While there are all kinds of reasons why tobacco tends to addict people as it does, the nicotine in it is beyond any doubt, the most potent way in which it traps you. Nicotine replacement therapy works at helping you quit smoking by giving you at least some nicotine every day to help calm you down, so you can think with a clear mind about quitting your relationship with cigarettes.
What exactly does the nicotine in cigarettes do to you to get you addicted?
Well, like any other recreational drug, it changes the chemistry of your brain. It raises your brain’s levels of dopamine, norepinephrine and other chemicals to make you feel happier, brighter and so on. When you try to kick the habit though, your brain is no longer able to maintain those high levels of brain chemicals. They come down to the normal level that they used to be before you started smoking. Your brain isn’t used to this level at all. So you don’t feel the way you used to before you smoked. You get all irritable, and there is a gnawing hunger.
Nicotine replacement therapy works because it tries to give you a bit of nicotine so that you can raise your brain’s levels up a little bit and think straight. And then, you can go about trying to kick the habit. You’re probably wondering if it won’t get you addicted to nicotine patches.
Well, tobacco smoke tends to deliver nicotine into your system in a slightly different way. Smoke can fill the vast surface area of your lungs and deliver nicotine to your blood really, really quickly. That tends to give you a real kick. On the other hand, nicotine replacement products are a kind of constant low-level thing, and the patch delivers nicotine through only a small part of your skin. It really takes your body a long time to absorb anything from that patch at all.
Anything that slow, and your body is really able to get something to stay sane with. There’s no real kick there. You’re much less likely to become addicted to this stuff.
So does it really work? Well, it does, actually. It doubles your success rate when you’re trying to quit. And if you take two different kinds of nicotine replacement therapy at the same time, your chances become even better. You’ll probably have to work with your doctor to decide on what kind of nicotine replacement therapy system will really work for you. You have your choice of nicotine gum, lozenges, patches, inhalers and so on.
No matter what you do, quitting a habit of any kind is difficult. It takes a great deal of time – no matter what habit it is. People, for instance, can even have a very hard time quitting a television habit or a food habit. It’s completely normal when you try to quit a bad habit, to fail over and over again. You just have to pick yourself up and dust yourself off.
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