Smokers: help a nonsmoker understand what it is about smoking.

I've never smoked so I don't understand about the addiction of smoking and what is really going on.

I'm asking this now because my 19 year old goddaughter who is pretty much staying with me has tried and is trying to quit. Her mother spent $200 getting Vapor King e-cigarettes for her to help her to get off the real thing. She loved them with all the flavors and the feel of them with all of the vapor being inhaled and looking like smoke. These ones had 18 mg of nicotine per cartridge. Just last week she was so happy with them and how they freed her from cigarettes.

Suddenly this week she no longer wants them. She wants cigarettes and she got a pack on Monday and smoked the entire pack in a day. Before she got these last e-cigarettes she had cut herself down to just a couple of cigarettes a day along with using nicotine gum. This Monday she was not interested in either the e-cigarettes or nicotine gum.

So if she is getting the nicotine, the drug to which she is addicted, from either the e-cigarettes or nicotine gum I don't understand why she would reject them in favor of tobacco cigarettes with all of their downside and social stigma. Is there something more going on about smoking other than the nicotine because with an e-cigarette she is not only getting the nicotine, but also the actual feel of a cigarette as well as inhaling?

Help me to understand better what this is all about.

I read a book a looooong time ago (sorry, I have no link to provide, can't remember), that seemed to explain it best to me: Nicotine is terribly addicting because it acts as both a depressant and a stimulant. Smokers unconsciously adjust their inhaling to accomodate their need. In other words, if nervous or upset, they take quick, frequent hits. After a fine meal (or sex :) they inhale slowly, taking long breaths of the nicotine. It is a relaxant, a stimulant, and everything in between. Nicotine taken in through the lungs hits the pleasure center of the brain like crack cocaine. It is insideous in its ability to hook you.

I have smoked since I was 17 (63 now) - I quit last September when I was diagnosed with chronic bronchitis - COPD - and the only reason I still don't smoke is that it sends me into gales of coughing. I use nicotine gum, because it satisfies that oral thing - I can use it after a meal, like I would have used a cigarette. Theoretically, the patch is great, in that it delivers nicotine slowly and consistently (although I had really trippy dreams that totally screwed up my sleeping/rest), but I missed the oral part. Regardless, it is more than the nicotine addiction that a smoker has to fight. It's the IMMEDIATE hit of nicotine to the brain that gum or patches can't provide. I haven't tried the e-cigarette, because I'm thinking with my chronic bronchitis, it wouldn't be a good idea to have moisture and nicotine hit my lungs.

Cigarettes stink, they make the smoker stink, they stain teeth, ruin your lungs, and cause damage to your clothes -- but by god, I loved smoking, and I miss it. It's difficult to explain addiction. Chances are that logic won't do any good until your goddaughter is ready. I hope she is ready before she does some really serious damage to herself.

Best to her, and to you.

What more is it about smoking an actual tobacco cigarette might it be that she is craving that would cause her to reject either the e-cigarette or the nicotine gum out of hand?

The stink part is right because now I can smell the cigarette smoke on her from even a distance. Plus she will be starting school on the 17th and here in Wisconsin in the cold winter weather it is pathetic to see smokers congregating outside to have a smoke.

"Nicotine is terribly addicting because it acts as both a depressant and a stimulant. Smokers unconsciously adjust their inhaling to accomodate their need. In other words, if nervous or upset, they take quick, frequent hits. After a fine meal (or sex :) they inhale slowly, taking long breaths of the nicotine. It is a relaxant, a stimulant, and everything in between. Nicotine taken in through the lungs hits the pleasure center of the brain like crack cocaine. It is insideous in its ability to hook you."
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So your emotions go all over the place, waay too up, waay too down. I remember feeling like an emotional basketcase. I could start crying and not be able to stop without EVEN knowing why.

So I'd give up on trying to quit over and over and over again until finally, I stopped and stayed stopped. This was over a six-year period where I'd sometimes get up to 7 or 9 months at a stretch of staying quitted.

Not everyone faces the same level of addiction, but for an awful lot of us there is nothing harder to do in this universe than to give up smoking.

Everybody's unique, and each has different combination of reasons why they smoke. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

* The consumption. Sucking down your favorite smoke is like eating or drinking your favorite thing.

* The smoke thing. The curling wisps are mesmerizing and the source of immense enjoyment.

* The hand thing. Withdrawal starts as soon as you put out the last butt. You become a little antsy and your hands want to do something.

* Boredom. It's a great excuse to do something different than what you're doing now.

* The social aspect. The most sociable creatures on the planet are smokers and the rest of you bore us to tears. Smoking is a great excuse to get away, go out, and be among the interesting people.

* The anti-social aspect. Deep down we are sorely disappointed in the human race, and it brings us immense pleasure to piss off you self-righteous losers.

* Rebellion. Social norms as a whole are infuriating and smoking is our only little way striking back against everything.

* Pure addiction. We are weak-willed and unwilling to go thru the few days or weeks of intense agony to rid ourselves of a disgusting, filthy, harmful habit.

I, too, have quit and failed. E-cigs are the closest to the real thing in that they are capable of somewhat satisfying many of the above reasons for smoking. But they are not quite there yet. The technology is not quite good enough. You really gotta wanta quit bad.

That's the bit that I don't understand purely from the addiction part of smoking.

E-cigs, like gum or patch, can you give you that, but they are close to, but inferior, to satisfying the other things.

Another, more troubling, aspect I didn't list is SELF-LOATHING and SELF-DESTRUCTION. Smoking is a form of slow suicide. Some of us also have a core distaste for life. We are too chicken to off ourselves immediately, but killing ourselves slowly some how satisfies this desire. You would have to get VERY close to her to see if this is actually what is driving her to smoke.

but my hope was that the nicotine replacement would help to solve that.

She has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and up to 90% of schizophrenics smoke which is far, far more than the general population. Research believes they smoke because the nicotine helps their thought process, helping them to concentrate and to think more straight. Her psychiatrist has told me that entire books have been written about schizophrenics and smoking.

So I know there is more going on than with your average smoker and I actually expected that the e-cigs would be a replacement for smoking tobacco cigarettes so she could get the nicotine she needs without all of the other bad and cancerous stuff in cigarettes. But apparently there is more going on than just nicotine and its replacement.

I'm truly sorry to hear that, but remember, there are things worse than smoking. I think you're right, though. Maybe a nicotine substitute in combination with some other therapies would be effective.

Yes, smoking is very, very common among people with various mental illnesses, from full-blown obvious schizophrenia to mild, concealable depression. It's not *just* a matter of nicotine's effects on the brain, or the ritualistic behavior of smoking, or the pleasure one comes to associate with the taste...it involves all of the above.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that her schizophrenia is a MUCH more immediate concern than her smoking, if she's only 19 - the longterm effects of the latter won't hit her for years yet, but she's feeling the pain of the former right now. I admire her for trying, but frankly, I think going through the VERY painful longterm process of withdrawal and recovery might very well be totally beyond a teenager with a much more serious illness. Definitely encourage her to quit if she really truly wants to, but please please don't get angry with her if she fails - that won't help one little bit.

She sees a counselor every week and her psychiatrist every 6 weeks, plus I am here to watch over her. She is in a very good situation compared with many other people with a mental disease, but like very many of them that do smoke, her pack a day addiction was eating up a big chunk of her monthly SSI. She may not be suffering any longterm effects of smoking but I have heard her in the middle of the night coughing like she was going to bring up a lung.

I had hoped that nicotine replacement using the e-cigarettes would be enough to help her not only over the addictive aspect of smoking cigarettes, but having the nicotine would continue to help her thought process. My expectation was that she would not be off of nicotine anytime soon but getting it in the form other than from tobacco would relieve the ill effects of smoking cigarettes.

This is why I asked the original question of my OP about what it is all about with smoking because it must be more than the nicotine or even the feel and routine of a cigarette because the e-cigs seem to mimic that well although not perfectly. She is holding something that looks and has the physical appearance of a cigarette. The end glows when she takes a drag and she is drawing vapor into her lungs that contains nicotine. Something else seems to be going on and it may be something that is not common to all smokers.

Never heard that about schizophrenics and smoking....interesting.

really satisfy the smoker. For me there is even a difference between smoking regular sized cigs and the 100s of my brand. Have not tried e-cigs but I'm guessing that's it.

from the well known names to the el-cheapos. But initially she really loved the e-cigarettes, then it was like a light went out.

what does she say the reason is?

In fact I thought she enjoyed the comments and attention that they brought her. She even commented that she would be interested in selling them.

This same pattern occurred a year ago when she first got e-cigarettes for Christmas in 2009. She was very excited at first and then she didn't use them much claiming she needed a new battery although even after she got the new battery she still would not use them much. Next thing you know she is up to smoking a pack a day and then claiming the e-cigarettes were not the kind she wanted. Then again for Christmas this year her mom got her the exact kind of e-cigarettes that she said she wanted, but her interest in them only lasted a few weeks.

You'd think that SOMETHING was the catalyst for the flaky behavior...I can't even begin to think of a likely reason. It really sounds like she just wants to smoke and then goes along with it for a while to get the pressure off...Sad. Can be really hard to get through to someone who chooses to ignore the facts. :(

That's what kind of scares me about using the e-cigs... that it will be a whole lot more "work" involved in smoking. Maybe she got tired of having to deal with all the intricacies of using the e-cig. It also isn't going to feel the same, look the same, taste the same, etc., etc. And as far as I can tell, there's no way to know when you're "done" (with regular cigs, you're "done" when it burns down to the filter). Smokers don't even like having to use a different BRAND of cigarette, and switching brands takes a lot of getting used to. It took me ages to get used to the differences with the "fire safe" cigs in how they taste and how they burn, and for months I HATED them and searched everywhere for any place still selling the regular ones yet it was nothing like switching to a completely different brand, which would have been a hell of a lot more difficult to deal with.

There's also being able to tell when you need more at a glance and how long they'll last. That's another thing that scares me about using e-cigs... how will I know at a glance when I'm "out"? I get a really bad panicy feeling when I only have one pack left and know I need to go buy more. There's times when I've gotten down to just a few cigs without having bought more, and that panicy feeling REALLY escalates. I can't even imagine having NONE around.

Personally, there's a hell of a lot more to my addiction that nicotine has nothing at all to do with. It's the entire ritual. It's almost like an OCD thing.

There very well could be something to her not getting as much nicotine as she did with regular cigs. Though each cartridge has X amount of mgs., one cartridge doesn't equal one cig, so though she may be "smoking" as much as she used to, she may not be getting anything near the same amount of nicotine as she used to PER "smoke".

Have you considered just ASKING her what it is about the e-cigs she doesn't like?

She does not dislike the e-cigs. In fact for the first couple of weeks she could not say enough good about them, about all the different flavors and about how she did not have to go outside as much. She has lots of cartridges, so she was in no danger of running out, but she did have to keep them charged and she has difficulty even in keeping her cell phone charged.

But now, even after she has e-cigs that are charged she won't use them. I have wondered about the nicotine level aspect of e-cigs and how much you get per puff on average compared to a tobacco cigarette. The ones she currently has have 18 mg of nicotine per cartridge while the ones she had a earlier last year only had 6 mg of nicotine per cartridge.

A cartridge is supposed to be equivalent to about a pack of cigarettes so if she smoked a pack a day it would be a cartridge a day. My guess is that since the cartridge is actually equivalent to many cigarettes that her tendency was to continue smoking more than she would have if she had to light another cigarette each time. So there are questions about the specific aspects concerning e-cigs such as the amount of nicotine per puff or cigarette equivalent of puffs and if e-cig users actually smoke more than they would using tobacco cigarettes.

I understand the ritual thing. To a nonsmoker many of the rituals involved in using e-cigs are like regular cigarettes, although some are obviously different. In the end I'm beginning to see that quitting the use of tobacco cigarettes is more complicated than just the nicotine replace or even the ritual.

Particularly the fact that there are many, many different reasons that go into it. Smoking addiction is every bit as complicated as alcoholism or eating disorders or a gambling addiction or every other kind of addictive behavior that affects every area of life, from the pleasure centers in the brain to social life to one's fundamental (and not always conscious) beliefs about the world.

What I think a lot of non-smokers who hate the smell just don't get is how incredibly pleasurable it is to a smoker. And how much the "little pleasures" mean to someone who is hurting or lacking in other sources of joy.

Outwardly, there seems to be little joy in her life. There's a great deal of heartbreak in her life.

Earlier this year, she was cig-free after a several-days hospital stay for a serious illness. When she was discharged, I think she lit up on her way out to the car. Mrs. V. (a former smoker) begged to know why, with the worst of kicking behind her, would she do that?! Mom said, "I like my cigarettes."

almost an embodiment of sex.

smoke caressing, like breath made manifest, curling discreetly into crevasses, veiling from prying eyes. light dancing, at the edge of engulfing darkness, captivating, tracing memories of idle gestures. flame smoldering, raw power dancing at the tips of your fingers, tamed but crackling a warning of danger with each puff. lips sucking, passionate like a desperate kiss with a need as strong as a gasp for life itself. heat burning, pain preceding pleasure, unlike the pleasure's normal promise of pain. furtive grasps at a fleeting ecstasy reminding of a lost paradise...

oh yes, smoking is very raw and sensual like sex. and amusingly, the challenge is similar: indulging under your own volition, instead of need driving you instead.

:smoke:

LOL! Extremely well said.

failed quit a smoker will smoke a cigarette because it helps them go back into denial. Every time they feel guilty they light up: guilt gone. It is a vicious cycle. I quit using champix and then I smoked herbal smokes for a few months. I now never have a real crave and have been quit two years. But many people cannot tolerate champix because it causes all sorts of psychological side effects. Good luck.

She is leery of taking any medication other than what is prescribed for her by her psychiatrist.

and work perfectly with champix (like for me with my ptsd meds.).

http://www.quitsmokingonline.com/

After being a cigarette smoker for fifty years---and thanks to that website---I haven't felt a so-called "need" for nicotine since the summer of '03, when I quit, cold turkey.

and not just for the addictive quality of it, but I had hoped she would not have to get it from tobacco. That's why I wondered if there was something going on with smoking beyond the nicotine and the physical interaction with a cigarette.

I had a patient today, a very nice, pleasant 40 year-old guy, following up on a hospital visit in which he was diagnosed with COPD. 40 years old.

As part of the initial exam, I listened to his lungs with my stethoscope, and man, they were shredded! I never heard such bad lungs on so young a guy.

Years and years of cigarette smoking. It was sad.

What's he going to do with the rest of his life? And how long will that be?

I also did a newborn check today. As part of the patient history and background, I asked the mother if she or the father smoke. She said: "Yes, we both do." If her brand-new daughter hadn't been in the room, I would have drop-kicked the mother out the exam room window...

He was a heavy smoker, several packs a day. I have letters that he sent to his father when he was doing the scenic tour of North Africa and Europe as a heavy machinegunner in WWII. "Please send me cigarettes, I need cigarettes".

Many of us have had family members who we watched die from lung cancer, and while (again) the person usually means well, it can be a bit grating to have someone regale you with stories about how horrible it is to die that way. Many of us know exactly how horrible it is.

I have been fighting this for 35 years. I can go three weeks, a month, without, but then all of a sudden I want to get the fix, the immediacy of inhaling the nicotine. I love it. I like how it feels.

Plus she exhales so much vapor that looks like smoke that she can blow a vapor ring.

The e-cigs. Maybe then I can finally get away from the damn things.

Addiction is addiction. That's all you really need to know.

Other than smoking makes you look totally cool, that is...lol.

Here is an article in Newsweek that my goddaughter's counselor recommended to her today: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/03/can-you-build-a-better-brain.html

Here's an interesting part:



This goes a long way to explaining why a schizophrenic would self medicate by smoking because it helps them to think better (my goddaughter does have memory problems which sucks when you are trying to work and go to school). Maybe the trouble with using the e-cigs or nicotine gum is in the last line which says it has not been determined if nicotine substitutes deliver the same benefits as smoking when it comes to cognition.

surgery to remove cancer from my tonsils (although I didn't know it was cancer at the time). One would have thought I'd have been addicted to the nicotine if anybody was ever going to be, but I had absolutely no craving for it.

I missed doing something. I missed the smell and will still inhale deeply when I pass a burning cigarette for the aroma. I haven't had a cigarette in 720 days, but still feel deprived of the act of smoking.

as you would get in a regular tobacco cigarette. That means you would have to smoke an e-cigarette twice as long to get the same nicotine hit as from a tobacco cigarette. Maybe she is missing the strength of nicotine in each drag of the cigarette.

From reading comments on e-cigarettes the praise of them is effusive from former smokers who say they helped them to quit smoking. One this is certain, smoking is a very expensive habit for those who cannot afford it.