on smoking

I thought smoking was a Hollywood thing? Maybe photoshopping James Dean and Marilyn Monroe with nicotine patches would do the trick.

It’s not the same. I used them to quit smoking, but it wasn’t a 1:1 replacement for smoking. You get a steady stream of nicotine in them which can blunt some of the cravings, or at least keep you from going insane with rage 24/7 for weeks. But it didn’t get rid of all the cravings, or replace anything else about the habit. It made quitting somewhat tolerable, but that’s about it.

As you alluded to in your post, there are, sadly, a whole set of non chemical or even biological socio-behavioral aspects to smoking.

I’ve heard people who quit carp about everything from now not having an excuse to step outside of work for a break, to not being able to gauge how much time they have to apply make-up in the morning.

Then there’s the comradery, smokers hang out in gaggles and gossip or whatever. I agree, it IS a weird habit, and not just because of the health issues. It’s also a habit that effects everyone in a 20 foot radius around you, or more on a windy day.

As someone who has only successfully been a non-smoker for just over a year, and still struggles with the temptation often, I’ll offer that chemical addiction is only one consideration. We don’t call smoking a habit for nothing, because many things about it are habitual and regimented. The goal of a smoker smoking a cigarette is not merely to obtain nicotine, but to obtain a feeling of satisfaction, and part of that satisfaction comes by non-chemical means. The deliberate nature of the breaths required to smoke, the taste, these all work on different areas of the brain and contribute to a type of euphoria that nicotine alone does not provide. It ain’t economics, it’s addiction.

Aside from the outright poisonous components, tobacco contains substantial amounts of natural MAO inhibitors, which are antidepressants and seem to act synergistically with nicotine; pure nicotine doesn’t seem to be very habituating, but it’s much more so when administered with MAO inhibitors, at least in rat studies.

I’ll chime in having been a long time smoker who has successfully quit in the past and gone back to it. The biggest issue I encountered when quitting beyond the chemical withdrawals was finding something to fill the time up I used to spend smoking. Much like anyone who has a “fidget” or other nervous habit (nail biting, hair twirling, face rubbing, etc…) the physical act of smoking becomes reflexive and, as stated above, habitual. When you spend hours a day repeating the same physical task it ceases to be a conscious decision and becomes routine. Breaking out of a routine, especially one with a chemical dependency associated with it, is - obviously - extremely difficult.

Ultimately, it goes beyond Nicotine addiction and is more or less an addiction to Dopamine and anything you happen to be doing at the time that causes that Dopamine to be released. Nicotine is merely the vehicle for the massive Dopamine doses your body gets as a result. And anyone who has experienced that level of Dopamine release (being in love, skydiving, winning an award, getting a raise) knows that it really takes the edge off. Leave it up to nature to get us addicted to our own body’s chemicals.

My neighbor is 10 years smoke-free and uses a nicotine patch every day because her doctor told her it’s the tobacco, not the nicotine, that’s bad for her health. Worked for her. She says at first it was more expensive to use the patch, but now it’s cheaper than smoking.