9781422272299

withdrawal symptoms include nausea, anxiety, and depression, sometimes accompanied by strong feelings of anger or frustration. Some people chew their nails or think constantly about smoking or vaping until their next opportunity for a hit of nicotine. This experience is familiar with all drugs, but it is often harder to escape from nicotine addiction for a few reasons. These include the ease of purchasing nicotine products, the half-life of the substance, and the potency of its effects on the mind. Nicotine Also Damages the Brain The massive impact of nicotine on the brain can lead to other severe problems, some of which may be as severe as brain damage. For example, a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that smoking during adolescence significantly increased a person’s chances of developing cognitive problems or psychiatric disorders as an adult. These results occurred because nicotine also adversely affects other areas of the brain. For example, nicotine can impact a person’s attention span, decrease their memory capabilities, make it harder for a person to learn new skills, and decrease brain plasticity, which is the ability of the mind to adapt to new concepts and skills by adjusting the ways that it operates. Young children have higher plasticity than adults, but this adaptability slowly decreases as a person ages. Unfortunately, nicotine abuse can impact a teen’s brain plasticity early and make it harder for them to learn new skills. Even worse, it may affect their emotional development and make it harder for them to control their impulses or to process emotional problems. As a result, a teen who starts smoking young may find that they never mature the way their peers do and stay at a state of somewhat arrested development. This point shouldn’t be stated too heavily, as nicotine won’t make a person drastically less intelligent or mature. However, researchers

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Nicotine Treatments: Fighting to Breathe Again