Entries Tagged as 'Addictions'
Smoking Addiction - its Components and Causes
The addiction to smoking, which implies addiction to the substance nicotine, has several components. The better one is aware of these components and understands them; the better is the chance for succeeding in stopping the smoking habit. Here is a survey of the components that addiction to smoke consist of.
THE SOCIAL COMPONENT
To some extend the habit of smoking is a product of socialization. Socialization is simply the tendency to repeat patterns of behaviour one sees other persons in the society exhibit. Socialisation is one major way children and young people learn social skills. Children and teenagers learn skills necessary to live and work in the society by a socialisation process. Unfortunately also bad habits and bad ways of thinking are learned the same way.
If one lives or works together with other smoking individuals, one will more or less automatic adopt these individuals’ smoking habits. If one then tries to break out of the social structure, one will feel anxiety for not being accepted any more by the social group one is a part of.
If the other individuals also make moves to threaten or freeze out an individual trying to break this bad social standard, the difficulty of breaking out of the habit will be even greater. The threatening actions may not even be very serious to frighten a person from braking out of such a socially standardized habit, and may not even be meant as a threat.
THE NEED FOR SUCKING AND CHEWING
Every person has a need for sucking and chewing. This need is necessary in early infanthood, but it also persists into adult life to some degree. Some persons use cigarettes or other smoking devices and the smoke as a means to satisfy this need. There is a hypothesis that this need is greater by some adults then by others because this need, or some other similar basic need, has not been fully satisfied in early infanthood.
If you want to stop smoking, you can try to satisfy this need by other means, for example by always keeping something in your pocket that you can put in your mouth to chew at when the need for smoke appears.
AUTOMATIC REPEATING
When a person have done something many times and frequently enough, there will be created a pattern of automatic repetition of that particular behaviour. This is especially true if the particular action is done in a distinct recognizable situation.
The pattern of automatic repetition also has the effect of making a person feel safer in the daily life and routines.
Such a pattern of automatic repetition is always a component in the smoking habit. It you want to quit smoking, you should make an investigation to find out in which situations and which environments you usually take a cigarette.
Then try to avoid these situations or environments where you use to smoke, or to deliberately alter these situations.
NICOTINE USED AS A SELF MEDICATION
Nicotine has a tranquilizing effect upon nervous feelings. At the same time it has some anti-depressive effect, at least in the short run, and it makes a person feel more awake. A person suffering from nervousness or from depressive symptoms may feel that the smoking helps him against his mental symptoms.
However, gradually there will be a need for steadily higher doses of nicotine to give these good effects, and if there is a lack of nicotine in the body, the nervous or depressive feelings will be greater than before.
This gratification, but with the need for steadily higher doses to get the good effects is a major incentive for the smoking habit. You should consider if this anti-depressive or tranquilizing effect is a reason for your smoking. Then you should try to find other ways to achieve the same effect. Engaging in some sport or outdoor life will often make you feel less depressed. If the depressive feelings are more serious, some appropriate treatment can be necessary.
THE PLEASURE COMPONENT
There is to some degree a plain and direct pleasure connected with smoking. This pleasure is in itself a good effect. This good effect is probably in most cases too small compared to the painful effects of smoking, but will gives a temptation for an individual to continue the habit. However, also this pleasure effect will gradually be difficult to obtain without increasing the doses.
If the plain pleasure of smoking is a main reason for your habit, then you should try to find other sources of pleasure instead, for example some good food, some good music or some erotic action.
THE GENETIC COMPONENT
Not all people get equally easy dependent of nicotine. There are factors yet not fully understood that make some people more easily addicted than others. Perhaps some persons have receptors on their nerve cells that more easily get trigged by nicotine than others, or perhaps some people have more receptors with the ability to get trigged by nicotine, and this is inherited in the genetic code.
THE NERVOUS MECHANISMS WORKING BY ADDICTION
The normal brain has signal substances with a tranquilizing effect, and substances with a stimulating effect upon nerve cells. Like most narcotic substances, nicotine act like a signal substance by fitting into receptors on some brain cells.
Nicotine attaches itself to some receptors and thus gives the nerve cell having these receptors a signal. The cells getting such a signal from nicotine will react by secreting another signal substance, dopamine that influences still other cells. Dopamine will tranquilize some brain cells and stimulate others, and the total effect of this is the pleasurable effects of smoking.
However, when nicotine steadily induces dopamine release, the brain will gradually decrease the production of dopamine when nicotine is not present, and the brain will feel a steadily greater need for nicotine to work normally and feel well.
About the Author
Knut Holt is an internet consultant and marketer focusing on health items. TO FIND anti-aging supplements and natural medicines against smoking addiction, over-weight, hypothyroidism, joint pain, heart disease, hemorrhoids, depression, acne, other skin ailments, scars, wrinkles and much more PLEASE VISIT his web-site:—- http://www.abicana.com/shop2.htm —-Free to reprint with the author’s name and link.
Tags: Addictions
Are You Drinking Too Much Coffee?
Do you take any addictive, mind-altering drugs?
You probably would answer “no”, but you if you drink tea or coffee, you should be answering “yes”!
Many sober, law abiding people who would never dream of knowingly ingesting a mind-altering drug, actually consume one every day — caffeine!
Caffeine is so pervasive in our culture and in many other cultures that we often forget it is actually a drug that affects our brain. Caffeine is present in coffee, tea, many cola drinks and over the counter medications.
The most common way that most of us ingest caffeine is in the form of coffee. And some of us drink many cups of coffee in a day.
If you are one of those people who drinks a lot of coffee daily, you probably wonder what all that coffee is doing to you. Is coffee really bad for you, or is drinking coffee just a harmless vice? Can it be possible that coffee is actually good for us?
The research on coffee shows mixed results. Some studies show that drinking coffee increases the rate of heart attacks, while other studies have shown that drinking large amounts of coffee decreases the risk of diabetes.
There are nutritional advisers who claim that coffee makes us age faster, wears out our adrenal glands, and causes all sorts of untold damage to our cells.
Other researchers claim that coffee, especially if it’s freshly roasted and ground, is full of antioxidants, and therefore good for us. Most doctors say that drinking one or two cups of coffee a day is probably not harmful. And of course there are others who say we ought to avoid caffeine altogether.
The one thing that most researchers and most coffee drinkers agree on is that coffee can keep us awake at night and cause insomnia if we drink it late in the day.
Yet many of us drink coffee precisely because we want to boost up the activity of our brain cells, especially when we first wake up.
Many of us feel that we cannot really get going in the morning until we have had our first cup of coffee. We often continue to drink coffee throughout the day whenever our energy appears to be flagging and our brain seems to need additional help to think more clearly.
Does caffeine really enhance mental performance, or is that just a myth? Yes, caffeine does give a temporary boost to brain cells. But the amount required to improve mental performance is not very high. Even half a cup of coffee will be enough to give your brain a boost that lasts several hours.
Oddly enough, more caffeine is not necessarily better. In one test done when high-level executives were given the equivalent of fourteen cups of coffee in a day, they made their decisions faster, but the decisions were not of very good quality.
Not every person reacts to caffeine in the same way. Some people experience greater mental clarity, alertness and productivity after a cup of coffee. Other people become jittery, anxious, or depressed when they drink coffee. Although caffeine will keep most of us awake if taken at night, it does not have this effect in everyone.
In some older people, coffee or tea can improve memory and alertness enough to partly offset the effects of aging.
It is true that caffeine is mildly addicting for most people. Some people can quit using caffeine with absolutely no withdrawal symptoms, while others will feel headaches, fatigue, and experience cravings for caffeine for weeks.
Caffeine works by blocking one of the neurotransmitters–adenosine — which normally tells brain cells to calm down. Brain cells that have been affected by caffeine will remain excited and on high alert for several hours.
The most noticeable negative effect of caffeine is that it can interfere with sleep. In most people, drinking coffee, tea or cola in the late afternoon or in the evening will cause insomnia.
If you are particularly affected by caffeine, you will find that the quantity and quality of your sleep will be greatly reduced. This can set off a vicious cycle, where you feel so tired all the next day that you drink a lot more coffee just to try to feel awake.
If this is happening to you, cut back on the amount of coffee you consume each day. You may experience fewer withdrawal symptoms if you cut down gradually. You may wish to substitute green tea for some of your cups of coffee. Green tea has some caffeine, but not as much as coffee.
Better yet, consider substituting exercise for some of those cups of coffee. If you can’t leave your workplace, at least get up from your chair periodically.
Do a few stretches, walk around a bit, and jump up and down a few times. Take some deep breaths. A little exercise break can revitalize your brain without giving you the caffeine jitters.
Remember that your brain won’t really benefit from more than one or two cups of coffee in a day.
By: Royane Real
This article was posted at iReprint.info on 2006-04-24. Webmasters and publishers are free to reprint this article as long as the resource box and all the links remain intact.
Tags: Addictions
The Frightening But True Facts About Smoking
If you think that smoking is a harmless little hobby and all the people harping on you to quit are overreactors, think again. Smoking is the number ONE preventable cause of premature death and morbidity in America. There is nothing more dangerous you can be doing to your health. And it isn’t just bad for you, smoking around your kids can cause severe health complications down the road and cause serious damage while their lungs and other vital organs are developing. All of this information is well documented by the AMA, American Lung and Heart Associations, and the American Cancer Society.
Background On the Problem Of Smoking
Cigarette smoking has been identified as the most important source of preventable morbidity and premature mortality worldwide. Smoking is responsible for approximately one in five deaths in the United States. From 1995 to 1999, smoking killed over 440,000 people in the United States each year. This includes an estimated 264,087 male and 178,311 female deaths annually. Among adults, most smoking attributable deaths were from lung cancer (124,813), coronary heart disease (81,976) and chronic airway obstruction (64,735).
Excluding adult deaths from exposure to secondhand smoke, adult males and females lost an average of 13.2 and 14.5 years of life respectively, due to smoking. If current tobacco use patterns persist in the United States, an estimated 6.4 million children (8,830 per 100,000) will die prematurely from a smoking-related disease. Smoking costs the economy over $150 billion in annual health care costs and lost productivity, including $81.9 billion in mortality-related productivity losses and $75.5 billion in excess medical expenditures. It is directly responsible for 87 percent of lung cancer cases and causes most cases of emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
Cardiovascular disease is the primary cause of death in the United States. It is estimated that as many as 30% of deaths from cardiovascular disease are a result of tobacco use. In 2001, approximately 65,000 women died of lung cancer. 85,000 men die each year from smoking related cancers of the trachea, lung and bronchus. These statistics are not encouraging, and indicate that smoking has a far more negative impact on the health of Americans and the strength of our economy than most people are aware of. These statistics alone should make people stop smoking, but unfortunately many people relapse back into the habit.
In 2000, more than 70% of smokers wanted to quit, and 41% tried for at least a day. Many smokers report making 8-11 attempts before quitting for good. With a large majority of smokers desiring to quit, it is imperative that they are given the tools and support they need to increase their chances of being successful.
Judy Brown is a director of http://www.lifenatural.com, http://www.smoke-rx.com and http://www.helpquitsmoking.net a pure informational resource where you will find further information on how to quit smoking.
Tags: Addictions · Smoking
