Smoking was once a symbol of masculine suave, long before the you-gotta-wear-a-chain swag. Even now, if you will look at black and white movies or pictures of the likes of James Dean, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and Brigitte Bardot puffing cigarettes in their classy outfits, you will think that the scenes would never look as iconic and elegant had the cigarettes been taken out of them. That's one psychological cause of smoking--that perfect advertisement where the tiny stick of chronic diseases is caught between fingers of a star practically making death attractive. But I'm going to tell you other factors in this article, more scientific.
Unconscious Dependency
When a person smokes, nicotine enters the brain triggering its receptors to react by releasing dopamine which is responsible for that calmness and happiness a smoker claims to feel when smoking. Dopamine is also that neurotransmitter also known as the reward and pleasure center, thus highlighting that satisfaction achieved by the brain when nicotine approaches it. We all know this though, and what we do not know is the fact that this is not actually the only reason why it is difficult for many smokers to quit no matter how hard they try.
The mentioned effect of nicotine to the brain deals with a smoker's physical dependency on the substance which may or may not always be an issue for cigarette users as it means that withdrawal from the habit will only cause stress or anxiety opposing the pleasures given by nicotine--something that could perhaps be handled by an alternative source of joy. Psychological dependency, on the other hand, is more complicated than this.
This other type of dependency is tagged along other regular routines one cannot really quit. You see, some people have made it a habit to smoke after eating, during school/office breaks, after sex, etc., and since those activities are all natural to a person, the other activity along it which is smoking no longer gets separated from them or even get noticed.
For people who smoke after sex, they are most likely to have hard time quitting the habit as unconsciously, smoking has already been associated with another activity that brings pleasure, satisfaction, happiness, or feeling of being loved. Even when these people smoke outside that routine, they may still feel those positive emotions that laying off the habit just does not seem to be appealing or is simply not consciously present in the mind of the smoker as an option for him or her to take.
Death Link
There is nothing exactly Nihilistic about smoking, obviously, as it even allows the brain to release positive emotions contradicting death. However, it is true that cigarettes have substances that could cause a lot of chronic diseases, but based on what I have just said above, smokers choose to puff away due to their attraction or dependency on the calmness smoking brings to them. Even when I smoke with my friends and they joke about smoking to get closer and closer to death as they feel their life is hopeless, that still does not change or exactly add up to the cause of the habit, for these friends of mine do this out of boredom or because it has been a part of their break time routine. Otherwise, they would be puffing every second until their said much-awaited end comes.
Conscious Choice
Quitting the habit like any other addiction could be tough especially that it could be inferred from the information above that smoking is a form of escapism. There is no easy way to get a person out of something he or she looks at as a break from the harsh reality, yet there is always a way to intervene with that other dimension and it starts with making the perceived difficult life worthwhile by keeping the person engaged in other activities he or she could pour his or her passion into or by simply keeping his or her attention into things that give him or her something to earn and treasure rather than keeping him or her a chemical and disease-filled stick that is starting to get more and more expensive as time passes.