2 Stimulants - 2 Bad Results

     Drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes seem like 2 different actions in 2 totally different ball parks. One is generally much more socially acceptable than the other. However, their results seem very very similar. In all honesty, if you take out the terrible causes of what the tar in cigarettes can do to your lungs, the effects of cigarettes and coffee are right with each other. I mean, look at life 30 years ago. The harmful effects of cigarettes to your lungs were not known, so it was just as common for someone to step out for a puff than it was to pour yourself a cup of Joe. The reason for this lies behind the similar overall effects of nicotine and caffeine. 

     First, I want to define what a stimulant is. A stimulant is a drug that stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, excites neural activity, and speeds up body functions. Caffeine and nicotine are both stimulants. Given they operate in different ways, they still lead to these same results that all stimulants share.

     How does caffeine work? Well, it is an antagonist - it stops the reuptake of a neurotransmitter. What it does is it binds to a neuron's axons, triggers the release of the stimulating neurotransmitter dopamine, and then stops the reuptake of dopamine, causing a person to be energized for a certain period of time and if not restimulated results in a crash.

     Nicotine works in a different way. It is an agonist - it triggers the release of the neurotransmitters epinephrine, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, dopamine, and glutamate, which, similarly to caffeine, causes one to feel a high or be energized for a period of time. 

     The stimulation is not such a bad thing. It is what results from this unnatural way of stimulating your body that is not good for you. Once you start, you don't stop so easily. Once you feel this stimulation, your body craves it along with the fact that your neurons are not able to produce the same neurotransmitters by themselves due to the manipulation you have put them through. Therefore, your body requires more and more nicotine or caffeine even to be just normally stimulated. And when you stop drinking coffee or smoking cigarettes, you go through a terrible withdrawal.

     Therefore, my advice is to stay away from cigarettes and coffee in the first place if possible. Being dependent on a substance will prove to be unfavorable down the line.