Lack of Knowledge Kill a Lot of Smokers

Ignorance is a harsh word. But imagine reaching for that next cigarette until it kills you, without ever really understanding why. Imagine wanting to stop yet not knowing the only rule needed to succeed. And imagine never once investigating the truth as to how most ex-smokers quit. Half of adult smokers smoke themselves to death. More than five million smoking deaths annually, with one billion expected by century's end, why don't smokers take their self-destruction and slow suicide more seriously? If the U.S. Centers for Disease Control is correct and smoking causes "1 in every 5 deaths" and "on average, adults who smoke cigarettes die 14 years earlier than nonsmokers," what force could cause one billion humans to each trade 5,000 sunrises for smoke? Sadly, smoking's biggest killer isn't lung cancer, emphysema, heart attack or stroke. It's ignorance, ignorance about why smokers smoke and how to quit. Smoking Ignorance Chemical dependency upon smoking nicotine is as real and permanent as alcoholism. A true mental illness, nicotine enslaves the same brain dopamine pathways as illegal drugs. It is a brain "wanting" disorder which leaves the addict convinced that smoking nicotine is as core to survival as eating food or drinking water. Brain dopamine pathways are designed to make pre-programmed human survival events nearly impossible, in the short term, to forget or ignore. It's why starving yourself to death is almost unthinkable. It's also why, to the hooked smoker, thoughts of never smoking another cigarette may be as unthinkable as quitting food. By happenstance, within 8-10 seconds of inhaling just one puff, nicotine arrives in the brain where the nicotine molecule is so similar to the brain's acetylcholine molecule that it is able to activate up to 50 percent of brain dopamine pathway receptors. Additional puffs saturate receptors.