normally reply that it doubles or even triples when drinking.

He or she usually is convinced that this happens because everyone around them is smoking. But if he or she thinks back to a time when he or she was the only smoker in the room, they will realize that drinking still caused them to smoke more.

Alcohol consumption results in the same physiological effect as stress—acidification of the urine. The nicotine level drops dramatically, and the smoker must light one cigarette after another or suffer drug withdrawal.

It is important for the smoker considering to stop smoking to understand these concepts because once they truly understand why they smoke they will be able to more fully appreciate how much more simple life will become as an ex-smoker.

Once the smoker stops, the nicotine will begin to leave the body, and within two weeks all the nicotine will be gone. Once the nicotine is totally out of the body, all withdrawal will cease. No longer will they experience drug withdrawal states whenever encountering stress, drinking, or just going too long without smoking.

In short, they will soon realize that all the benefits they thought they derived from smoking were false effects. They will realize that they did not need to smoke to deal with stress, or to drink, socialize, or work. Everything done as a smoker can be done as a non-smoker, and in most cases, these activities can be done more efficiently and make you feel better during them.

The ex-smoker will become a more independent person. It is a good feeling and a major accomplishment to break free from this addiction. But no matter how long he or she is off smoking and how confident he or she feels, the ex-smoker must always remember that he or she is a smoke-a-holic.

Being a smoke-a-holic means that as long as you don’t take a single drag off a cigarette, cigar or pipe, or chew tobacco, or inject it into his bloodstream with a syringe, you  will never again become hooked on nicotine.

If, on the other hand, the ex-smoker does make the tragic mistake of experimenting with any nicotine product, it will only reinforce the addiction. This will result either in returning to the old level of consumption or experiencing a full fledged withdrawal process. Neither situation is fun to go through.

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