Do Nicotine replacement products really work?

You are not addicted to Nicotine, at least not in the sense that it is the Nicotine that causes you to keep smoking. If this was the case then people who quit smoking using Nicotine Replacement Products such as patches, gum, inhalers etc would have difficulty quitting those products after they have stopped smoking cigarettes.

The thing that keeps you smoking is the emotional attachment that you have to cigarettes. Shortly after you started smoking, your mind developed an emotional attachment to cigarettes because it created a link between inhaling smoke and feeling pleasure.

What you may not be aware of is that the pleasure that you are associating with the cigarette is caused by your brain releasing natural opiates (natural feel-good chemicals) called endorphins.

Your brain releases these chemicals in order to protect you from feeling poisoned as a result of your intake of nicotine. When this phenomenon occurs, the endorphins mask this poisoned feeling and instead of feeling sick from inhaling the highly poisonous nicotine, you feel calm and relaxed.

The main point being that it is not the nicotine that gives you this calm feeling, but instead it is your bodies natural defences, fighting the effects of your being poisoned, that creates the feeling that you desire.