Contrary to the common belief that smoking addiction is not comparable to alcohol or marijuana addiction, the truth is that nicotine addiction can be equally as strong and deadly as any of these other addictions. In fact, if you calculate the total number of people who die yearly of all other addictions combined, they would not add up to the total number of premature deaths attributed to cigarette smoking. The most active ingredient in a cigarette and the one that is involved in causing the heavy addictive characteristics of tobacco is the naturally occurring liquid alkaloid better known as Nicotine. And its a fact that tolerance to this drug usually develops. With the consequence that increasingly larger doses become necessary with time to achieve the same desired effects. Smokers experience this addictive phenomenon as their cigarette consumption gradually increases from what was a sporadic and occasional use at the beginning to a required daily consumption of one or many more packs. An addictive substance, in this case Nicotine, becomes a totally consuming necessity to its user, usually resulting in what is considered by our societies as an anti-social behavior. A number of people have argued that cigarette smoking fails to fulfill this requirement regarding the ill-behavior. It is true that most smokers do not resort to ill and deviant behaviors to maintain their dependency, but this is so because most smokers do manage to easily obtain the full complement of cigarettes they need to satisfy their addiction. But when the time comes that smokers are deprived of easy accessibility to cigarettes, the situation becomes totally different and ill-behaviors arise. It is curious to observe these behaviors, as for example during WW II, in many concentration camps in Germany, prisoners by rule were not given enough food to fulfill minimum caloric nutritional requirements, so they were literally starving to death. A common and notorious practice among smoking prisoners was trading away their scarce food rations for cigarettes to smoke (!). Even today, in underdeveloped countries, such as Bangladesh, many parents with starving children are willing to sacrify essential food for their children in order to buy cigarettes. This is in no way a normal behavior. For many smokers, even a day without Nicotine is excruciating. Statistics indicate that every year, millions of people try to break the nicotine habit but only 10 percent of them succeed. Will you succeed? |
