Nicotine Acts at the Neuromuscular Junction to Stimulate Muscles

Health

Nicotine acts at the neuro-muscular junction to stimulate muscles. Paradoxically, smokers report that it relaxes them. Explain.

One of the paradoxes about nicotine addiction is that smokers report feeling relaxed after using, in spite of the fact that nicotine is a biological stimulant. The phenomenon is known in the literature as Nesbitt's Paradox or simply the nicotine paradox. Early research into Nesbitt's Paradox revealed that there are a number of potential variables influencing the perception of a relaxed emotional response. Behavioral activity levels, the level of central nervous system arousal, the type of emotion being reported, time elapsed since the nicotine fix, and both rate and dose of administration are linked to perceived emotional responses to smoking cigarettes containing nicotine (Gilbert, 1979). Of these variables, the degree of nicotine deprivation has been most closely linked to the paradoxical sensation that a stimulant creates a relaxation response. The solution to the paradox, then, is that addiction to nicotine creates sensations of anxiety, irritability and distress, and these symptoms are alleviated by a "fix." As Parrott (2002) puts it, there is no paradox at all. Addiction creates withdrawal symptoms, which include heightened states of arousal. Smoking alleviates the withdrawal symptoms and therefore makes the smoker feel more relaxed.

One of the functions of smoking is "mood normalization," according to Parrott (2002, p. 27). In other words, smokers start to need nicotine in order to "feel" or "function" normally (Parrott, 2002, p. 27). This would account for the fact that smokers report feeling more relaxed after smoking. The central nervous system is measurably aroused, and yet psychologically the person is relieved after satisfying the craving to feed the addiction. It should also be noted that not all smokers report feeling reduced anxiety; many report feeling increased anxiety, agitation, and restlessness (Gilani, n.d.). How a person feels after smoking is related to how long the person has been addicted to cigarettes, how long the withdrawal period has lasted, and how anxiety-prone that person was regardless of smoking.

Therefore, the nicotine paradox is slightly more complex than being related only to nicotine withdrawal. Evatt & Kassel (2010) found that there are differences between smokers who are sensitive or prone to anxiety vs. those who are not as easily aroused. High anxiety smokers tend to report feeling more relaxed after smoking when in a stressful condition but did not report reduced anxiety after a low stress condition. In other words, persons prone to feeling a baseline level of anxiety react differently to nicotine than their lower anxiety counterparts. Persons not as prone to experiencing anxiety actually report that smoking calms them at all times (Evatt & Kassel, 2010). These findings would, however, substantiate the basic notion that Nesbitt's paradox is related more to nicotine withdrawal than to actual reductions in biological features of anxiety in smokers.

There are other variables that must be taken into consideration when evaluating the nicotine paradox. For example, persons who have pre-existing anxiety tendencies might be more prone to becoming addicted to cigarettes. That would mean that smokers set themselves up for a feedback loop in which their addiction creates an illusory means of self-medicating for anxiety disorder.