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How Addiction Works | Addicted to Profit | Addictive Thinking
How Quickly Addicted | Are you Addicted | Self-Exempting Beliefs

Addiction

How Addiction Works

Nicotine is the tobacco plant's natural protection from being eaten by insects. Drop for drop it's more lethal than strychnine and three times deadlier than arsenic. Within 8 seconds of the first puff, nicotine hits the brain and begins the addictive process.

Once a person has been using tobacco steadily for a short time, nicotine begins to affect the nervous system, the part of the body that controls all of our thoughts and functions. Nicotine becomes a neurotransmitter; that is, it acts as one of the many chemicals that transmit signals through the nervous system.

In the presence of nicotine, the body shuts down the production of its own endogenous neurotransmitters, which have become redundant and not useful. Nicotine then controls the processes of digestion and cardiac function, to name just a few.

The withdrawal from tobacco is as difficult and painful as the withdrawal from alcohol and heroin. Acute withdrawal of nicotine results in severe disruptions to the nervous system, including tremors, agitation and abnormal heart rhythms. People withdrawing from nicotine cannot properly digest their food, nor pass waste. They cannot concentrate and their fine-motor function is impaired.

Tobacco addicts, like any other addicts, will begin to go thru withdrawal if they don't maintain their established level of nicotine. The mind serves the body by helping it avoid the agony of withdrawal. Addicts often end up sacrificing their jobs, their families, their homes in the effort to avoid the agony of withdrawal. Everything else becomes secondary.

Bill Moyers did an excellent, comprehensive 5-part series on Addiction on TV several years ago. You can find it here.

www.pbs.org/wnet/closetohome/home.html

Note: People who are spiritually fulfilled in their lives seldom become addicts. People get sucked in to self-destructive activities when there is some kind of lack, void, or emptiness in their lives and they start looking outside of themselves for fulfilment.

How Addiction Works | Addicted to Profit | Addictive Thinking
How Quickly Addicted | Are you Addicted | Self-Exempting Beliefs