What Is Hidden Behind The Smoking Habit?

Smoking is not exactly a pleasure for the senses. The first time a person is exposed to cigarettes, the most common thing is that they do not have a pleasant experience. Tobacco has a strong, uncomfortable smell. When you bring it, there is a burning sensation and a feeling of being suffocated. Still, many people become addicted, develop the habit of smoking and, in the future, find it very difficult to quit.

Nicotine is the substance responsible for addiction to cigarettes. This compound is an addictive alkaloid. Once inhaled, nicotine takes approximately 10 seconds to reach the brain. There, it stimulates the production of dopamine, but in the long run it starts to cause the release of an increasingly smaller amount, which satiates less. Therefore, more and more people feel the need for higher doses for nicotine to produce the same effects as before.

Unlike other drugs, nicotine does not cause radical changes in behavior. Even so, many studies have established that cigarette addiction also influences powerful psychological factors. This habit is considered a “behavioral reinforcement” rather than an exclusively physical addiction.

The reasons why we develop the habit of smoking

It is very common for people to start smoking in their teens. This fact has its reasons. Both tobacco and alcohol are two legal psychoactives, easily acquired and relatively inexpensive. It is a habit commonly prohibited by parents and teachers. It is exactly these factors that attract young people.

In a study by Scientific Psychic , it was found that these are the main reasons people start smoking:

• To challenge the adult world or restrictive environments.
• To adapt to a social circle.
• To demonstrate that you are no longer a child.
• To reaffirm independence.
• To imitate people who smoke and are admired.
• To lose weight.

In summary, there is a strong psychosocial component to smoking. The most common is that teenagers smoke in the presence of other people and that they do not keep this habit when they are alone. Many of these young people quit smoking, but there is also another group that gets caught in the nicotine nets.

pull, inhale and exhale

Several unconscious aspects of smoking are also involved. In psychoanalysis, cigarette addiction is spoken of as the expression of an oral symptom. It would represent a regression to the infantile stage of life.

Scholars on the subject, such as Coderch, indicate that it is a characteristic habit of people with overprotective mothers who calmed the child by pleasing orally. In other words, they soothed their anxiety by giving them something to eat, a pleasant action for the little ones.

Many people say they feel like smoking when they are in distress. According to them, cigarettes soothe them. Some authors suggest that by literally pulling in smoke, what people do is swallow their aspirations. In this sense, smoking would be a response to frustration. Symbolically it helps to inhibit cravings.

Along the same lines, it was stated that what is sought with the habit of smoking, symbolically, is inspiration. Lack of ideas, or resources, to resolve a situation unconsciously leads to smoking. It is an act that represents the desire to be inspired without, however, achieving success.

What burns and soon turns to ashes

For many ancient cultures, tobacco is a sacred plant. Intuitively, these cultures knew that tobacco is an element that exerts positive effects on the brain. It has been shown to stimulate memory, increase the speed of thought and stabilize the mood.

The difference between these cultures in relation to ours is that in them no psychoactive substance was inserted in the consumerist logic. There are times and places for tobacco, just as there are for coca leaves and other similar plants. It is common for them to be part of well-defined collective rituals. In these cultures, the use of these plants is intended to make people wiser. On the other hand, in today’s Western societies, people become dumber when they consume them.

An old maxim says that “where there is smoke, there is fire”. This can be applied to people who are in the habit of smoking. They live incorporating and disposing of smoke, while tobacco burns and turns to ash.

People addicted to the act of smoking carry something that burns inside them. The answer is to put it out, in the shape of a cigarette, and let it go away. One thing is certain: it has been proven that when the psychological motivations for smoking disappear, nicotine addiction is relatively easily overcome. We need to think about it.

Images courtesy of Eloise Heritier