[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by vesperae I definitely agree that all of the various aspects of the addiction enhance each other, and I believe that each individual aspect also ends up being stronger as it relates to the others. So it ends up being a situation where the whole is definitely greater than the simple sum of the individual parts. Any thoughts on this, from the perspective of your medical experience?
on April 8, 2007, 9:30 pm, in reply to "Re: Recent Experiences"
Hi M G F! 
"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."
I would have to imagine that this has to do with not only a permanently elevated level of nicotine neurorecptors, but also, and perhaps more importantly, with the permanent changes to the tissues of the lungs following a prolonged exposure to regular smoking. Perhaps it also has to do with the fact that a smoker has either learned to "willfully" supress her cough reflex (unless it is heavily stimulated by a lot of mucous and/or smoke irritation), or perhaps the cough reflex itself eventually gets "rewired" to a much lower threshold of stimulation.
* * * * *vesperae
Responses: