What is “the vicious cycle of addiction to tobacco and nicotine”?
Drug addiction follows a cycle like this: A person experiences discomfort, a sense of distress or pain, whether physical or psychological.
This person drinks or tries drugs in order to temporarily relieve the discomfort. It works and the person feels better. He or she realizes he or she can deal with life better and the drugs help toward that end. Use gradually increases as the effectiveness of the drug wears off sooner after each use. As it wears off, a new feeling of discomfort associated with the drug wearing off crowds out the previous discomfort and it fades from memory. At this point, getting and using drugs becomes the primary focus. He or she can no longer control using the drug and ignores any horrible consequences associated with its use. They now have a new problem: addiction. A sense of shame and embarrassment causes the addict to hide his or her drug use from friends and family.
This dishonesty and guilt further add to the discomfort, causing a backlash of denial and justification for continued use. In this state of mind, social isolation becomes an easy solution. But this only compounds the discomfort further. Relationships with friends and family and job performance are impacted. The drugs replace even those outlets and become the most important thing. Ironically, the ability to get relief diminishes as one adapts to the drugs. Ever larger amounts must be taken in order to function at all. An overwhelming obsession with getting and using the drugs now supplants all other interests or activities. One is now caught in an emotional rollercoaster that actually may be mistaken for mental illness.
One may seem very “up” and enthusiastic when high, and “down” (depressed) and lethargic when in withdrawal. At this point, the addict is stuck in a cycle of addiction. One faces the problem of having to pursue drugs at any cost and to attempt to appear normal to his friends, family, and employer. By now, the drugs will have changed one both physically and mentally.
While this cycle may seem extreme, particularly when distinguishing the clear differences between nicotine addiction and other addictions, it illustrates why nicotine addiction may actually be far more difficult to quit.
When facing the loss of one’s entire support system and one’s job, it is easier to see why one would want to quit. But when such overtly huge losses are not in jeopardy, the internal justification for continued use becomes all the more powerful, even though one’s health is at stake. The impact on health is gradual and insidious, taking years to occur. It does not come in a crescendo-like force the way an alcoholic’s or heroin addict’s life falls apart. It’s easy to rationalize that the physical condition would have occurred anyway even without smoking.
So the cycle of addiction for nicotine is far more subtle, yet because of that fact it is far more powerful and tightly bound. To read a darkly humorous account of this cycle, I refer you to a chapter called “Smoke” in Italo Svevo’s novel, Zeno’s Conscience.
Joseph’s comment:
In my experience, I truly believe that tobacco and nicotine are a part of a vicious cycle both physically and psychologically. When I first started smoking, it felt like something that worked to relax me and calm me down. At that time it was also a “cool” thing to do. Within a short period of time, I went from wanting a cigarette to needing a cigarette. Even with all the information on TV and what doctors told me, it seemed like it did not matter. What I like to call the phenomena of craving had set in. Every time I tried to not smoke, the physiological and physical draw was so strong, that my self-will could not prevent me from picking up the next one.
