The Lie of Smoking

Today I was at work and I noticed that one of my co workers kept sneeking outside to smoke (since the statewide ban, smoking is no longer allowed in my warehouse,quit smoking now, Thank the lord!!). I watched him sneak out like 4 or 5 times in under an hour, so I finally went and asked him why he was sneaking out to smoke so much. He told me that he was trying to do a work order for a customer, but it wasn't going well. He said that it was stressing him out and he just needed a cigarette to relax for a minute. This got me thinking. I started wondering how many times I have said those exact same words in my smoking career. How many times was I stressed out or needed to concentrate on something, and that thought would pop into my head , " Man, I need a smoke!" I allways thought that smoking relieved my stress, when in fact the only thing that it relieved were the anxieties of withdrawal. Smoking is a lie. It does not relieve stress. It creates it! Over and over. THE LIE OF SMOKING ----------------------------- The act of smoking is a vicious cycle. It is an addiction that no matter how much we feed it, it cannot ever be satisfied. We have all heard the saying here. One Puff= All Puffs. Why is that though? It is because smoking is basically the act of temporarily relieving anxieties of withdrawals that cigarettes create in the first place. When a smoker smokes a cigarette. Nicotine enters the brain mimicing the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. This enables nicotine to reach the reward center of the brain where it releases large amounts of unearned dopamine. This is where the smoker gets that AAAHHHH sensation we are all so familiar with. But what happens when nicotine starts to metabolize and leave the body? Another chemical reaction happens causing us to have anxieties that are the same as if we were in a fight or flight situation. It is a false anxiety though. It is a lie. There is no outside variable creating this. It is only our brain and body being fooled into thinking that something is wrong. Thiis is when an active smoker smokes. This act not only releases more unearned dopamine but also creates a chemical reaction that turns off the fight or flight mechanism. It is a viscous cycle that the smoker must perform ritually. A smoker doesn't even smoke to get "High" in the traditional sense of a drug. A smoker smokes to just feel so called "Normal". There's more though. Everytime a smoker smokes a cigarette it raises the heartbeat by 20 beats a minute. It raises the blood pressure and makes the arteries smaller. This effect makes the heart have to work harder and the body releases its own stored fats to try and find the extra energy. This is where a catch 22 happens. The heart now has to work harder to overcome these affects, but to do this, it needs extra oxygen to work harder. The problem is, the carbon monoxide from smoking is basically poisoning the amount of oxygen that the blood can carry. This in turn has to make the heart work harder to get more oxygen to itself to work harder,stop smoking now, because it is allready working harder. LOL Make sense? It is just a viscous circle, over and over. Here's the capper though. Everytime someone smokes to relieve those false anxieties, the body goes through the physical strain mentioned above. The mind might be temporarily calmed, but the body is not. As the nicotine starts to metablolize, the body for a short time, gets to recover from the affects of that last cigarette. The problem though is that the fight or flight mechanism starts turning on creating false anxieties again. Now the active smoker must now smoke and once again this viscous cycle starts all over. Smoking is a lie. It does not relieve stress. All those times we smoked when we were upset or stressed out. All we did was relieve withdrawal. The problem was still there, but we "felt better", because we put a stop to those false anxieties. This in turn makes the smoker think that smoking relieved their stress. It actually does nothing for the active smoker but relieve anxieties that it created in the first place. When we see it for what it is, we come to understand just how useless and absurd smoking really is. So if you ever start thinking about wanting a cigarette or think that you miss smoking. Or think that just "one" will help you through a tough situation. Realize this is what you're missing. An absolute useless lie. Think of how many times you have already lived this lie. Eric