Why is smoking so addictive and what are the best ways to give up?

"The first thing that happens when you smoke a cigarette is that you inhale a noxious mix of nicotine, various irritants and carcinogens into your lungs, stunning your cilia—the tiny, hair-like projections that line your airways—and making them do their job less effectively."

"Nicotine gets absorbed through the lungs into the alveoli, into the bloodstream, and then gets transferred into the brain. This is when you start to feel good, and also a key thing that keeps you addicted. Essentially, nicotine taps into your brain's reward pathways and starts to release dopamine and serotonin within about 10 to 20 seconds of your first inhale."

"If it took a couple of hours for that dopamine release, people probably wouldn't get addicted. Some research suggests that as many as two-thirds of people who try one cigarette become, at least temporarily, daily smokers, while a recent survey found that less than a fifth of UK smokers trying to quit actually managed it."

Smoking causes immediate and long-term health damage, yet remains highly addictive. Nicotine reaches the brain within 10-20 seconds of inhalation, triggering dopamine and serotonin release through reward pathways that create rapid pleasure responses. This speed of gratification is crucial to addiction development; slower dopamine release would prevent addiction. Approximately two-thirds of people who try one cigarette become at least temporarily daily smokers. Less than one-fifth of UK smokers successfully quit on their first attempt, with most requiring between six and over one hundred quit attempts before succeeding. The combination of immediate neurochemical rewards and physical addiction mechanisms makes cigarettes exceptionally difficult to abandon.

Read at www.theguardian.com