My 1998 Brochure to Teenage Smokers (page 2)
The years of adolescence are by nature an emotional roller coaster. As teens become young adults and separate from childhood, hormones are racing and forever changing their social worlds. School is a place to create a social database while these emotions lead the way.
Tobacco takes a smoker on a roller coaster ride fueled by nicotine and acetaldehyde. Nicotine is a stimulant, and the acetaldehyde (additive) is a sedative. It is this chemistry of stimulant and sedative that entices and grows addictive.
The parallels of the effects of tobacco with teenage emotional surges create a temptation, especially during the dating years, as a way to manage feelings. The use of tobacco to manage feelings delays the process of emotional growth that you will need to enter your 20-something years.
_________________________________(page 2)_____________________________
I loved this brochure.
I really would like to see more TV shows and movies add characters who are combating the detrimental side effects and disease brought about by their smoking addiction.
That's the reason I wrote this from another viewpoint. On the back side of addiction, to begin the recovery process, the focus isn't on what addiction does or how the chemistry affects our body. The focus is on why a person REACHES for it. Nothing changes until they stop reaching. And as you'll see on any article where smokers, for instance, share their story: "I started when I was 13 -- me I was 16 -- etc." No matter what a person's homelife was, if they began smoking as a teen, those teen emotions are locked underneath the nicotine addiction.
IF a teen is precented from picking up cigarettes to placate the anxiety, it doesn't mean they are always better off, because they will replace it with another substance/behavior, because of that desire to REACH. Sometimes it's shoplifting. Lots of things. I wrote this to teens to address what was underneath the temptation to smoke, not really about the health effects and the head-smartness of it, but to the emotions behind it.