The Truth Behind Why People Smoke

Nicotine is often cited as being one of the most addictive substances on earth; but, despite its intoxicating nature, the truth behind why people smoke is not rooted solely in a simple physical craving. Smoking, like many other addictions, is also heavily based in an individual’s psychological outlook. Almost anyone can train themselves not to pick up a cigarette, but it is far more difficult to train the mind to stop imagining smoking as a pleasurable activity.

Smokers who do manage to permanently quit do so not because they’ve managed to effectively hide their cigarettes, but because they’ve trained themselves to no longer desire them. Smoking cessation is so difficult in part because without removing the psychological impulse to smoke, a relapse is almost inevitable whenever stress triggers a familiar path that the brain believes can only be ‘solved’ by taking a puff on a cigarette. Removing this link, and finding a new way of conceptualizing the importance of one’s health, are vital components of any successful smoking cessation plan.

Stress, especially in the modern era, is problematic. Many people develop coping mechanisms to help handle the seemingly endless deluge of problems and surprises that confront us daily. Smoking is a particularly insidious coping mechanism because of the physical damage it leaves behind. Few smokers will claim that they are happy about the state of their bodies, but their emotional needs, and the way their brain handles them, keeps them smoking even when they realize they are doing themselves harm.

Ultimately, people smoke not only because they are addicted to nicotine, but because they do not have any other way of dealing with their emotional triggers. Getting over a nicotine addiction can be accomplished in relatively simple ways. But leaving smoking behind requires that the smoker understand where the impulse to smoke comes from, and how to separate that impulse from the physical act. By separating the emotional triggers that prompt smoking from the physical act of smoking, those addicted to the habit can begin to understand their own feelings and begin to control their impulses. Once a smoker has learned to deal with the feelings that prompt the desire to smoke, the seemingly unconquerable need to smoke vanishes into thin air.