How Long Does It Take For Tobacco Addiction To Appear?
Smoking is a widespread addiction, and although it has been linked to respiratory, cardiac, and even dermatological and dental problems, the truth is that quitting tobacco is difficult for many people.
As with many things related to health, prevention is better than cure. The ideal is not to smoke at all, but on many occasions social pressure gets the better of us and, confident, we smoke the odd cigarette.
How long does it take for tobacco addiction to appear? This is the question that many of those trusting people ask themselves when they inhale the smoke of that cigarette or cigar that they have just offered us. Below we will answer this question.
How long does it take for smoking addiction to appear?
It is almost common sense that tobacco is a drug and as such produces addiction. Cigarettes are a source of pleasure and also regret for millions of people around the world. Every second thousands of people inhale cigarette smoke. A smoke that they know is harmful but, despite this, It is very difficult for them to get rid of this vice and opt for a healthier lifestyle
Although youth are increasingly aware of the risks of tobacco, it is not uncommon to find young people who have fallen into this addiction. They are warned that they will end up regretting it, especially when after years of having smoked daily they notice that it is increasingly difficult for them to breathe, they get tired more quickly, their teeth are yellow and they notice that food no longer tastes as intense as before..
Given how dangerous and addictive tobacco is, there has always been interest in knowing exactly how long it takes to become addicted. It seems clear that smoking a cigarette very occasionally does not cause addiction, but it is also quite evident that There are quite a few who start by smoking a few cigarettes from time to time and after a relatively short time say that they are having a hard time quitting
How long it takes for tobacco addiction to appear is a question that has been attempted to be answered with scientific data on many occasions. The objective of this is to make young people aware of how unhealthy this habit is and how quickly one can fall into addiction. If you know exactly how long it takes to turn occasional tobacco use into a true addiction, you can use this information to warn new smokers of how quickly they can become addicted.
The consolidation of smoking through smoking: what does science say?
Although in recent years there has been an attempt to investigate this issue in more depth, a study carried out in 2000 turns out to be quite revealing, which provided an answer to the question of how long it takes to fall into addiction to alcohol. tobacco. The article in question is that of Joseph R. DiFranza and colleagues, who at the time of their research worked at the University of Massachusetts, and is titled “Initial symptoms of nicotine dependence in adolescents.”
This study, which judging by the years it has been published, could be considered classic, was done to test a widely held belief regarding tobacco Until then, it was considered that nicotine, a substance that causes addiction to tobacco and which is characterized by tolerance, craving for smoking and being responsible for withdrawal symptoms, dependence occurred very gradually, after a long period of habitual consumption of at least five cigarettes a day.
This same belief was based on the fact that some adults, whose levels of nicotine absorption and metabolism did not differ from other daily smokers, did not develop such dependence despite smoking up to a maximum of five cigarettes a day. However, this belief did not seem to be entirely true, which is why DiFranza’s group decided to carry out research on the time of acquisition of addiction.
The research was carried out with a group of 681 adolescent seventh grade students (first year of ESO) aged between 12 and 13 years. The follow-up period was one year and information on tobacco consumption was obtained through three confidential interviews with each of the participants during the research implementation period.
Tobacco addiction can manifest itself in different types of dependence and, in fact, it could be debated whether not all cases of smoking are tobacco addiction, while as we have mentioned before there are people who smoke but do not have problems not smoking. The study explains that the latency period until the appearance of dependence symptoms was calculated taking into account the moment in which the participants began to smoke with a minimum frequency of once a month.
Study results and conclusions
Through their research, DiFranza and colleagues found that 22% of 95 subjects who had started smoking occasionally reported some symptoms of nicotine dependence four weeks after they started smoking once a month. One or more withdrawal symptoms were reported by 60 of these same individuals (63%), of whom 62% had reported the first symptom before starting daily smoking.
Based on their findings, the researchers concluded that The first symptoms of nicotine dependence may appear within a few days or weeks once occasional consumption has begun In fact, these same experts found that these manifestations even appeared before daily consumption, which suggests that tobacco addiction is much faster than previously thought and that there is always a risk that, even if very heavy consumption occurs, punctually, smoking develops.
But despite this conclusion, researchers could not ignore the fact that there are people who smoke daily but do not develop addiction. For this same reason, DiFranza’s team proposed the possibility that there were different types of smokers, speaking of three groups On the one hand, there are smokers who become addicted quickly, only smoking a few cigarettes for a few weeks. Then there would be another group where they would gradually become addicted. And finally we would find the group of smokers who would not fall into addiction, controlling the habit.
But these same researchers comment on one of the limitations of the study, and that is the fact that they conducted it with adolescents. There could be the possibility that adolescents are more sensitive to nicotine than adults, which would imply that they have a greater risk of developing tobacco addiction.
Added to this, In the case of adult smokers, the possible influence of the consumption of other drugs cannot be ignored either alcohol being the one that is most accompanied by smoking.
What can be extracted from this work, pioneering at the time, is that it is necessary to warn youth about the risk of tobacco, indicating how quickly one can fall into an addiction from which it is very difficult to free oneself.
It is perfectly plausible to smoke a few cigarettes for a few days and then find it really difficult to stop smoking, since a dangerous habit has just been generated. It seems that most of the time this habit leads to an addiction that can last the rest of your life and that is why it is better to stay away from cigarettes and stop playing with fire.
