Why Is It So Hard to STOP MOKING??

Why Is It So Hard to STOP Smoking?

Mark Twain said, "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it a thousand times." Maybe you've tried to quit, too. Why is quitting and staying quit hard for so many people? The answer is nicotine.

Nicotine

Nicotine is a drug found naturally in tobacco. It is highly addictive -- as addictive as heroin or cocaine. Over time, a person becomes physically and emotionally addicted to, or dependent on, nicotine. Studies have shown that smokers must deal with both the physical and psychological dependence to be successful at quitting and staying quit.

Where Nicotine Goes and How Long it Stays

When you inhale smoke, nicotine is carried deep into your lungs, where it is absorbed quickly into the bloodstream and carried throughout your body. Nicotine affects many parts of the body, including your heart and blood vessels, your hormonal system, your metabolism, and your brain. Nicotine can be found in breast milk and even in cervix mucus secretions of smokers. During pregnancy, nicotine freely crosses the placenta and has been found in amniotic fluid and the umbilical cord blood of newborn infants.

Several different factors can affect how long it takes the body to remove nicotine and its by-products. In general, a regular smoker will have nicotine or its by-products, such as cotinine, in the body for about 3 to 4 days after stopping.

How Nicotine Hooks Smokers

Nicotine produces pleasant feelings that make the smoker want to smoke more. It also acts as a kind of depressant by interfering with the flow of information between nerve cells. As the nervous system adapts to nicotine, smokers tend to increase the number of cigarettes they smoke, and therefore the amount of nicotine in their blood. After a while, the smoker develops a tolerance to the drug, which leads to an increase in smoking over time. Over time, the smoker reaches a certain nicotine level and then smokes to maintain this level of nicotine. In fact, nicotine, when inhaled in cigarette smoke, reaches the brain faster than drugs that enter the body intravenously (IV).

Nicotine Withdrawal

When smokers try to cut back or quit, the lack of nicotine leads to withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal is both physical and mental. Physically, the body reacts to the absence of nicotine. Mentally, the smoker is faced with giving up a habit, which calls for a major change in behavior. Both must be addressed in order for the quitting process to work.

If a person has smoked regularly for a few weeks or longer and suddenly stops using tobacco or greatly reduces the amount smoked, they will have withdrawal symptoms. Symptoms usually start within a few hours of the last cigarette and peak about 2 to 3 days later. Withdrawal symptoms can last for a few days to up to several weeks.

Withdrawal symptoms can include any of the following:

* dizziness (which may only last 1-2 days after quitting)
* depression
* feelings of frustration, impatience, and anger
* anxiety
* irritability
* sleep disturbances, including having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, and having bad dreams or even nightmares
* trouble concentrating
* restlessness
* headaches
* tiredness
* increased appetite


These symptoms can lead the smoker to start smoking cigarettes again to boost blood levels of nicotine back to a level where there are no symptoms.

Smoking also makes your body get rid of certain drugs faster than usual. When you quit smoking, it changes the way your body handles these medicines. Ask your doctor if any medicines you take regularly need to be checked or changed after you quit.