According to the physiological approach, substance abuse and addiction have been considered one of the most critical medical problem facing individuals. On the other hand, addiction is simply the over dependence of a particular type of drug that often results in intolerance and various withdrawal symptoms in case an addict has been deprived of the substance (Dube et al., 2010). According to the nicotine regulation model, most people often continue using nicotine to maintain a significant level of this substance in their body system and to prevent certain withdrawal symptoms. Studies have pointed out that the pharmacologic reasons for nicotine use include the following: to improve individual’s moods through relieving the withdrawal symptoms in addition to the augmentation of a person’s mental functioning. The essay will focus on behaviorism operant conditioning as developed by Skinner. According to the behavioralist approach to substance abuse, nicotine addiction is often learned. Therefore, nicotine abuse is simply a form of behavior that has become highly addictive to that individual (Warner & Pollack, 2014). According to the operant conditioning, a person will learn a particular type of behavior such as nicotine smoking because they are often reinforced in some ways.
Reinforcements, in this case, might entail a person being accepted in a particular group or to relive tension. The reinforcement often outweighs the negative factors of nicotine use, and this is the primary reason these types of reinforcement are immediate.
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Operant conditioning as a learning principle occurs as a result of the cause and effect relationships that often exist between nicotine use and the potential costs. In a situation when a particular behavior is rewarded, then it increases while on the other hand when the behavior is punished, it drastically decreases. For most people, smoking tends to become addictive when the rewards are high such as it is highly enjoyable. On the other hand, there are individual who dislike smoking nicotine hence they have minimal risk to develop addiction problem to this substance. Therefore, this tends to protect them from developing an addiction problem simply because such substances are not pleasurable implying that they are less rewarding (Dube et al., 2010).
Smoking has been proven to be a learned behavior and it emerges because of the initial pleasure than one derives from it is highly rewarding. Operant conditioning states that a person will learn smoking nicotine because they seem to be highly reinforced. Reinforcement strategies might comprise being acknowledged within a formed society sand to experience a feel of relief. Therefore, to have an impact, the reinforcements, ought to overshadow the real pessimistic smoking effects because their reinforcements are instantaneous. Based on the principles of operant conditioning, when a behavior in this case smoking is rewarded, it increases. Nicotine, just like the rest of the addictive substances is immediately rewarding hence people tend to learn such behaviour much quickly (Hahn, 2010). It can be used to explain why nicotine tends to replace healthy sources of rewards because they seem to be delayed. As addiction progress, the potential availability of natural, healthy pleasures which in this case are rewarded declines significantly as a result of dependency. In such case, friendship is strained, hobbies are lost, and the loved members become bitter forcing the addicts to strongly depend on their addiction as the primary source of reward creating a great addictive cycle.
Research has further pointed that punishment is one of the tools that can be used to understanding the nicotine addiction problem. In a situation where there exists an early punishment for instance medical problem, then it is more probable that addiction problem would not have developed. However, the problem is that punishment for smoking takes place much later when the problem of addiction has been strongly developed (Hetrick, 2014). At such a situation chemical and psychological changes might occur in an individual’s brain hence making it tough to discontinue nicotine addiction. Consequently, detrimental cognitive and emotional pattern tends to have been solidly established hence making it very complicated to break the smoking behavior. It follows that during the later stages of smoking punishment alone might not be efficient to develop a lasting change. It might be important to increase sources of rewards especially those related to the healthy behavioral preferences while at the same time eliminate the rewards that would support addictive behaviors (Dube et al., 2010).
For years, operant conditioning was adopted and applied to treatment the health problem of nicotine addiction. It has helped very many people to quit smoking. Based on the operant conditioning theory, nicotine abuse is one of the learned behaviors that an individual acquires as he grows primarily through influence from other people. Based on the argument of the behaviorist, nicotine abuse was learned and has become a habit to an individual, therefore; it can be changed easily through relearning another healthy behavior. It is possible to stop people from acquiring certain behaviors, but this should be done in the first place before the situation amounts to addiction (Warner & Pollack, 2014). Operant condition states that reinforcement can be helpful to aid individuals to stop using nicotine. One of the successful applications of the operant conditioning that has been able to help people to quit smoking is rewarding themselves on some days that they have gone without smoking. It might be argued that based on this, some programs have been established that consistently create awareness on the harmful consequences of tobacco use and the potential positive effect obtained when they quit smoking.
For many years, the operant conditioning has been employed in treating addiction and has led to diverse, effective treatments. One of the initial ideas is rewarding the nicotine addicts for making any significant healthier, recovery-oriented choices. It is, however, essential to ensure that the award ought to have a particular value and the reward substantial. According to E-cigarette use by teen’s triples (2015), despite the probability of improvement, it is highly unlikely that the nicotine addict individual would easily give up smoking for a piece of a bar of chocolate, but it is highly possible to quit smoking for a car. It might further be worth noting that what seems rewarding to a particular individual might be worthless to another addict. Research on addiction has come to a conclusion that when a person has been rewarded with inexpensive but a highly desired product, then it will follow that they will add to the number of the abstinent days. It is very efficient in individuals with inadequate financial resources. However, the same low-priced products might not have a significant impact on a person with greater financial means.
The operant conditioning approach is useful in understanding the nicotine addiction problem and explains reasons individually engages into using nicotine and further provide a valid and reliable clarification why individual have continued to abuse nicotine.
According to Hetrick (2014), at the time an individual becomes highly addicted to nicotine they are supposed to maintain the behavior of smoking with an aim to continue receiving the rewarding obtained regarding satisfaction and enjoyment and avoid possible withdrawal (E-cigarette use by teen’s triples 2015). Operant conditioning helps to offer an explanation why individuals often engage in certain health risk behaviors like the heavy use of nicotine. Further, it has contributed to suggest possible treatment to the addiction problem for addicts to conquer nicotine abuse habits. Since an individual’s behavior is learned, then it follows that it can easily be unlearned. For years, the media campaigns have tried as much to fight nicotine addiction without success because these people have not been provided with any form of reinforcement. The majority of the individuals have successfully adopted operant conditioning tools to help stop nicotine abuse and reduce addiction problem where they offer some reinforcements to themselves when they sometimes spend without having to smoke and using the saved money on various leisure activities (E-cigarette use by teens triples 2015).
One of the biggest problems with behaviorist approach to explain and treat nicotine addiction problem is that it is reductionist where it only focuses on the observable individual’s behavior while ignoring the rest of the most vital factors like the cognitive processes. As a result of this, they often offer a higher level of passive observation of human beings. In addition to this, operant conditioning also ignores physiological explanations, and this is evident where several types of research have established that among the nicotine addicts, genetics play a huge role in influencing these individuals. In the event the first ever experience of nicotine use was rewarding then it follows that people would be willing to return to it once more. On the other hand, if there are no particular unpleasant impacts to nicotine addiction then there it might be tough for one to quit smoking. We can enhance the efforts towards recovery through giving a chance the natural consequences of taking place. There is the need to reward all healthy choices made by an individual to ensure that these behaviors become appealing compared to nicotine addictive behavior. The best example in such a case is only to allow a person to go back to the family and continue enjoying the comforts of home is he or she has shown greater improvements in the period without nicotine abuse.
References
Dube, S. R., McClave, A., James, C., Caraballo, R., Kaufmann, R., & Pechacek, T. (2010). Vital signs: current cigarette smoking among adults aged≥ 18 Years-United States, 2009. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report , 59 (35), 1135-1140.
E-cigarette use by teens triples: officials warn of nicotine addiction. Cover story) (2015). Alcoholism& Drug Abuse Weekly . 27 (17).1-3.doi:10.1002/adaw.200471
Hahn, L. (2010). New Smoking danger. Good Housekeeping. 251(1). 83
Hetrick, K. (2014). Does Smoking Drive Us to Drink?. The Futurist , 48 (2), 8.
Warner, K., & Pollack, H. (2014).The Nicotine Fix. Atlantic, 314 (5), 48.
