When you start smoking which comes first,the physical or psychological dependence?

Question

i've been a smoker for 35 years.after getting sick on the first cigarette,the cravings started immediately and i think i was mentally addicted before i bought my second pack.i quit once for boot camp and didn't suffer too much because of the physical and mental stress they put you through for 9 weeks.i went back to smoking because the mental cravings never stopped.any opinions from long term smokers out there.i want to quit but my addiction seems impossible to overcome.

Answer 1

I know what u mean

i think its psychological becuz with me

it has become routine

1 after i eat 1 in the mourning

2 or 3 right now sitting at my computer

some times i fire up without thinking about it

but you gotta find something else ur mind is addicted 2

girls worked 4 me

Answer 2

I can't answer your question, but I don't think that matters because it's just semantic. Physical, psychological -- it all amounts to an addiction.   Personally, I hated being a slave to the habit, and as you know it's getting harder and harder to be a smoker.  The important thing is that it has never been easier to quit.  There are all kinds of medications administered all kinds of ways.  But you still have to really WANT to quit or they won't work.  Your desire to quit has to be strong enough to carry you through the rough times when you rationalize "If I just had one more cigarette, I'd be able to quit."

Answer 3

I smoked for 25 years until 1989 when I quit; I haven't had a cigarette since.  I couldn't count the # of times I tried to quit but it came about gradually.  I carpooled & didn't smoke in the car (even when I was alone).  I couldn't smoke at work.  So the only place I associated with smoking was my home.  It's weird but it didn't bother me at all not to smoke at work or in the car.  So when I finally decided to quit altogether it was easy for me.  But I had some help; I had chronic bronchitis which stopped responding to medication.  It was my health or the cigarette & I wasn't about to let the cigarette get the better of me any longer.

It takes less than a week to get past the physical addiction; after that its all psychological!  Whenever you get the urge immediately think of something else.  Those urges don't last long & when you don't smoke, the length of time between urges increases.   And before you know it 20 years will pass as a non-smoker.

Answer 4

Smoking is definitely more of a psychological addiction than a physical one. It is important for you to realize this but what is equally as important is for you to have some self belief. Everyone has the power to quit no matter how long they have been smoking. You have already put yourself on the road to failure by stating "i want to quit but my addiction seems impossible to overcome".

If you really want to quit you must discover the reasons why you smoke and then eliminate or change these thought processes. As soon as I dealt with my psychological reasons for smoking I quit, first time and more importantly for good.

Once you deal with the psychological side of smoking it makes the quitting process easy, no matter your level of addiction. All that is required is a bit of motivation, self belief and determination. You can stop smoking, others have smoked longer than you and quit. How, by believing that they could. Give yourself more credit, you are stronger than you think.

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Good Luck and Good Quitting

Answer 5

I would question very much whether there's a distinction between the two in the case of smoking. The notion that physical and psychological addiction are two distinct things is an old-fashioned one that was based on observations of alcohlics, barbiturate addicts, and Heroin addicts, who had convulsions when the drug was withdrawn. At that time, it wasn't known that drugs like nicotine were addictive -- that understanding came only from experiments with laboratory animals and, eventually, an understanding of the changes that drugs produce in the brain, e.g., in the up or downregulation of receptor sites. The idea back then was that physical symptoms like convulsions were somehow distinct from the cravings and other supposedly "psychological" symptoms.

A more contemporary understanding of the physiological processes that underlie addiction renders this distinction at least partly superfluous. You experienced cravings as a result of physiological changes in your brain. Sickness when one first tries smoking suggests a strong degree of nicotine sensitivity, and the potential for rapid addiction, hence the apparently paradoxical observation that people who are sickened by their first cigarette are more likely to become smokers than those who aren't.