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Posted by vesperae Nicotine addiction is simply the most common and universally accepted reason for failure to quit smoking, which means that it is also the most common and universally accepted excuse for being unable to quit. My belief is that unless all other personal motivations to keep smoking are consciously recognized and addressed, the attempt to quit smoking will fail, and the knee-jerk reaction is to blame nicotine addiction as the sole reason for the failure. This thinking is common because we have been fed the message over and over and over again that the tobacco industry’s manipulation of nicotine content and delivery in cigarettes is responsible for all smokers’ addictions to smoking. The model is one of blame, and a total shifting of personal responsibility away from the “innocent” individual to an external “evil” manipulator. Withdrawal from nicotine can be awful, but in the absence of any other motivation to smoke, it is only a fraction as difficult as withdrawal from cocaine, heroin, or alcohol (for an alcoholic), all of which can be fatal if not medically managed with in-patient care in a hospital or other medical setting. Nicotine is cleared from the system within three days, and the bulk of the worst physical withdrawal symptoms have passed by this point. And while they may be profoundly unpleasant, the withdrawal systems are really no worse than a bad case of the flu, and no one has ever died from nicotine withdrawal (that I am aware of). Why then does smoking seem glamorous and sophisticated and desirable to the uninitiated? No one ever lights up her first cigarette and takes a drag and inhales it without becoming immediately and permanently aware of the Risks and Dangers of smoking. Violent coughing? Dizziness? Nausea? Her body tells her in no uncertain terms that deliberately breathing cigarette smoke is something that it does not want to do. The message is there loud and clear. And I believe that a huge part of the motivation to keep smoking is the fact that every time she lights up another cigarette, the experience relates back to that first drag, as a reminder of just how far she has come in her ability to control and change her body. This is the Identity motivation that I was talking about in my last reply, and it implicitly depends on overcoming her innate physiological revulsion to repeatedly embracing something that is clearly toxic. As I and others have said previously, I believe that smoking is such a psychologically and physically intimate behavior that most smokers, and most women especially, would prefer to keep their most honest thoughts and feelings about it private, especially in response to those who do not share in the experience of smoking, or who have an obvious agenda of wanting them to quit.
on April 18, 2007, 3:42 am, in reply to "Re: “Anne’s Choice” by Richard"
Hi Richard, 
”These are views which I would like to explore. They seem to me to underplay the role which nicotine addiction may play in a smoker who wishes to quit being unable to do so. By way of evidence of this, I offer the information contained on the hundreds of ‘quit smoking’ websites with message boards on the internet. These are posters who have made a decision to quit but often fail. Sometimes they hate themselves for what they see as their own weakness. What is it that keeps them smoking?”
I think that addiction to nicotine is certainly a very strong and important reason for the “failure” to quit, but I also believe that it in no way is sufficient (in the absence of other considerations) to explain it.
”In my experience a common (though by no means invariable) scenario might be this. Most smokers start during their teens, perhaps as a result of peer group pressure, a desire to indulge in an adult activity, and, yes, a desire to do something which is ‘bad’ and even prohibited. They note the contrast between anti-smoking propaganda on the one hand and the glamorous, sophisticated image of adult smokers in movies and in real life.”
Why is smoking an “adult” activity? Why is smoking “bad”? Why are there ubiquitous anti-smoking public health campaigns?
”However, I don’t believe that risk enters into the equation at this stage at all. Someone offering a cigarette to a teenage friend will say: ‘Go on, a few cigarettes won’t do you any harm’. And this is almost certainly correct: they won’t. So for a new smoker there is no risk or danger to consider.”
I think that this commonly held scenario seriously underestimates the psychological sophistication of most adolescents, and also is a result of the model of seeing teens as mindless and “innocent”, and tobacco companies as “evil” predators and manipulators. I also think that it’s another outgrowth of our tendency to want to shift blame away from the personal responsibility of the user.
”Ten years later our smoker is in her mid-20s and has become physically and psychologically addicted to nicotine and behaviourally accustomed to smoking cigarettes. She has begun to notice some minor effects on her body but regards these as outweighed by the pleasures of smoking. She is aware that if she continues to smoke the risk of more serious damage will increase but so long as the risk remains low it can be disregarded. That is not to say that she enjoys the thought of the risk; it just isn’t sufficiently important to influence her decision to continue to smoke.”
These sound like the socially declared rationalizations of many smokers of the age group that you are describing. But the question is, can they be taken at face value? Is this the whole of the story? Since she doesn’t want to quit, if challenged, she might feel the need to rationalize her behavior to herself and to others. When questioned about the seemingly illogical decision to continue to smoke, she will undoubtedly offer up whatever justifications she imagines will fend off a critical party who is questioning her, because she probably doesn’t want to discuss it any more than is required to take the immediate focus off of her and her smoking.
”Another 10 years go by and our smoker begins to worry about the risk. She still enjoys smoking - or at least does not enjoy not smoking – but the balance has now shifted. She tries to quit and repeatedly fails. Why? Is it because subconsciously her desire to continue smoking is greater than she thinks? If so, where is the evidence for such a subconscious desire? Or is it because her rational will is insufficiently strong to overcome the demand of the receptors in her brain for the chemical and psychological satisfaction upon which they have become dependent? It seems to me that there is a great deal of evidence among these unsuccessful quitters for that explanation.”
Again, I think that there is this strong tendency to focus blame exclusively on nicotine addiction, and I think that it is this incomplete model of motivation that allows many smokers to conveniently avoid a sense of personal responsibility for their inability to quit. It also grossly inflates our perception of the role of nicotine, because we end up attributing to nicotine motivations to continue smoking that really have nothing to do with it, at least in the absence of the interaction of other considerations.
Continued in next reply…
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