Smoking and type A personalities

Today I began to understand why people at my job smoke. The smokers I know at my job are all type A personalities.

They’re extremely productive and motivated to get things done. They often don’t take breaks and get natural highs from interacting with people and succeeding in overcoming challenges. But these highs deplete their dopamine, so they smoke to make themselves feel good and relieve their stress, but they don’t realize that the chemicals in cigarettes give them these feelings by increasing dopamine.

The problem with this is that like any other drug, cigarettes deplete dopamine by causing the smoker to use up too much of it each time he or she smokes. This creates an addiction that leads to a dependency, because the reward pathway in the brain becomes less and less sensitive to the reward when it’s flooded with dopamine every time someone smokes.

So the brain makes less dopamine receptors over time, and this requires the smoker to smoke more cigs just to get the same high they did before when they were smoking less cigs. Plus, because of the changes in their brain caused by the addiction, they can’t go without the cigs even for a day due to the fact that their brain now has less dopamine receptors and therefore requires something to trigger more dopamine release every day in order to keep their dopamine levels within the normal range that keeps us motivated and energized. That something is the cigs, and until they find another substance or activity to stimulate dopamine release, they won’t be able to quit smoking.

That’s one reason why smokers who try to quit and who do quit start eating a lot more food- eating, especially foods high in sugar and fat, activates the brain’s reward pathway and releases dopamine.
Until their brain becomes normalized, which takes quite a bit of time, the time it took for it to be changed, they will struggled to quit smoking. Only when they grow back all those dopamine receptors they lost and boost their dopamine levels through natural activites and substances will they be able to break free of their addiction to cigarettes.

All of these things also explains why smokers almost always crave uppers like caffeine, because without it their lowered dopamine levels would keep them from getting their work done and feeling motivated and energetic throughout the day.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the smokers I work with all drink lots of caffeine along with their smoking.
Smokers who are trying to quit have to change their behavior and habits, but they need help. They need someone who will be there every step of the way to make sure they don’t revert back to their old addiction. This will give them the willpower they need to take one step at a time and eventually quit smoking completely.