Reasons to smoke

Why should a person start smoking?

All over the Internet, the newspapers, televisions and other media sources, you will see that smoking is harmful for your health. So, why should you start smoking? Are there any advantages and benefits? And are those benefits above the problems smoking can cause to you?

What are the problems caused by smoking?
According to the vast majority of media sources, the major problem smoking will do to you is damage to your health. However, if you ask a convinced smoker (like myself), the major problem is money consumption.

Health risks
Because of the subject of this wiki and because there are many detailed articles available about the negative health effects of smoking, I will not insist on the subject.

You know probably very well that smoking can cause lung cancer and many diseases. However, these problems occur at some age. So, if you are 20 and decide to start smoking, expect problems to occur when you are 40 or 50. This is not a rule. Some smokers might live their entire lives and die of old age or from completely different problems (like a car accident). In other cases, health problems might occur much sooner. To find out more about what bad things smoking can do to you, please visit any of the many sites and articles about this subject.

Money
If you are not a rich person and cigarettes are expensive in your area, there might be a major problem. This is the main problem smoking can do to you. At some point, you might give money from your food and eat less, to buy cigarettes. This will weaken your body and expose yourself to many diseases. Smoking have some bad effects on your health, but if you combine them with a bad alimentation, it can be a real hazard to yourself. Also, it can affect your family.

Advantages
Why do people smoke? Some smoke for pleasure, some just because they are addicted, some do this because they are nervous people and others because their friends do so.

Why people do smoke
Pleasure of smoking. For a smoker, smoking is something pleasant. It is relaxing. Some people enjoy the taste of it, some only enjoy the effects of nicotine and others love to see how they puff clouds of smoke in the air.

It is sexy. There is something called smoking fetish. Some people (usually males) are attracted by smoking people. This is what motivated so many people to create smoking videos on youtube and why those videos have a high number of visitors. However, there are also many women who enjoy watching smoking videos of men.

A glimpse of freedom. Among women, smoking appeared in the 20's as more and more women wished to show their desire to be independent and have equal rights with men. Today, we see the same movement among the Arab world, where women are still discriminated. Smoking is usually associated with a bad and rebel temper, but there are also many innocent people who smoke.

Changing your personality
Under the effect of nicotine and other substances found in cigarette smoke, many things will change to your personality. What are the effects of nicotine on your brain? Depending on dose, they are as follows:


 * 1) At a low dose, nicotine increases your ability to focus. This means that you will be able to pay attention to important things. Also, it reduces noise of your brain. The noise is made of non-important or imaginary things. However, if thee noise is too strong, stronger then the main things you try to focus on, the effects will be opposite.
 * 2) At a higher dose, nicotine is relaxing. It calms down your anger and allows you to control your behavior.
 * 3) When the dose is even higher, the effect is somehow similar with alcohol, only that you don't get drunk. You become unable to focus (for example, at a difficult math exercise), your feelings are less strong, but still you are awake (and not drunk) and your reflexes are almost the same.

Nicotine after a trauma. Some people start smoking (for the first time or start again) after something bad happened to them (for example, the death of someone important). Yes, smoking will have a strong healing effect on that person, even if not noticed at first. Smoking can put you on an equilibrium state, far safer and cheaper then anti-depressive drugs. And while anti-depressive medication is more recent and not so well studied, the effects of smoking are well known and nicotine has been tested for centuries.

Sometimes, the effects of a trauma can last for years. In this case, even if you start smoking at two years after the incident, you can still benefit from its advantages. In this case, your psychological profile will reach a state of equilibrium much faster.

Nervous people. Some people tend to become angry almost from nothing. In those moments, they reach an incredible level of stress. For them, smoking is a good solution.

People with brain problems
It is proven that people with schizophrenia and other neural disease tend to smoke much. Some researchers suggest that nicotine-based therapy can be used for them. Also, some drugs exist or are under development, based on chemicals derived from nicotine.

Smoking versus alcohol and drugs
Now, let's compare the effects of smoking to other drugs.

Alcohol. In some places of the world (like in those where Islam is the main religion), alcohol is strongly prohibited. So, people have only limited access to it.

In small amounts, alcohol consumption might not be harmful. However, in high amounts, it has a really bad effect on you. Smoking affects your pocket money and in long term your health, however, drinking will strongly affect not only your money and your health, but also your reputation and your family. Everybody have seen drunk people how they behave. Alcohol abuse is an important factor in family violence and unemployment. You will never see a convinced smoker beating his wife or making car accidents in the same way alcoholics do, because nicotine does not distort your mind, as alcohol does.

Drugs. There is no way to compare the effects of smoking with the dangers of drug abuse.

Anti-depressive medication. Anti-depressive medication is also addictive, like smoking, but less studied. There are cases when people, after more then 10 years of medication, have reported brain diseases. I am not a doctor and I don't have enough data to compare the effects of both.

Weight improvement
It is known that many people who start smoking also lose weight. Also, when they stop smoking, their weight increases significantly.