UPDATE: This story was edited Nov. 19, 2009 at 1:09 a.m. to remove a misquote from Ashton Stowe.
Countless advertising campaigns, the messages of high school health classes and the D.A.R.E. program in elementary schools all scream the same thing: smoking cigarettes is addictive.
Even Philip Morris International, one of the world’s leading tobacco companies, makes no bones about it. “The conclusion is clear: Smoking is addictive” the company’s Web site says.
On the Web site, Philip Morris uses the U.S. Food and Drug Administration findings that say, “A smoker who makes a serious attempt to stop smoking has a less than 5 percent chance of being off cigarettes a year later.” And, the findings show, “almost half the smokers who undergo surgery for lung cancer resume smoking.”
And the addiction is expensive.
Ashton Stowe, a freshman in biological sciences, estimates she spends $30 each week on cigarettes.
“I once figured out how much it would be a year, and it was a staggering amount,” she said.
Chris Ayscue, a sophomore in zoology and former chain-smoker, said there is a social factor in the decision to smoke cigarettes.
“I find that I pick up cigarettes when I’m around people who smoke,” he said. “When I’m at home, I rarely see anyone smoking. Cigarettes hardly cross my mind.”
Although tobacco-related addictions are highly publicized, they are not the only ones plaguing students on campus.
Jeff Huber, a freshman in civil engineering, recently took the plunge: he uninstalled Counter-Strike from his computer.
Huber speculated that, for most people, addictions “probably find their source in the desire to escape reality.”
Video games, he said, are made to satisfy that need.
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games, such as Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, allow players to create alternative identities through their characters and tap into online communities of tens of thousands.
“It’s entertaining as hell,” Declan Nishiyama, a sophomore in biomedical engineering and former WoW warlord, said. “But to really play it and be competitive, you have to trade long-term goals for short-term pleasure.”
Since coming to college, Nishiyama has swapped WoW for Guitar Hero.
“If I put as much time into guitar as I put into Guitar Hero, I’d be Dave Matthews,” he said.
Humor aside, Nishiyama suggested that sometimes compulsive behavior gets improperly labeled as addiction, and its benefits get overlooked. He claimed to have improved his hand-eye coordination and ear for music through the game. He has also gained social status from his ability to excel in expert mode.
And while things like video games may appear to be less harmful than smoking, these addictions may fall into the same category.
James W. Kalat’s Introduction to Psychology defines an addiction as a “self-destructive habit that someone finds difficult or impossible to quit.”
Kalat, a psychology professor, writes that addictions involve stimulation of dopamine receptors in a small area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, apparently critical for attention and habit formation.
“[While] gambling and video game playing, [for instance], do not automatically stimulate the nucleus accumbens — they can’t, because they aren’t ‘substances’ — after people develop a strong gambling or video, the activities come to stimulate the nucleus accumbens,” Kalat said in his book.
But, Ayscue said kicking bad habits may be easier than people think.
“Ultimately, each individual is responsible for his or her own actions, even when facing withdrawal symptoms or strong desire,” Ayscue said. “Part of me thinks special interests want us to believe changing our actions will be more difficult than it actually is.”
