What Is Behind The Habit Of Smoking?

Smoking is not really a pleasure for the senses. The first time a person is exposed to cigarettes, they usually do not have a pleasant experience. Tobacco has a very strong – and irritating – odor. When it is sucked in, there is a feeling of burning and suffocation. But even despite this, many people become addicted to this habit; then it is almost impossible for them to stop.

Nicotine is the substance responsible for cigarette addiction. This compound is an addictive alkaloid. After inhaling it, it takes about 10 seconds to reach the brain. This is where it stimulates the production of dopamine but, in the long run, it produces the release of an amount which is less satisfying. Therefore, larger doses are needed for the nicotine to take effect again.

Unlike other drugs, nicotine does not produce drastic changes in behavior. Thus, various studies have been able to establish that, in tobacco addiction, powerful psychological factors have a great influence. This habit is seen more as “behavioral reinforcement” than as a strictly physical addiction.

The reasons why we start to smoke

It is very common for people to start smoking during their teenage years. But it’s not free. Tobacco and alcohol are two legal psychoactive agents that are easy to acquire and relatively inexpensive. This is a habit normally prohibited by parents and teachers. And this is precisely what attracts a lot of young people.

In a study by  Scientific Psychic ,  the main reasons people start smoking were found to be:

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

Finally, there is a powerful psychosocial component in smoking. The most common thing is that adolescents present themselves in front of others while smoking and that they do not maintain this habit alone. Many of them quit smoking, but another large group remains addicted to the nicotine networks.

Inhale, inhale and exhale

In the act of smoking, several unconscious aspects are also involved. In psychoanalysis, we speak of addiction to cigarettes as the expression of an oral symptom. It represents a regression to an infantile phase of life.

Experts on the subject like Coderch have indicated  that this is a habit unique to people who have overprotective mothers, who soothe their children by gratifying them orally. In other words, they calmed their anxiety by giving them something they liked to eat.

Many people say they feel like smoking when they are feeling anxious. According to them, cigarettes calm them down. Some authors suggest that by inhaling the smoke, literally, they are sucking up their own aspirations. Therefore, smoking would be a response to frustration. Symbolically, it helps to inhibit desires.

In this same line of ideas,  it has been said that, symbolically, when you smoke, you seek inspiration. The lack of ideas or resources to resolve a situation unconsciously pushes to smoke. It is an act that represents the desire to find inspiration, without getting there.

What burns and ends up turning to ashes

For many ancestral cultures, tobacco is a sacred plant. Intuitively, these cultures know that this is an element that has positive effects on the brain. We have been able to verify that it stimulates memory, increases the speed of thought and stabilizes the state of mind.

The difference between these cultures and ours is that, in theirs, no psychoactive substance falls within the logic of consumption. There are special times and places for tobacco, just as there are times and places for coca leaves and other similar plants. It is usual for this to be part of collective and well-defined rituals. These people use these plants to be wiser; Westerners, on the other hand, get more silly when they use them.

An old proverb says “there is no smoke without fire”. This can apply to those who are used to smoking. They live by incorporating the smoke and discarding it, at the same time as the tobacco burns and turns to ashes.

There is something that burns inside of them who are addicted to cigarettes. Their response is to take this thing out, in the slender shape of a cigarette, and let it burn out. In any case, one thing is certain: it has been proven that when psychological motivations for smoking disappear, nicotine addiction can be overcome with relative ease. You have to think about that.

Images of Eloise Heritier