In a lot of the smoking-related threads here, I have noticed that a very common reason cited as to why people smoke is that it “relaxes” them. My question is: does it really relax you, or does it merely relieve the tension you feel from needing a smoke? I contend that nicotine addiction, like any other addiction, causes your “baseline” feeling to change, so that you feel tension due to your craving for the drug; this tension is then relieved when your body gets the drug it needs. The “relaxation” is only relative to the withdrawal symptoms that preceded it.
Feel free to refute this; all I ask is that everyone try to discuss it without acrimony. I realize it’s a rather subjective debate, but hopefully it might be an interesting topic anyway.
Personally, I have never been a serious smoker. The only time I have a smoke now is exam day or some other high stress event. In a stressful situation for me, one or tow nicotine sticks calms me down. Like I said though, that puts me at about three or four cigarettes a year so I can’t speak for everyday smokers. After I have one or two I cough for a week and I can’t stand the smell so it is a freak thing I do when panicing.
I can’t answer this scientifically, but I can tell you two personal experiences that seem, in my mind, to support the relaxation theory.
First, the first cigarette I ever smoked was offered to me when I was very tense and upset about something, and I absolutely felt calmer and more relaxed after smoking it, despite never having smoked before and therefore having no cravings to relieve.
Second, although I haven’t been a regular smoker for quite some time, when I have mild menstrual cramps a cigarette makes my stomach feel less tight and crampy. I’ll admit that one could be in my head. There’s something to be said for that too, though - if the action relaxes me because I think it does, the bottom line is still the same - I feel more relaxed.
(Not that smoking is good in any way or that I’m suggesting it’s a good way to relax)
You’re a drug addict, so you feed your addiction (orally, via a cigarette) and you feel relieved, less edgy; addicts like to think of that – in the delusional way addicts have - as relaxing them. So yes, in that sense smoking does “relax” you.
But it’s hardly the same as not being a drug addict in the first place.
Yes, it really does. I am not a habitual smoker, but I have lit up a cigar every now and then. First off, smoking anything decreases oxygen flow to the brain, providing a mild euphoria, much like nitrogen narcosis in diving. Second, nicotine is a depressant, just like alcohol. So smoking relaxes the smoker, just like drinking relaxes the drinker.
Now, in habitual smokers you’re right. Much more relaxation is gained from satisfying addictive cravings than you get from smoking directly.
Are you sure? I couldn’t find any cites for nicotine being classified as a depressant; but it was listed as a stimulant on several web sites. I didn’t spend too much time searching, though, so I could quite possibly have overlooked it.
But did it make you feel relaxed, or did it just make you feel happy? A couple of sources I looked at said smoking causes dopamine to be released, which makes me suspect that it’s not really relieving stress, but rather causing a temporary euphoria that masks whatever problem you were upset about. The first time I tried a cigarette, I don’t remember being in a particularly bad mood, and the only effect I remember was dizziness and a “buzz” feeling.
Yeah, that’s a good point - I think I remember seeing something about nicotene causing muscles to relax.
Well, that’s what I always got fed back in school. Or maybe I’m just mis-remembering. BUt it would seem to be psycho-active either way, so it’s not purely a matter of feeding a fix.
If you talk to smokers you’ll also discover that smoking “peps you up”, “helps you concentrate” and “takes your mind off things”, “suppresses your appetite” and “makes eating more enjoyable”, “gives you a buzz” and “calms you down”, “helps you go to sleep” and “wakes you up”.
As an ex smoker I would say that smoking “relaxed” me in the sense that it provided relief from withdrawal and created a temporary sense of well-being. It’s not so much that nicotine per se is a relaxant but that it momentarily releases some tension for those who are addicts.
“When blood vessels are exposed to cigarette smoke it causes the vessels to behave like a rigid pipe rather than a flexible tube, **thus the vessels can’t dilate in response to increased blood flow,” says David J. Bouchier-Hayes, M.D., senior author of the taurine study and professor of surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin. This is a condition called endothelial dysfunction. **
Endothelial dysfunction is one of the earliest signs of the atherosclerosis, which is a major cause of heart attacks and stroke. “We’re not trying to find a therapeutic treatment for smoking, because we believe that the best therapy for smokers is to stop smoking,” says Bouchier-Hayes. “Nonetheless, smokers provide a good clinical model for treatment of endothelial dysfunction.”
vs.
David J. Bouchier-Hayes, M.D., senior author of the taurine study and professor of surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin
I have a strong recollection of watching some animal show long ago (perhaps Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom) where nicotine was used in a dart to tranquilize a rhinoceros. One might conclude a “relaxing” effect…
There’s another possibility here - smoking may be self-medicating for ADD symptoms.
In ADD people, stimulant medications actually have a calming effect. The brain doesn’t make enough of its own internal stimulant which helps people to focus and stay calm. Absent this stimulant, the brain just wanders all over the place willy-nilly, leading to stresss and agitation. ADD people are often thrill-seeking or conflict-seeking, because the added stimulation from that actually calms them and makes them feel better. Thus, the prescription for stimulant medications, which paradoxically makes them feel calm and in control.
Notice that the increase in reported ADD cases has gone up in reverse correlation with the number of people who have quit smoking? Of course, correlation doesn’t imply causation, but I find it interesting that nicotine is a stimulant, that ADD treatment uses stimulants, and that diagnoses of ADD have gone up as people stopped using a common stimulant.
You should have stopped right there. I could just as easily attribute the increase in ADD diagnoses to the fact that more people listen to rap music, or more people drive SUVs.
Not at all. There is a plausible connection with smoking (the stimulant of nicotine) which doesn’t exist with those other things. This makes it a plausible hypothesis worth investigating.
In addition to London_calling pointing out that you are actually the one who is mistaken, I’d like to add something. In addition to narrowing the blood vessels, the carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke replaces oxygen carried by red blood cells, which has a very similar effect to the narrowing of the blood vessels. Both the narrowing of blood vessels and using red blood cells for carbon monoxide transport instead of oxygen transport means that oxygen does not reach your brain or muscles as easily.
I’m actually amazed that people think smoking helps your circulation in this day and age when quite reliable information about smoking is so readily available.
As for whether it is relaxing or relieving, that depends. Relaxing is fairly subjective, as it can be seen by its definitions. So it can certainly be relaxing to someone despite raising blood pressure and increasing heart rate. From my experience smoking tobacco, though, it was relaxing to me psychologically because I believed that it relaxed me, but relieving to me in a physical sense. If I hadn’t wanted a cigarette in the first place then I probably would not have needed to be relaxed.
I quit more than 10 years ago, by the way, after being a smoker for five or more years.