Smoking – What Do You Need To Know?

People who smoke a pack a day die on average 7 years earlier than people who have never smoked.

Smoking cigarettes is dangerous to health. According to studies conducted, one out of every five deaths in the U.S. is due to smoking cigarettes. Smoking reduced more than five million years of lifespan because of premature death.
Cigarettes are the most addictive and harmful over-the-counter drug known to man. Cigarette smoking leads to lung cancer. Considering these facts, one may wonder why people still smoke cigarettes.

History of Smoking Cigarettes

Tobacco was smoked in the form of cigars before World War I. They were chiefly smoked by the wealthy. The less fortunate smoked cigarettes, which are basically leftovers of the cigar making process.
When tobacco companies started to mass-produce cigarettes, the number of people who smoked cigarettes suddenly increased. Their customers were soldiers of World War I. It took some time before a deadly by-product of smoking became evident.

Are You Smoking For Mental Needs?

About 20 to 50 percent of cigarettes are smoked for an explicit, expressed need. Smokers come to rely on cigarettes to hone their performance.
For example, people like artists, writers, and strategists use smoking to isolate themselves in their own world, to come up with creative ideas. Sensitive, fragile, and anxiety prone smokers use cigarettes as tranquilizers, and they tend to do more compelled and less instinctual smoking than other smokers.
Smokers with a sense of insecurity, an inferiority complex, and low self-esteem tend to insulate themselves from the world through this habit. Smokers are frightened of giving up compelled smoking, and if the percentage they smoke due to a compulsion is higher than 50 percent, this fear becomes a severe barrier.
Many smokers from this category smoke more cigarettes after they decide to stop smoking up until the moment they quit. If these individuals are relatively healthy, it is very difficult to convince them to stop smoking. These smokers demand advanced assurances that they can survive without smoking before their last cigarette.
If you fall into this category, it is significant to remind yourself that you must believe in yourself and your innate talents more than in cigarettes. By accomplishing this transformation, you not only become a comfortable nonsmoker but also a stress free, confident, and delightful individual.

Cigarette Smoking and Lung Cancer

Doctors only noticed that there was an increase in lung cancer incidents 20 to 30 years after World War I. With this increase, an article named “Cancer by the Carton,” was published by Reader’s Digest, which prompted the public to be aware of the effects of cigarette smoking.
Similar articles have been published to denounce smoking cigarettes. Medical advancements have proven the relationship between lung cancer and smoking cigarettes. In spite all these factors, lung cancer has remained as the one of the most common diseases in the modern world.

Nicotine

Nicotine is the most common ingredient in cigarettes. Nicotine is more addictive than heroine, which is a prohibited drug in most parts of the world. In terms of dependence, aside from heroine, doctors ranked nicotine ahead of alcohol and cocaine.
Researches have proved that smoking four cigarettes a day can induce life-long addiction to nicotine. People who smoke tend to see smoking as a part of their personality, as something that they cannot live without.
That is a clear sign of addiction. The addiction in the case of nicotine is considered a sickness. What adds to the addiction to smoke cigarettes is satisfaction a smoker gains when puffing a cigarette or the psychological pleasure.
Smokers describe smoking is like a pat on the back after a hard day’s work. One smoker confesses that it is actually the sense of satisfaction that you get from it that keeps you smoking but not the taste of the cigarette.

Effects of Nicotine

Studies have also shown that depression is twice as common to smokers against non-smokers. Some also use cigarettes as an artificial action to pass time and be patient.
Nicotine reduces anxiety and generates joy. Nicotine triggers the smoker’s brain to be more capable in processing information. Researches have also shown that based on the dose of nicotine intake, it induces sedation and relaxation, and alertness and arousal.
These effects, though, do not balance the harmful effect of nicotine addiction, which is lung cancer, and possibly other diseases, which will all finally leads to death. Smokers who cannot stop from smoking may consider the positive effects of nicotine. The short-term effects of nicotine may blind them.

Other Ingredients of Cigarette

Aside from nicotine, smokers rarely know that a cigarette contains carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, acetylene, and cyanide, all of which are harmful chemicals. These chemicals are also used as poison.

Psychosocial Factors

Psychosocial factors also contribute on why people continue to smoke. Persons surrounded by smokers, like family and friends, can soon develop the habit of smoking.
The smoker will have a hard time quitting the habit because of the addictive nature. An atmosphere permissive and unconcerned towards cigarette smoking will produce considerable numbers of smokers.
Recently, researchers have reported that genetic variables also play a role on why people keep on smoking. These genetic variables affect the tendency of a person to smoke to the chances to quit smoking.
Undergoing substance abuse
counseling is absolutely necessary for an addict as it is an essential
part of the addiction treatment process.