Tips on Stopping Smoking - Understanding Nicotine Addiction

The remarkable thing is that people create a nicotine addiction in the first place. Almost every smoker can recall his or her first few cigarettes, the nasty taste and unpleasant effects such as nausea and coughing. This reaction is to be expected with any poison - in the case of cigarette burning, some of the most potent poisons we know of.First you spit it out, and then you 'register' the experience in your memory so as not to make the same mistake again. It is nature's way of protecting us from harm.Nicotine addiction is clearly nothing to do with pleasure, relaxation, confidence and such like. Most smokers start the habit because of social or other influences such as peer pressure. These are somehow strong enough to counter the unpleasantness of the drug, as well as (if we knew at the time) the knowledge of its harmful effects. Compare this with trying a new food for the first time. If you don't like it, you don't feel compelled to continue your displeasure, persevering until it somehow becomes bearable.Most teenagers are too independent and smart to act in such a crazy way. And even if you did - as with broccoli and sprouts for most youngsters - you would probably gain benefit from the food in terms of life and health.This is not so in the case of nicotine or any other dangerous peer pressure, persuasive advertising and other conditioning, the idea of getting drawn into smoking in the first place still seems bizarre. A smoker gets hooked, not because of the pleasure but despite the displeasure. They don't start smoking for the cigarette, and, as we shall see, nor will they stop by focusing on the cigarette but rather on the benefits of being free from them.When you first start to smoke the nicotine withdrawal symptoms are very slight or non-existent. It is during this period that most young smokers convince themselves that they can easily quit when they want to, but as the addiction grows it soon becomes harder to stop.All too soon, the person starts to act and think like an addict. By then the psychological aspects of the habit, far outweigh the chemical addiction. Thence, true to an addictive personality, the smoker insists that they can give up when they really want to, that they get pleasure, there's 'no problem' and so on. This cumulative addictive effect, coupled with the social pressure when people start to smoke, explains why the drug has got such a foothold in the lives of millions of intelligent people, and why so many people put off learning how to quit smoking until it's too late.