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Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known. Study after study shows that one can get addicted to nicotine as quickly as cocaine and other illegal drugs that we generally associate with crippling addictions. It is for this reason, of course, that is can be so difficult to quit smoking. One top of this physical addiction – that is, the body’s craving of nicotine – there is a psychological component: because smoking is both legal and socially acceptable in many situations, it can be difficult to avoid it completely. Any attempt to quit smoking, therefore, should involve a comprehensive plan that deals with both the physical and psychological side of the addiction. One way to address the physical addition to nicotine, to leave yourself free to concentrate on the psychological aspects of your addiction, is to use a nicotine patch.

The nicotine patch is one of the oldest, and certainly best-known, medical aids to quitting smoking. Patches are placed on the skin, and work by releasing a slow and steady supply of nicotine into the bloodstream. The idea is that the patch helps wean your body off nicotine – instead of nicotine being immediately absent from your system when you quit smoking, it is gradually reduced.

The way the patch works is to break your body’s desire for nicotine “spikes.” When you smoke a cigarette, your body receives an immidiete spike in its nicotine levels. As the level of nicotine slowly dissipates after the spike, it will eventually drop to a point where you desire to have it “topped up” again – the need for another cigarette. If you picture a graph of your body’s nicotine levels when you smoke, you would see a steady series of peaks and valleys – the peaks corresponding to the spike in nicotine levels when you smoke a cigarette. A graph of your nicotine levels when wearing the patch, on the other hand, would show a steady line: the line wouldn’t be as high as your peaks, but it wouldn’t be as low as your valleys either. The idea is that the patch goes for the middle ground, and your body slowly adjusts to not having spikes in its nicotine levels.

As you become more and more used to lower levels of nicotine in your system, you can reduce the dosage of the patches you wear, until eventually your body is nicotine free. Another good thing about the patch is that it is an extremely strong deterrent against smoking: if you smoke while you’re on the patch, your levels of nicotine will become too high and you could suffer from a nicotine overdose, which can result in sickness and even death.

The patch is a very effective stop smoking aid. It does, however, have some disadvantages: it is fairly expensive, and at the early stages of quitting it can often cost more than cigarettes did. The patch can also cause problems with sleeping if you wear it to bed – and at the same time if you don’t you will wake up with no nicotine in your system, and feel pretty bad until you put on a morning patch and it starts working. Despite these drawbacks, the patch remains the medical aid of choice for people dealing with serious nicotine addictions.

In general, an addiction to smoking can be a very difficult one to overcome. Depending on how long you’ve smoked, how much you smoke, and genetic factors, you may find it extremely difficult to quit smoking. It is a well known fact the genetic factors are at play and determine how susceptible someone is to a nicotine addiction, and for this reason some people need more than their will power to quit smoking. There are medical aids to quit smoking that help address the body’s dependence on nicotine, leaving you to concentrate your will power on other aspects of the addiction: namely, the social associations you likely have with smoking.

For many years the standard medical stop-smoking aid was the nicotine patch, which is attached to the skin and releases a steady supply of nicotine to the bloodstream. Fairly recently, though, another approach has become popular: the use of the drug Zyban (bupropion hydrochloride.)

Zyban’s development as an anti-smoking aid is a curious one: it was originally designed as an anti-depressant, and during clinical trials of the drug is was discovered that as a side effect, many smokers participating in the trails lost interest in cigarettes and found it very easy to quit. Further research revealed that the drug was an effective stop-smoking aid, and it was approved for use as such in 1997 by the FDA.

Zyban works in a completely different way from the nicotine patch. Instead of supplying nicotine to the bloodstream, Zyban alters brain chemistry in such a way that the desire for smoking is greatly reduced – many people find that cigarettes simply become unappealing after taking the drug. At no point does Zyban supply or regulate nicotine in the bloodstream.

To work effectively, Zyban is usually taken a few weeks before you actually stop smoking. Like all anti-depressants, it takes time for its effects to manifest. Once you’ve been taking the drug for some time, you stop smoking, and if all goes well you’ll find the process much easier than an unaided attempt.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that Zyban is a prescription drug that alters brain chemistry – in fact researchers are not even exactly sure how it works, only that it does for many people. Naturally, you doctor will be consulted in your decision to take Zyban, and it is crucial that Zyban is not taken in combination with other drugs. Make sure you talk to your doctor about the possible side effects of using Zyban to quit smoking: some common side effects include insomnia, dizziness, and dry mouth. In rarer cases, more serious side effects like seizures can occur. You must also discuss with your doctor the situations in which Zyban should not be taken, like if you are abruptly stopping the use of alcohol, or have a history of seizures.

While Zyban should be approached with some caution, as long as it is properly discussed with your doctor, it can be a very effective aid in your battle to quit smoking.

An addiction to nicotine is a serious one indeed. Many studies have shown that it is one of the most addictive substances known, and most people will gain a dependency to it soon after they start smoking regularly. When you smoke a cigarette, you body receives an instant rush of nicotine – there is a spike in your nicotine levels which slowly dissipates, and when your nicotine levels drop below a certain point you will crave another spike, in the form of another cigarette.

As a smoker, part of your body’s physical addition to nicotine has to do with relieving it in these “hits,” and it is for this reason that an attempt to quit smoking can be so difficult. The most important thing in any attempt to quit smoking is willpower, and the chances that you will succeed in staying smoke free without the use of willpower are extremely slim. In same cases, however, you can benefit from using a medical aid in addition to your willpower. The most common and well known aids to quitting smoking are those that supply and regulate nicotine in the bloodstream.

A popular choice is nicotine gum. This is gum that resembles ordinary chewing gum, but of course it contains nicotine. The reason nicotine gum can be effective is because is can replicate nicotine spikes in your bloodstream without the need for cigarettes. The problem that some people run into with the nicotine patch – the other popular nicotine supplier – is that a nicotine patch supplies a steady amount of nicotine into your bloodstream. There is no spike, or “hit”, with a patch, and for this reason some people still find themselves craving cigarettes when they use the patch: even though the body is receiving nicotine, it desires the hit that the cigarette provides.

With nicotine gum, you can attempt to replicate this hit without a cigarette. The gum is not chewed like normal gum — rather you hold in your mouth without chewing it for long periods of time, and then give it a few chews when you want a release of nicotine, much as you would take a drag on a cigarette for a quick nicotine hit. A typical guideline for nicotine gum would be to chew it 3-4 times, until you feel a tingling sensation, at which point you should flatten it and place it between your cheek and gum. Repeat the brief chewing process at occasional intervals as necessary. Under no circumstances should nicotine gum be chewed like ordinary gum, as too much nicotine will be released into your bloodstream.

Nicotine Gum comes in 2mg and 4mg strengths (the 4mg is recommended if you smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day.) It is recommended that you use the gum every 1-2 hours throughout the day, for a period of up to 3 months. The only drawback of nicotine gum is that you cannot drink anything except water for 15 minutes before and during chewing. For this reason nicotine gum isn’t helpful at a bar, which is where many ex-smokers need the most help. Despite this, nicotine gum can be an effective tool — when combined with your willpower — in an attempt to quit smoking.

Tobacco was
initially used by pre-Columbian Native Americans, who smoked it in pipes and
even used it for hallucinogenic purposes in shamanic rituals. Christopher
Columbus was given tobacco by natives and introduced it Europe when he returned
from North America.

However, tobacco did not become widely used in
Europe until the middle of the 16th century, when explorers and diplomats such
as France’s Jean Nicot (for whom nicotine was named) popularized its use.

Tobacco was introduced to France in 1556, Portugal in 1558, Spain in
1559, and England in 1565.

Initially, tobacco was produced for pipe
smoking, chewing and snuff. Cigarettes were made in a crude, hand-rolled form
since the early 1600s, but did not become popular in America until after the
civil war. Cigarette sales surged with introduction of the cigarette rolling
machine by James Bonsack in 1883, in a contest sponsored by tobacco company
Allen and Ginter, who promised $75,000 to the first person to invent a fast
cigarette-rolling machine. This facilitated industrialized production and
widespread distribution of cigarettes.

Since then, nicotine addiction
has become a public-health concern in virtually every nation on Earth.

Warnings about the health risks of smoking were muted until the 1950’s
and 1960’s, when a series of unsuccessful lawsuits forced the issue into the
public eye. Not until the 1990’s would a lawsuit be won by the plaintiff.
However, the American Surgeon General first demanded that warning labels be
placed on cigarette packages started in 1966.

Both the tar and nicotine
in cigarettes are toxins, each its own way; and that’s without mentioning the
poisonous substances such as arsenic used in the curing process. Nicotine is as
addictive as heroin or cocaine, and has long-lasting effects on the brain’s
dopamine systems. The “tar” which filters attempt to remove falls into four
categories of substances: nitrosamines, widely held to be the most carcinogenic
of all the agents in tobacco smoke; aldehydes, created by the burning of sugars
and cellulose in tobacco; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which form in the
cigarette behind the burning tip; and trace amounts of heavy metals from
fertilizers used to grow the plant.

Tobacco companies were loath to
admit in public that they knew the dangers posed by their product; however, in a
sideways concession to tobacco foes, they produced what were advertised as
“safer” filtered cigarettes.

In the 1958 a scientist working for Philip
Morris went so far as to admit publicly that, “Evidence is builing up that heavy
smoking contributes to lung cancer.” He cleverly suggested that this admission
could be turned into a “wealth of ammunition” to attack the competion by
suggesting that Philip Morris, unlike its competitors, made cigarettes with
filters to screen out the toxins. In 1986 the CEO of British American Tobacco,
Patrick Sheehy, had a different opinion, and wrote that, “in attempting to
develop a “safe” cigarette you are, by implication, in danger of being
interpreted as accepting the current product is unsafe, and this is not a
position that I think we should take.”

However much tobacco executives
attempted to hide the dangers of their product from the public, increasing
market demand eventually forced all cigarette companies to develop some filter
systems for their cigarettes. Filtered cigarettes accounted for only 1 percent
of cigarette purchases in 1950, but this had soared to 87 percent by 1975.

However, the development of filtered cigarettes met two hurdles, one
medical and the other a matter of personal taste. Because smokers are nicotine
addicts, they will smoke until their craving for nicotine is satisfied. A filter
which removes nicotine will simply prompt them to inhale more deeply or smoke
more cigarettes. A filter which removes the tar components of tobacco will
remove the taste and smoking sensation to which smokers have become accustomed,
and consumers find such a product lacking in “flavor”. Due to compensatory
behavior by smokers, the amount of toxins consumed is not significantly less
than from an unfiltered cigarette, and there is no proof filtered cigarettes are
less of health risk.

Still, tobacco companies persist in their efforts
to develop better filters. Often they are hampered not by lack of technical
knowledge but by consumer behavior. In 1975, Brown and Williamson introduced a
new cigarette called Fact, with a new filter designed to selectively remove
toxic compounds such a cyanide. However the product did not please consumers,
and was removed from the market two years later.

An internet search for
“cigarette filter patent” produces 425,000 results as manufacturers strive to
outdo each over in the invention of filter materials and baffles to construct a
cigarette which they claim is less toxic but still appealing to smokers.

It is difficult to make a filter which removes tar but not nicotine, and
tobacco companies have now focused their attention on growing tobacco plants
with a higher nicotine content, in order to satisfy smokers’ nicotine addiction
with proportionately less exposure to tar. Rumors that cigarette companies
“spike”their products with extra nicotine have met with public uproar, since
cigarettes are sold as a natural agricultural product.

Scientists have
also experiments with tobacco substitutes , with ingredients such as wood pulp,
which would produce smoke flavor with less tar. Legal hurdles have stopped such
projects, as they are no longer “natural” but rather an
artificially-manufactured substance about which health claims are being made.
Such products are treated as drugs, and subject to lengthy regulatory battles
before they are allowed to be sold. For the tobacco companies, manipulating
naturally-grown tobacco leaf is cheaper and more profitable in a competitive
marketplace.

Since a cigarette is basically a delivery system for an
addictive drug, nicotine, it is theoretically possible to produce a product
which has only nicotine, without the diversion of tar. In fact, such a product
exists: the nicotine patch. At its most basic level, it has exactly the same
function as a cigarette. However, it has less social cachet than the packaging,
rituals and paraphenalia associated with smoking: it is for people who want to
wean themselves off their addiction.