Your Brain on Nicotine - Why It Keeps Wanting More
No doubt about it, smoking makes you feel good. That's because among its many feats, nicotine changes the levels of certain brain chemicals -- particularly dopamine, which is famous for making you feel good and dulling pain.
Because the nicotine in one cigarette doesn't stay around forever, you get the urge for another cigarette. The trouble is, your brain starts to adjust to those extra surges of dopamine. Before you know it, what used to feel like a high dopamine level feels normal to you. Cut off that nicotine supply abruptly and your dopamine plummets. That's the scientific explanation for "nic fits."
Want to test yourself? Stop smoking for just a few hours and watch what happens.
In some ways, your body celebrates by bringing your blood pressure and pulse rate back to normal. But in other ways, it protests. That jittery irritability that makes you long for another cigarette is a withdrawal symptom. Keep the butts at bay for another 8 hours or so and more nasty annoyances will erupt. Some, like dizziness, last only a few days; a few, like fatigue, last several weeks.
Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) damps down those effects, which seriously ups your chances of getting smoke-free: While about 2% of people manage to quit cold turkey, NRT boosts your chance of success to 60%. It may also help you gain less weight, a common obstacle to quitting.
Starting and Stopping
Don't start using NRT until you stub out that last cigarette. If you relapse, stop using NRT until you're ready to try quitting again. As you become more comfortable without a cigarette in hand, you can gradually wean yourself from NRT over several months. We've found that the average ex-smoker can stop using a patch after 6 months; light smokers may be okay after 4 months; heavy ones may need 8 or 9 months.
