how long does it take to get addicted to nicotine?

Factual Questions
1

So, I’m 25 years old, and it occurred to me tonight that I have (quite sensibly) never smoked a cigarette. Figured that my smoker friends seem to like them, and a couple couldn’t hurt, so I bought a pack. After puzzling them out for a minute (which end do you light?), I managed to smoke one.

Seemed okay. Nothing special. Didn’t last very long. I shrugged, figured what the hey, and smoked another.

Still didn’t seem that impressive. Felt a bit queasy, though. And my mouth tasted nasty - so I figured that I was done with smoking, and threw out the pack.

A couple hours later, I was walking home from the bar, and I thought to myself, “Huh. I’d kind of like a cigarette.” Was that me getting hooked on sweet, sweet nicotine, or just me being drunk? How long does it normally take to become a hard-core, good-grief-why-can’t-I-quit smoker?

2

I don’t know scientifically, but a smoker will tell you that it takes one cigarette. Nicotine only does one thing for you, it makes you crave nicotine. Throw out that pack of poison and forget about them.

3

It prolly depends on the person. I’ve smoked a whole pack before (in a lame attempt to be cool and fit in with a girl I was trying to hook up with). When they were gone I never had a craving to smoke another.

Give that pack to my brother, and he’ll be trying to bum more smokes off you the very next day…

4

There is a genetic element to how likely one is to become addicted to nicotine. But it is inevitable that anyone will become addicted eventually with sufficient exposure. It alters brain chemistry as all chemically addictive substances do, but it does it in a particularly insidious way. The nicotine molecule by sheer coincidence happens to be able to bind to nerve cells designed to bind to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. After filling these receptors with nicotine often enough, the brain makes substantial changes to its own wiring in order to compensate. It makes quitting very, very difficult because for a time after withdrawing from nicotine the brain isn’t firing right and the ex-smoker feels a range of horrible sensations including unbearable craving of nicotine, but also general depression, changes in diet and sleep, sex drive, etc. until the brain has had time to adjust to life sans nicotine. This article covers most of these points. If you are able to currently ask if you might or might not be addicted, you aren’t addicted. Put them down and don’t tempt fate… if you keep puffing it is just a matter of time.

5

I’ve been a “social smoker” for years, a smoke with a beer just kind of tastes nice. However, I wouldn’t say I’m addicted. I never wake up in the morning craving nicotine, and the thought of a cigarette whilst sober seems pretty disgusting. If I don’t drink for a while I don’t miss them. I can take it or leave it.

However… while I have friends who were serious smokers who have given up, I haven’t. I know I should, but I just like the taste. Maybe it’s a mental addiction. My advice, just don’t do it.

6

I was a regular smoker from 15 to about 20. After I returned from over seas, my close knit group of friends quit for various reasons, and suddenly I didn’t really have a reason. So I stopped. Funnily enough there are several stories in my family tree where relatives have had to quit from circumstance and never picked it up again. So I’ll echo, as above, it highly depends on genetics.

Quite apart from the chemical properties of cigarettes, there is the self image involved (negative or positive, as both can make you want to smoke), digital fixation, and habit (ie, I should be smoking, because I’m drinking). I think a lot of smokers will tell you it takes work to get started. I’d suggest it takes a number of packs before you’ve made the hand-to-mouth habit, and singed the hairs in your throat and nose enough to enjoy inhalation.

Stop before you start. The biggest problem my good friend has with quitting is that he enjoys it, the only things telling him to stop are his SO and conscience. If you stop before you enjoy it you’re probably gonna be fine.

7

It only takes one cigarette, but you never know which one it will be. :slight_smile:

8

This is simply not the straight dope; it seems more like a line of propaganda put out by an anti-smoking group.

A web search for “effects of nicotine” will lead to a lot of information, for example:

How does nicotine deliver its effect?
Nicotine can act as both a stimulant and a sedative. Immediately after exposure to nicotine, there is a “kick” caused in part by the drug’s stimulation of the adrenal glands and resulting discharge of epinephrine (adrenaline). The rush of adrenaline stimulates the body and causes a sudden release of glucose as well as an increase in blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate. Nicotine also suppresses insulin output from the pancreas, which means that smokers are always slightly hyperglycemic. In addition, nicotine indirectly causes a release of dopamine in the brain regions that control pleasure and motivation. This reaction is similar to that seen with other drugs of abuse-such as cocaine and heroin- and it is thought to underlie the pleasurable sensations experienced by many smokers. In contrast, nicotine can also exert a sedative effect, depending on the level of the smoker’s nervous system arousal and the dose of nicotine taken.

9

I call nicotine an “emotional dampener.” Whatever emotion we are experiencing, we can moderate it by smoking. Smokers will want a cigarette whenever an emotion is triggered, good or bad.

I smoked for 40 years and when I quit two years ago, I was up to 3 packs a day. That’s 60 cigarettes a day for you non-smokers. Name one other thing you stop to do 60 times a day? Yes, a big component of smoking is the physical act of smoking and thus, behavior change is a big part of breaking the habit, maybe the major and most important part.

As for the nicotine addiction, I understand that the more you smoke, the more receptors are created to accomodate the nicotine but even after you stop smoking, those receptors don’t go away. This would explain why smoking tends to increase in frequency over the years and why someone like me, even after 2 years, would be back up to 3 packs a day in no time at all.

Once your receptors experience nicotine, they want more. They scream and howl for it…for about a week. Then they go to sleep. All it takes to wake them back up is one puff.

As for genetics, the addiction factor may have something to do with how many receptors you’re born with and/or how much acetylcholine your body produces naturally. If your receptors are usually busy, they won’t absorb the nicotine.

As for the OP, sounds like nicotine found some empty receptors to occupy so those receptors are asking for more of that good stuff! Don’t listen. Take a few deep breaths instead. That seems to ease the craving. Within a week, smoking should be a distant memory.

For an ex-smoker, there will always be “a good time for a cigarette” moments. This is memory kicking in - they become more like flashes, not cravings. It’s funny however, how we always know when those moments are.

10

An interesting statistic, from M. A. Hamilton Russell’s 1971 article “Cigarette Smoking: Natural History of a Dependence Disorder” in the British Journal of Medical Psychology:

This statistic is from a few decades ago, so I would imagine that the statistics are somewhat different now, thanks to the widespread availability of nicotine replacement products, the greater social and economic forces opposing smoking, etc. But if 85% of adolescents who smoke more than one cigarette become regular smokers, well… seems like nicotine is pretty rapidly addictive. My wife smoked three puffs on a cigarette as a teenager, hated it, never smoked again, and has had regular cravings for cigarettes and dreams about longing for a cigarette ever since.

11

Does it really create physical addiction that quickly? I’ve had a cigarette before on a couple of occasions, didn’t really like it, didn’t have any desire to have another one. I also smoke cigars once every couple of months (sometimes I’ll have 2 or 3 cubans in a night, which supposedly has the same amount of nicotine as a whole pack of cigarettes or more), and I’ve never felt remotely dependent.

Maybe that’s partly genetic, but do people really start feeling physically dependent after a couple of cigarettes? What about cigars?

12

I believe that, like other addictive drugs, it depends on the individual. I have known people who were very addicted and others who after years of smoking quit without much trouble. Whether it is nicotine, alcohol, crack, heroin or caffeine I believe it affects different people in different ways.

13

Of course, the craving is due to the effects you posted. But a smoker doesn’t feel much if any of that and in the end, walks away from a cigarette with nothing more than the desire for another.

14

Very pretty prose but entirely wrong in fact … sounds very much like more of the dogma spouted by the anti-smoking groups. I suggest you would do better to get your information about what smoking feels like from smokers rather from those who are vehemently against smoking.

Nicotine is a very interesting drug. Within a few seconds of lighting a cigarette even a heavy, long-time smoker feels a distinctly pleasant calming effect when stressed and a stimulating effect when tired.

15

The stimulation is a real effect.

The calming effect however is precisely what Fubaya was referring to: it’s nothing more than the craving for another cigarette. You become strung out when you go without your nicotine fix. When you take a hit you do become more relaxed, but that is just because the craving ceases. IOW the hit has returned you to a state of relaxation that would be your baseline had you never smoked.

That’s why non-smokers fell edgy after the smoke, not relaxed. That’s the stimulant effect of nicotine, and it’s real. Only heavy, long-time smoker feels a calming effect, and that’s caused by the craving being appeased, not by any ihnerent phsyiological effect of tobacco.

16

A problem with the question is that, in order to measure it accurately, you’d need to account for sources of nicotine other than first-hand cigar smoke.

I was addicted to “black” tobacco (cigar tobacco) when I was 15 - yet I didn’t smoke. It was the period during which Dad could have as many as 4 “black” cigs burning around the flat at the same time, tho. Since the craving was exclusively for “black,” not for Virginia, it may have been that I was addicted to one of the other substances in it, or simply that the smell I identified with “what I need” was the smell of “black”.

FTR, the friend who I assaulted for the fix of “black” while we were in a country where it isn’t sold was amazed that, being my first cig, I smoked like a pro. Gee, you think watching Dad might have something to do with it?

Blake, maybe it’s also calming for people with a brain chemistry similar to people with ADHD? (Or who are mildly ADHD). Just a passing WAG, given that for people with ADHD some stimulants are actually relaxing, with no addition involved. Someone with that kind of chemistry might be using tobacco as self-medication.

17

Related - are cigars as addictive as cigarettes? I used to smoke cigars socially (took the smoke into my mouth and throat but not lungs) and I read that more nicotine gets absorbed through the mouth and throat than lungs. I never was remotely addicted (in fact I hadn’t had a cigar in 2 years until my cigar-smoking friend came out to visit). Is it because cigars are different from cigarettes, because I don’t take the smoke into my lungs, or some other factor?

18

It’s not impossible. I’ve never seen any evidence for it though.

19

Sorry to pour more anecdote into the GQ, but two summers ago, when I was first separated from my now-ex-wife, one of the things I enjoyed doing was sitting out on my back porch in the evening and having a smoke, just to catch the nicotine-and-oxygen-deprivation buzz.

Within a few weeks, catching that buzz took two cigarettes. By summer’s end, it took three.

Fortunately for me, a wicked little case of pneumonia that fall gave me a really good excuse to knock it off.

20

I am a smoker and don’t recall ever reading anything by an anti-smoking group. and although I am anti-smoking, my sentence or two in this thread is probably my most extensive words on the subject.

I’ve never felt the things you describe, but I do know that they happen, I’m not arguing that. Are you saying people smoke for the stimulation? To me, a few seconds or a minute of stimulation that the person may never notice is nothing to the withdrawl and desire for more.