Nicotine is an addictive chemical
Nicotine is the addictive part of tobacco. It has effects that make you:
- develop tolerance – meaning you need more to feel the same way
- experience symptoms of withdrawal – which make it hard to quit
- use more cigarettes or other tobacco or nicotine products than you want to
- sometimes smoke – rather than doing other important things
- keep smoking – even though you know it’s doing you harm.
The World Health Organization and the American Psychiatric Association have both declared nicotine to be a drug of addiction.
Quitting smoking can be difficult and often takes several tries, but it’s definitely worth it.
Learn more about how to quit and the benefits of quitting smoking.
Nicotine affects your body quickly
When you smoke, nicotine from the smoke fills your lungs and moves into your blood. From here, it moves all around the body, including into your brain.
Nicotine reaches its peak level in the blood within 5 minutes. Blood levels go down again over the following hours. How fast this happens depends on the person’s usual smoking patterns as well as biological differences between people.
The fast speed with which nicotine affects the body is one of the reasons it is so addictive.
How does nicotine affect your brain?
Nicotine travels through your blood and enters your brain. It has many different effects on your brain, which can lead to addiction. Nicotine addiction changes the chemical balance in your brain.
Nicotine binds to receptors located all around your brain. This leads to the release of neurotransmitters, which are chemical messengers that move between nerves, muscles, or glands. They affect many bodily functions, mood, and behaviour.
Nicotine can stimulate the release of neurotransmitters in the brain that create feelings of pleasure and reward. One of these neurotransmitters is called dopamine. Dopamine is released in parts of the brain that are associated with feeling pleasure. However, the feeling of pleasure wears off quickly, and when it does, you begin to crave more nicotine. This is so that you can experience the pleasurable feeling again.
Nicotine has some positive effects on brain performance in the short-term, but negative effects in the long-term.
Nicotine can have short-term positive effects on:
- fine motor abilities
- attention
- short-term recall tasks
- working memory response times.
However, smoking tobacco for a long period of time can lead to a reduction in how well your brain works. After many years of smoking, people can become less able to solve problems and remember things, and less able to process information. They can become more impulsive and more likely to over-react.
How does nicotine make you addicted?
After a period of being exposed to nicotine, your brain develops a tolerance for it. You become used to the pleasurable feelings that occur when neurotransmitters such as dopamine are released.
Then, when you don’t smoke for a while and no nicotine is entering your body, you can experience nicotine withdrawal symptoms. Nicotine withdrawal describes the feelings that people have when they stop using nicotine. This includes:
- severe cravings for nicotine or tobacco
- feelings of irritability, anxiety, anger
- difficulty concentrating
- restlessness
- impatience
- increased appetite
- insomnia.
These symptoms usually begin a few hours after stopping smoking. They peak within 2 days to one week. Then they gradually reduce over the next few weeks.
Many of the positive feelings from smoking can be explained by unpleasant nicotine withdrawal symptoms being relieved.
People who are addicted to nicotine tend to feel less pleasure from other sources than they do from nicotine. This means that when they are trying to quit, other things that they could do instead of smoking seem less appealing. This increases chances of going back to smoking.
Are some people more likely than others to become addicted?
Anyone can become addicted to nicotine, but scientific studies have shown that it is more likely for some people than for others. People who start smoking at an early age are more likely to become addicted than those who start later.
Some people’s genes may make them more likely to develop nicotine addiction. For instance, individual variation in the CYP2A6 enzyme that breaks down nicotine is associated with how much people smoke.
Many people who are addicted to other drugs are also highly addicted to nicotine. Withdrawal symptoms can be worse if people are using other addictive drugs.
People with mood, anxiety, and personality disorders are also more likely to be highly addicted to nicotine.
Quit smoking medications help to reduce withdrawal symptoms
Quitting can be difficult. Most people need more than one go at quitting before they succeed, but there is plenty of help available.
Nicotine patches, gum, lozenges, mouth sprays and inhalators help reduce the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. They do this by replacing nicotine that would otherwise come from smoking tobacco.
Newer drugs to treat nicotine dependence partially block nicotine from binding to its receptors in the brain. This reduces the reinforcing effects of nicotine, so that smoking doesn’t cause the same feelings of pleasure. Some medications that do this are available on prescription from your doctor.
Combining medications with counselling support gives you the best possible chance of quitting.
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