Nicotine Addiction From Smoking

Tobacco growing, chewing and smoking originated in the Americas and Australia. Nicotine is an active substance that is produced by the tobacco plant, which has a direct effect on the brain and nervous system.

The Effects Of Nicotine Intake are many and varied.

Nicotine is mainly responsible for your addiction to cigarettes because, unfortunately, it is one of the most highly addictive substances known to man. It is thought that smoking just 4 cigarettes is enough to get you hooked. Its effect on your mind and body is similar to caffeine, cocaine or amphetamine because it is a stimulant that increases brain activity.

Nicotine affects the pleasure center of the brain. When smokers are asked why they use tobacco some say smoking stimulates and increases concentration, while others say that smoking helps them to relax.

As a smoker, you might smoke some cigarettes to wake yourself up and get yourself going, and others smoke to help you relax or calm down if feeling stressed. Reaction times have been shown to improve following smoking.

With each cigarette you smoke, your heart rate and blood pressure increase, you may also sweat more. The effect on your body of smoking is similar to the effect adrenaline has.

While you are smoking a cigarette there is a great increase in the amount of nicotine circulating in your blood. After about 10 minutes of you finishing your cigarette the level of nicotine quickly drops as it moves from the blood into the body’s tissue, brain and nerves. The liver works to remove the nicotine from your body over the next 2 hours by which time you’ll be more than ready for your next fix of this drug.

Why Nicotine?

The many effects nicotine has on your brain and nervous system are powerful. You are probably aware of this if you have ever tried to quit smoking before and experienced the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. Smokers report the following pleasurable effects of smoking:

§                     Stimulation, feeling alert

§                     Relaxation

§                     Improved task performance

§                     Improved attention span

§                     Relief of stress and other negative emotions

Unfortunately these effects are usually short-lived; your body becomes used to them in your early days of smoking. Because of nicotine’s addictive quality you quickly find out that you need to get your fix regularly just to feel ‘normal.’ To put it bluntly it is no longer the buzz from nicotine that you crave, but your body’s reaction to not having it in the body that you now can’t get by without.

If tobacco had only been discovered in recent times it would never have stood a chance of being licensed and marketed to the general public.