Addiction is a recognized mental illness, whether it is to nicotine or cocaine. Any foreign substance that has the power to alter your brain chemistry fulfills the prerequisites of creating addiction in a person’s mind and body.
Many people disregard nicotine as a substance that can be abused, because of its social acceptability and ready availability. This is why many people would take up smoking without hesitation but still refrain from doing “hard drugs” as a means of justification.
Cigarette smoke contains three substances that damage the human body completely. These substances are nicotine, which gives the cigarette its addictive hook, along with tobacco and tar, which is a byproduct of combustion when you light up a cigarette.
Nicotine is a substance secreted by the tobacco plant to ward off insects from destroying the crop. It is also used as a popular pesticide. However, the negative effects of nicotine have plagued nature as well as human beings. Nicotine pesticides have been blamed for killing honey bees and has been labeled as a super-toxin, which is three times deadlier than arsenic and twice more poisonous as rattlesnake venom.
The reason why the human body can take in large quantities of nicotine is because nicotine has chemical compounds similar to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Once fitted inside the brain, this neurotransmitter hosts a series of chemical locks that enable it to take control and steer the flow of over two hundred neuro-chemicals around the brain, dopamine being one of those core chemicals.
It is no secret that tobacco is one of the most harmful plants on the planet. Tobacco is actually toxic, and is used as a natural pesticide for farmers when they want to get rid of certain types of pests that plague their crops before harvest. Facts state that around six million people die every year from diseases caused by tobacco consumption alone. Pair that with a combination of nicotine and tar and you have a ready-made cancer stick that millions of people proudly puff around the world.
This should be reason enough to quit smoking. Apart from that, there is always second-hand smoke, which makes you a social pariah in gatherings with non-smokers, which makes quitting smoking seem like an overall attractive prospect.