Everyone knows that smoking is injurious for health. It is also written on the packet of cigarettes that ‘smoking causes lung cancer’. But smokers can’t quit smoking because it became their habit. When this habit becomes addictive then it causes extensive damage both physically and mentally. But the quitting smoking is not easy because people are facing some side effects when they quit smoking. These side effects make the way so difficult to quit smoking. As a result, the person can’t quit smoking easily.

Sometimes, many people determined that ‘this is the last time for smoking’ or ‘today is the last day’ but they couldn’t quit smoking. They start smoking after their promise.

I think you have a question or want to know why quit smoking is so hard. Let’s discuss ‘why quit smoking is so hard’?

Physical:

Cigarettes contain more than 5000 chemicals, including nicotine which is highly addictive like heroin and cocaine. Nicotine stimulates pleasure centers in the brain and it can provide temporary relief from feelings of anxiety and depression. Nicotine releases a chemical called dopamine that makes you feel pleasurable and relax. Cigarette nicotine affects your brain when you smoke, creates feelings of pleasure and makes you crave more nicotine.

When you want to quit smoking, the nicotine receptors in the brain become active. As a result, the amount of dopamine released decreases which a smoker is accustomed to and for this, a smoker feels bored, anxiety and frustration. They need cigarettes to relieve anxiety and frustration. [1][2]

Social:

Smoking becomes the part of life of a smoker. They smoke together with their friends and colleagues. Many times smokers create a social group with their friends, colleagues and other people for smoking. They meet with them and smoke cigarettes together. If one of them wants to quit smoking, he can’t. The other members explain to him not to quit smoking. Actually, they don’t want him to quit smoking. They will understand him in different ways for smoking together. As a result, he can’t quit smoking for his friends or coworkers.

Mental:

Smoking is often part of daily routine. The smokers smoke at a certain time like after eating, in leisure time, while drinking a cup of tea or coffee, while driving or when they feel tired or bored. They become accustomed to smoking at that time. So, they smoke during this time to feel good or relieve depression but if they don’t smoke at that time the amount of dopamine released decreases and the smokers feel bored and they crave a new cigarette. Sometimes, it creates some problems in their body when they quit smoking. So, they don’t quit smoking.

Some diseases caused by smoking:

1.     Lung cancer, Liver cancer etc.

2.     Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

3.     Heart problem.

4.     Stroke

5.     Asthma

6.     Diabetes

7.     Reproductive effects in women

8.     Blindness and many other diseases. [3]

So, we can say that it’s hard to quit smoking but it’s not too hard that you can’t quit. It’s possible to quit smoking if you have decided to quit smoking or have a better plan. A quit plan helps you better manage the physical, mental and social challenges of quit smoking. If you want to quit smoking, at first you need to find out why you want to quit smoking? Once you find out your problem then it will be easy to quit smoking. Other things, it costs a lot of money but when you quit smoking you can save this money.        

Reference:

[1]. https://www.lung.org/blog/why-quitting-smoking-difficult

[2]. https://sites.google.com/view/utopiaeducators/home?authuser=1

[3]. https://www.lung.org/research/sotc/by-the-numbers/10-worst-diseases-smoking-causes