Nicotine, the primary psychotropic substance in tobacco, is a unique substance. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that nicotine disrupts a wide range of neurotransmitters. By virtue of altering both excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters simultaneously, nicotine is able to cause both energizing and relaxing effects in smokers. Nicotine disrupts the normal cycles of acetylcholine, serotonin, GABA, dopamine, and endorphin and enkephalins. In other words, nicotine involves, to some degree, most of the neurotransmitters that play a key role in substance-abuse problems.
After temporarily stimulating acetylcholine receptors, nicotine then rapidly blocks any additional acetylcholine stimulation, either from further use of tobacco or from the brains own normal acetylcholine production. This makes it, in effect, a self-regulating substance, because continued use actually stops its primary psychotropic effect. Because nicotine stimulation is not continuous, it provides intermittent psychological reinforcement, which is often a more powerful habit-forming pattern than continual reinforcement. If you quit smoking cold turkey, nicotine levels in your brain fall dramatically. As with other drugs, this causes your brain, which had learned to function in the presence of nicotine, to have to regain the ability to function without it.
lhave experience in stopping smoking cold turkey. Unfortunatley stopped alcohol cold turkey at the same time.Within 36 hrs. my girlfriend had to call an ambulance for me 'cause my brain went into shocks & my body into convulsions. You've probably guessed by now that it bought about epilepsy,which goes to show l think that not everyones brain can recover from the sudden shock.Anyway, been hooked into nicotine again since all that started and now i'm going to give it a big BOOT out of my life
