Smoking - An Addiction or Habit (Part 1)

When smokers think about quitting smoking they will consider what it is they are trying to stop. Part of that thinking, (depending on how easy or hard they find it to stop) will be whether smoking is a habit or an addiction.

If you were to ask the person in the street this question "What is more difficult to stop - a habit or an addiction?", you would no doubt get a majority saying that an addiction is harder to stop. In fact calling something that we get an urge to do, an addiction, can rob us of our power. It is almost like saying 'I can't stop because I am addicted' or 'I can't stop because I am not in control'. An addiction has many people perceiving that they have little or no control. This is part of the issue with stopping smoking. If you view it as a total addiction, and have accepted the above perception of an addiction, then you have now made stopping smoking much hard in your mind.

Of course an addiction is quite a general term. There can be different types of addiction such as a physical or a psychological addiction. A physical addiction is when the body craves for something and a psychological addiction is when the mind believes it wants or needs something.

Now, coming back to stopping smoking, is it a physical or psychological addiction, both or something else? This area has many differing opinions. After all with over 4,500 chemicals entering the body with any single puff it would seem logical to assume that there must be some physical addiction. Yet when sleeping for 6, 7 or 8 hours and then waking up in the morning the vast majority of smokers will NOT smoke imnmediately upon waking. They may have breakfast, or wash, or have a cup of coffee first before lighting up. If smoking really was a 100% physical addiction then surely the body having been without those 4,500 chemicals during sleep would be craving for a cigarette so much that the smoker would have to light up immediately. However in many cases this does not happen.

The majority of airlines have a non-smoking policy. Some of the long haul fights might last for 12-14 hours. This policy would be impossible to keep if smoking tobacco was a 100% physical addiction would it not? The vast majority of smokers find coping with a long haul flight no problem at all.

So can smoking really be an physical addiction?

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About the Author

Steven Harold
Clinical Hypnotherapist
www.stop-smoking-hypnosis.com
www.hypno-therapist.com