Looking at Smoking as a Habit

When we refer to smoking as a habit, we are talking about the behavioral patterns that come with it. To define your area of habit first think about the way in which you smoke, the little rituals that are now well-worn patterns etched onto your brain - such as the way you hold the cigarette, light it, inhale and flick the ash off the end.

The fact that these actions are repeated by yourself many times a day means they are ingrained into your brain and feel comfortable to you. They give you a sense of security, which is pleasurable and feels necessary.

When you stop smoking you lose all of those repetitive actions and can be left feeling at a loss for what to do with your hands. The loss can also be experienced as a psychological emotion. People who give up smoking talk about feeling deprived, like they’re missing an old friend, that they have time on their hands and they don’t know what to do with it.

This is because smoking has become a habit. To illustrate the point, actions used when driving a car eventually become a habit. Many of the actions you make when driving need to be constantly repeated so after some time of driving, you don’t have to think too much about changing gears and using the brakes.

Smoking works in the same way and some of the cigarettes you smoke will have been lit up without you thinking about if you really want one. It is important to be aware of this before attempting to quit smoking, especially as some people are more prone to repetitive behavior than others.

Psychological and Social Factors of Smoking Cigarettes

Countless people have tried unsuccessfully to stop smoking, only to find that it is more than just the physical addiction to nicotine that makes them want to keep on smoking.

This seems to be because most people start smoking in their teens for social reasons and their cigarette smoking habits quickly become connected with certain feelings and situations. This leads the smoker to develop an emotional attachment to cigarettes; it is this attachment that can be the most difficult to break.

Understanding the psychological role smoking plays in your life can make all the difference in your strategy towards quitting cigarettes for good. If you work out what smoking means to you and are aware of your personal triggers, you can put in to place specific strategies to address them when you decide you are going to quit.

Around 70% of smokers at any given time say they want to quit, and yet success rates for quitting are between 10 and 20 percent. Why is this so low? Well it seems that the social and psychological barriers smokers face when attempting to quit play a huge role in the process.

The problem starts in childhood with most smokers starting in their teens, with girls being more likely to smoke than boys in many countries.

There are many reasons why children may take up smoking and these include:

• Parental influence. Children who have parents that smoke are twice as likely to smoke than those whose parents don’t.
• A study in Scotland found that girls who wanted to cultivate an image of being ‘leaders’ within their groups were more likely to smoke. Cigarette smoking went together with wearing short skirts, make-up and jewelry.
• A study by the World Health Organization found that boys in the 11-15 year old range who smoked were more likely to be lonely, had problems at home and at school and also drank alcohol.

Where Do We Pick Up This Habit?

To briefly answer this question, we learn by example from others. Whether we like it or not we are strongly influenced by our parents, our peers, actors and pop stars. This can lead to us imitating their behavior and starting to smoke.

And with those first cigarettes we smoke comes the immediate effects of nicotine so we continue to smoke to recreate these feelings. Later we learn to associate smoking with other activities and that’s why we hear people saying “I always have a cigarette with a cup of coffee” or “I always smoke when I drink alcohol.

We become conditioned to associate certain situations with smoking and can feel anxious if we don’t have cigarettes with us during these times. So when we try to quit these strong psychological pulls remain with us.

Eventually we learn to continue smoking because when we go without cigarettes we experience unpleasant and uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms such as irritability or anxiety.

Smoking relieves us of these unpleasant symptoms and therefore reinforces, albeit negatively, our desire to continue smoking. This ‘conditioning’ keeps us hooked because the rewards we receive from smoking are instant, however the damage smoking causes unfortunately occurs over time and seems not significant enough for us to worry. That is until we or someone we know becomes ill from smoking.

In a similar way, when we try to stop smoking the ‘pain’ of withdrawal symptoms also come quickly but the benefits of improved health are difficult to measure.