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I have some theories about smoking and I just wanted to see what you thought. It is hard to put it all into a short post but I will try.

Step 1. Becoming a smoker.
I believe that our perception about smoking was cemented a long time before we actually picked up our first cigarette, When I think about what I saw on T.V and films and personally by watching the adults around me i realize that it was destined I would be a smoker. Not through peer pressure but through curiosity. I remember the images of cool heores on the screen getting all the women and fast cars but i remember more the adults around me such as my mum and uncles saying " I better not catch you smoking, They will kill you " and then turning around and lighting one up. What message did that send to a child. It will kill you but it must be so great they are all willing to risk their lives for it.

Step 2. Smoking that cigarette.
Like I say it was inevatble I would at some point try a cigarette. I now realize that what happened after that first cigarette shaped my life. I remember smoking the first ones. Made me feel sick and dizzy, made me scared I had poisioned myself and would die, made me feel exilerated and grown up yet stupid and childish. All these things went through my head but that was not the problem. By smoking that first cigarette I had started off a chain reaction that would affect my life. By introducing poision to my system I had triggered a primitive reaction inside my body that Should not have been trigered. Hormones and chmicals were causing around my system trying to deal with the onslaught. The most basic survival response, the fight or flight response had been activated. This was normally reserved for the most dangerous times in a humans life. Yet here it was all bells and wistles blowing trying to keep me out of danger. But what danger. There was no threat. The whole sequence had been triggered by mistake. By the chamicals in the cigarette.

Step 3. Safety first.
There are certain reactions by humans that are there and cannot be ignored no matter how irrational they may seem. By triggering the fight or flight response I was now in a state of full alert, all systems go ready to fight or run away. However the only way to turn off this reaction would be to see the danger disapear or actually expend the pent up energy generated by the false alarm. Unfortunantly We did neither. At this point a hormone called cortisol was being pumped into our system to cope with increased threat.

Step 4. The second cigarette.
Instead of accepting how bad smoking was and how it just made us feel anxious and afraid we decided to believe the perception we had that smoking must be good and I must have done it wrong. By lighting a second cigarette we were actually starting a misunderstanding that changed our lives. Nicotine has been proven to stimulate a hormone called DHEA. DHEA is the opposite hormaone to cortisol. They work as a team to switch on and off the fight or flight response. So by lighting the second cigarette we were basically telling ourselves. Everything is now OK and I am safe again. To your mind all you had done to stopp the anxiety was light a cigarette. At no point did it associate the two things though. The smoking of the first cigarette and the lighting of the second. So instead of seeing smoking as it really was. horrible and causing anxiety, it was now seen as an answer to anxiety.. A distorted memory began.

Step 5. What then
To your subconscious mind you had just discovered a way of controling your anxiety. not only that it was instant gratification. you didn't have to wait. The problem was though that as the effects of the nicotine and the resulting DHEA started to diminish, the cortisol that was still being pumped into your system had started to take effect again. The symptoms of anxiety and fear started to surface again. Again all due to the last cigarette you smoked. The same cigarette that you had hailed as the cure for anxiety. But as it was about an hour after smoking it you never related the two events. So what now. Your subconscious now had a answer for this feeling. Smoke a cigarette. So that's what you do and slowly you started to rely on the relief felt by smoking. the relief from that last cigarette. Perverse really.

Step 6. How did it keep you smoking.
I spent a long time studying this. But I have come to a conclusion that is only my theory but seems to fit. There is something else that can trigger the fight or flight response described in step 3. That is inflammation. When the body detects any kind of inflammation it releases cortisol into the system to fight off the bacteria. The reason for this is the body is seeing the inflammation as an injury dur to you fighting off the danger. It cannot help but do it. Now when you think about it smoking a cigarette meant inhaling hot smoke that incorporated all kinds of additives and chemicals and even radioactive particles. All this caused inflammation to the intestinal and respitory tracts. You didn't feel it straiht away though because the nicotine had released the DHEA (the all clear hormone) which meant that until the levels odf cortisol passed the levels of DHEA then ot would not be felt. But as soon as the DHEA dropped enough the fight or flight response would activate. Vicious circle.

Step 7. Trying to quit.
So when you think about it you are not fighting just an addiction to nicotine, nicotine is a small cog in a much bigger wheel. You are actually fighting something more powerful than any drug or chemical. You are fighting yourself. You are trying to override your own primative reactions. This is why people struggle, not because they do not want to quit but because they are still under the perception that smoking is doing something possitive for them. and that if they just will themselves hard enough it will work.

Step 8. Willpower, how much do you need.
The answer to this may surprise you. The answer is actually none. Think about what willpower actually is. The power of your will to do or not to do something. So When it comes to quitting smoking your conscious mind that makes all the rational decisions wants to quit, however the subconscious mind that has recorded all these distorted memeories about smoking will not let you. It will not let you becuase by just saying you are quitting it is seeing that as you putting yourself in danger. You are telling it that you are just going to take away it's safety net against fear and anxiety without explaining why or what you are going to do to replace it. How can you do this ? There are various ways. If you are still smoking, look at the next cigarette you smoke. Do not do it as an automatic reaction to certain feelings, actually ask yourself why you are smoking this cigarette, Is it really doing what you believe it does. What will happen in an hours time. Will you feel like another? why? Link the two things together like they should. The smoking of the last cigarette is dirctly related to how you feel when you want another. Tae a cigarette and rip it open. Empty the contents on a peice of paper. Look at the contents, get a pencil and sift through the inanimate object lying in front of you. Is it really that magical, can those dry leaves actaully releive your anxiety, releave boredom, make a meal taste better, can it sing to sooth you can it jump up and entertain you. NO yet for some reason you have associated all these things to a cigarette.
Once you have shown your subconscious mind that you have been tricked you will gain the permission of your subconscious to quit. Without fight and struggle because for the first time your conscious and subconscious minds will agree. If they agree there is no need for willpower.

Step 9. What happens when I quit
Over the first few days the chemicals that have built up in your body over many years of smoking will start to break down and disperse. This is what most people call the withdrawals. I prefer to call them the symptoms of recovery. Many people ask, why after weeks and months do they still feel the cravings for cigarettes. Well perhaps it isn't craving for cigarettes. As mentioned above the other trigger for the fight or flight response is inflammation. The damage caused by smoking does not heal in a week. In fact there is no time you can put on it as everyone heals at different rates. As you get a flare up of inflammation you will get the cortisol released into your system which in turn will make you feel anxious. It amy be something you ate or drank, it maybe due to genuine anxiety or stress but either way it will cause the flare-up to react. So while all the time you have blamed nicotine it could be because you just were eating something that didn't agreed with you.

Step 10. The implication of too much cortisol.
Cortisol in small doses is good and is needed for humans to work at their optimum level however constant over porduction as caused by smoking and inflammation leads to damaging health concequences.

Insomnia: When you quit

Cortisol has its own circadian (daily) rhythm, and should be at its highest level in the morning when we are waking up and getting started with our day; by night time it should be very low. One of cortisol?s functions is to keep us very alert in times of danger, so high levels of cortisol at night will cause insomnia.

There are two types of insomnia. In the first, you have trouble falling asleep because the cortisol levels are already too high; in the second, you fall asleep but then wake up in the middle of the night and can?t get back to sleep. This second type occurs because either the elevated level of cortisol has lowered your blood sugar too much (see Diabetes), or it?s time for your body to repair connective tissue and it realizes that the intestinal tract is inflamed and it produces cortisol in response to the inflammation.


Weight Gain: When you quit

This goes hand and hand with the blood sugar problem of cortisol and diabetes, because the brain?s primary fuel is glucose or sugar. If you are not able to metabolize sugar properly, your brain will demand that you eat more foods that have sugar in them to feed itself. So now you are eating high-calorie carbohydrate foods that often are high in fat, and you will gain weight. Equally bad is the fact that these types of food cause systemic inflammation and the further production of cortisol.

Fatigue, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Adrenal Exhaustion:

Cortisol imbalances due to inflammation can cause fatigue in several ways.
Because cortisol is designed to keep you alert in times of stress, it can cause insomnia, and the lack of quality sleep will make you tired. Cortisol also suppresses insulin production to keep the sugar available for muscles in a stress response, and can result in low blood sugar, which will also make you fatigued. Lastly, your adrenal glands can ultimately become exhausted from the constant demands placed on them to produce endless amounts of cortisol, usually as a response to chronic inflammation from a poor diet and smoking.


Thanks
Ian Clark

Alternatively we could also just simply say that stupid people deserve what they get and stop subsidizing their bad habit.

You have a right to buy a gun and shoot yourself in the head with it. You have the right to drive a nail through your foot. Why should this be any different so long as they do it to themselves and not to others?

If any one is stupid enough to smoke the first one then exactly why is that "my" issue? Take personal responsibility folks. If you're addicted get gum or patches. Don't expect sympath.

I started smoking in 1959, it was cool. I was cool. Stupid but cool. I've quit many times and was never successful. Not until three years ago. It was then that I reached the maturity necessary to admit that I was no different than an alcoholic an obesely over weight person or a junkie. I had to face the fact that I wasn't only addicted to the nicotine, which was relatively easy to rid my body of, I was addicted to a life style. That's the monster that grabs a smoker by the back of the neck and squeezes. It squeezes and says, "Just one puff, come on, just one little puff. Hey it's Christmas, just one every Christmas. Yo, it's your birthday, you deserve one on your birthday. Etc.
Well you can't take one puff like an alcoholic can take only one drink or a junkie can't just take one little hit and a fat person can't eat just one eclair.
An ex-smoker has to understand that they can't take one puff, it's over, finished. Not one
puff ever again.
Yes it's stupid to start but those that are sincerely trying to quit deserve our understanding and a little compassion. They are going through hell.

I know they are. I had something to do with the first methadone clinic in San Francisco when it opened back in the very early 1970s. Developed lab tests ... not as a patient ... but I got the picture.

Compassion yes. Even sympathy yes. But ultimately you need to deal with it. Fine something else to do with your hands. Stuff them down your pants if necessary. Get nicotine patches. Whatever it takes. But do realize that it is an addiction, one no different from many others, it just happens to be legal. And perhaps most importantly stop going to places that allow people to smoke and stop seeing friends that smoke ... same advice I would give a heroin addict ... stop hanging around with people that use needles.

I hope you succeed.

I smoke. I'm not trying to give them up. I have other fish to fry. I'm waded through Stockport6's post and I don't want to be that sick. It might suggest if a fireman inhaled some smoke it would make him/her addicted to fires for ever more. People smoked before it was invented. They also do a million other things which they shouldn't. Anyway, I've also stopped hanging around with preachers of health and safety, insurance and security. But I still pay for their health because of high taxes of cigs. so enjoy.

Well, I am a smoker too. And not that I deny the effects of smoking, but all this health craze related to smoking is not exactly borne from compasionate care or even individualistic care (of those who don't want to be polluted by cigarette smoke). If anyone bothers to check the origins of this smoking issue, they will find that it is the insurance companies lobying against tobacco companies.

What's worse, all local, federal and national governments enjoy a lot the revenues from selling cigarettes, through the taxes of course, and at the same time they also enyoy the larger revenues from the insurance companies who bill smokers higher than non-smokers. This is a two ...ssed cash cow giving double the amount of money.

But I agree with Dan, this is not a government issue, but an issue of personal responsability, although we have already given up to the craziness of parents who claim that someone else should do their parenting jobs.

I thought this was a science forum not a morality forum. I was hoping for some feedback on my theory of smoking being related to the notion that inflammation could trigger a primitive fight or flight response and over produce cortisol.

Has anyone any experience in this field.

Your theory of smoking, from a scientific standpoint, needs to be tested against the reality of human behaviour in any addictive situation:

1. Heroin
2. Gambling
3. Alcoholism
4. Cocaine

you get the idea.

Nicotine is addictive. The addiction it creates is an addiction. Likely no different from any other. What gets people hooked is the same, what keeps them hooked is the same. And what gets the monkey off their back is the same.

Will your theory survive the 4 tests above?