"Teenage smoking..."

     Most cigarette smokers understand that smoking is hazardous to your health. Despite this, millions attempt to quit each year unsuccessfully, because there is more to being hooked on cigarettes than the physical addiction to nicotine and tobacco. There are also psychological problems linked with smoking that make this habit all the more dangerous, and that in turn make quitting that much harder.
     The brain immediately feels the effects of smoking, thanks in large part to how fast nicotine reaches the brain shortly after a smoker takes the first puff. Social learning theory states that over time one learns to associate smoking with other pleasurable activities, including eating, drinking and socializing.People can become quickly conditioned to the point where the thought of a pleasurable activity triggers the need for a cigarette. These psychological associations remain when smokers try to quit and make stopping the habit once and for all difficult.
     The psychological addiction associated with smoking is caused by the nicotine inhaled. Cigarette nicotine has a direct effect on dopamine levels in the brain, which in term influence mood, appetite, and other aspects of brain chemistry controlled by this neurotransmitter. Repeated exposure to nicotine from smoking can quickly lead to the brain building up a tolerance for it, requiring the person to smoke more and more to produce the same effects on dopamine.