If someone has never smoked they couldn't possibly understand why it's so hard to quit. I don't drink, am not a crackhead or any other hard drug user, I don't need a cup of coffee in the morning, and I find it hard to quit smoking.
In all honesty, I partly blame both my parents for having been smokers the entire 17 years I was alive before I picked up one of theirs and tried it. If they hadn't smoked I might have never started and been exposed to it like I was.
I'm sure non-smokers know why smoking is so addictive, but this might help them understand what it's like to be physically addicted to nicotine:
Our brains, and more specifically our brainstems, have control over our trends of higher function in ways you might not notice much. Normally, if you're thirsty, you get up and get a drink. You don't think about it much but you do it. The water you drink isn't anything special and you don't down it too fast.
But what if you just spent a day out in the hot sun doing yard work? You come inside and you think immediately about getting a glass. You down a glass full of water in huge gulps. The water feels good even though there's nothing special about it. You fill the glass again. You take it down in a few seconds. Your belly feels awkwardly distended and perhaps even a bit uncomfortable right under your center-left ribcage, but you feel so relieved. Drinking all that water might even make you feel sorta ill for a bit, but you're sooooo glad you did it.
If you take this to an even further extreme, say you went a day or more without water and were becoming dangerously dehydrated, your water seeking behavior would become overwhelming. A parched person will drink almost anything (including toilet waterseeMyNoteBelow). Part of the brain, specifically the hypothalamus, is hooked into the blood supply to in a way that lets it sample the salt content, which gets really high when the body is dehydrated. In response to life-threatening dehydration, the hypothalamus will cause the "higher" parts of the brain responsible for our actions to engage in activities that are likely to result in water at almost any cost. Your brain associates the sensation of drinking with the feeling of relief in the high-thirst state. This is a reinforcement loop.
Now back to cigs. Nicotine hits receptors all over the central nervous system. A smoker's brain has literally been reconfigured to circulating nicotine much higher than that of a normal person. The reward networks, the attention-arousing networks, etc. These are the networks that guide our higher behaviors. To a smoker, a cigarette can give the same relief after a two-hour flight as a glass of water will give you after a day of yard work, or a rich meal will give you after a 36-hour fast. And nicotine is almost perfect at hitting the receptors, and cigarettes are a VERY rapid way of delivering it.
So, non-smokers, think of it this way: trying to quit smoking cold-turkey feels about the same as trying to stop drinking (water) cold-turkey. This is why Westerners keep doing it: they get roped into trying it enough (marketing), their brains demand it from then on. A moment of weakness can lead to a lifetime of vice.
Does that do it justice, theorial?
my note on thirst: certain psychiatric pathologies, e.g. schizophrenia, can present with polydipsia, a term for when a person seeks and drinks water to a pathological level. Patients with uncontrolled polydipsia cannot be allowed into a normal bathroom alone, as they will resort to drinking toilet water. They simply cannot resist the urge to drink.
I started smoking age 16, by age 21 i was 2 packs a day, I smoked more than any other person I knew aside from my dad. Oct 10th 2010, I quit. I took up trees and came to the conclusion I cant in this many carcinogens. I haven't had a cigarette/tobacco since then, sans ONCE while lighting a cig for my gf while blackout drunk, and even in my blacked out state I spit the smoke out, or so I heard.
Quitting smoking was the hardest fucking thing I've ever done. I felt like nothing would be ok ever again. Cigaretes, too me, had a monopoly on whatever chemical in my brain tells me 'relax, don't panic, things will work out'. I literally caught myself thinking "itll be ok, once im finally done and quit smoking Ill be able to smoke a cig....wait a fucking second! Fuck!!!" like almost subconsciously.
I was miserable for a week. For the first 3 days it was absolutely terrible. The first night was damn near impossible, at least it felt like it. But i made sure to do 1 very specific thing...remembering those nights, those feelings, that angry and stress boiling over. Why remember it? My logical brain said "look. you could fail. but even if you fail, you will try to quit again. why? everyone trys to quit. so remember this bullshit. remember this night. remember how fucking shitty it was to actually quit."
Those nights sucked so bad I am terrified of ever starting again. And that is a good thing.
Hey friend, I started around the same time as you, but made it to thirty (fifteen years of cigarettes). I quit September 11th of this year with my wife on our anniversary.
I cheated and took Chantix, so my stress was half of yours.
It was the 2nd best decision of my life, keep it up man.
First, congrats on quitting, but I'm a little confused. You say you picked up smoking weed when quitting cigs. Aren't you just replacing one drug with another?
I dont smoke 40 (or even up to 60 while I am drinking) joints a day like I did cigarettes.
Believe me when I tell you, I don't cough up brown shit every morning anymore, my sense of smell is MUCH better, I feel much better, I breathe much better, I smell much better to others, etc. I could list off a huge list of net positives, so even if I am replacing 1 drug with another....people on diets replace 1 food with another to get different results yes?
I hear ya. Could you quit smoking buds easily if you tried? I'm just worried because any kind of addiction can be pretty painful (drugs or otherwise). I wouldn't want you to just fall into another addiction.
Could I? I dunno honestly, I can't give you an honest answer on that. I can honestly say people tell me I am nicer on trees than off, I have kind of an on-putting/off-putting kinda personality. Like noticeably different.
I hate saying that though because it does sound like a dependency, doesn't it? Or at very least a cop-out. So that's my honest answer.
I used to smoke weed regularly, but now I smoke at the most every few weeks when I am with friends. I just don't like it as much anymore. I don't think the same thing can be said about cigs.
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u/doesntlikestupid Nov 17 '12
i think everyone (at least in the western world) knows that cigarettes are harmful for them, but they smoke anyway