[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by M G F on April 8, 2007, 4:20 pm, in reply to "Re: Recent Experiences" I have known several people who have given up smoking for several years, but have started again. In each case their bodies took to the renewed abuse (Apart from getting major buzz with the first cigarette) as if they had never stopped. Were the physical addiction fully broken, I believe they would have had to endure, perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree, the same trauma they experienced when they first sought to make their lungs obey their will.
One of the most interesting aspects of smoking to me is the intertwined nature of the different types of addiction a smoker experiences. Certainly the physical addiction to nicotine is very real, but part of what makes it so powerful is its relationship with the others. I’ll take Marcus and myself as an example and reference a couple of friends who have quit smoking in the past year. Marcus and I are both relatively heavy smokers. Neither of us intended to become heavy smokers; it just sort of happened, but neither of us tried to reverse the trend when we realized what was happening. Our heavier consumption, along with the young age at which we both started smoking, means that our physical addiction is probably much deeper and stronger than those who smoke less and started at an older age. I believe that the urge to smoke, as well as the real physical craving triggered by an activity one has long associated with smoking, say exiting a building to go to lunch, would be just as strong in a former smoker who had limited her consumption to less than a pack a day as it would in Marcus and me were we to quit. I think that one who truly enjoys smoking, for whatever reasons, never really overcomes the psychological addiction nor the physical addiction. The memories of and desire to engage in an intensely pleasurable activity never really goes away, nor does the brain’s addicted response to nicotine. Much like a recovering alcoholic is always recovering, so is a former smoker simply maintaining altered behavior in order to remain a non-smoker.
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