The author of this book presented his STAR model of smoking behavior at the sixth Milford Symposium on Addiction and Behaviour in June 1996, a presentation which whet the appetite and led to a desire to read the book as a whole.
This text begins with an overview of the book as a whole, discussing the outline of what is to follow. Chapters two to eight give a history of smoking, taking the reader from the time that cigarette smoking was viewed as a habit, to the current 'addiction to nicotine' stance. Reviews are also made of the self administration of nicotine showing that 'addiction' may be too harsh a term for smokers as they do not tend to increase their intake, but stay at the same level of nicotine and tar, and smoke around the same number of cigarettes per day. Tolerance and dependence are discussed with an argument on internal and external motivations for smoking.
Chapters three and four look at emotion, mood, feelings, sensations and stress as possible influences on smoking habits, moving on to personality types and psychopathology, and discussing the possibility of genetic predisposition to smoking. The following chapter asks the question 'do some people smoke to self medicate for psychopathology' and other more minor dysfunctional personality traits, feelings of neuroticism for example. This chapter examines some of the withdrawal effects different personality types would encounter on cessation of smoking, for example, it was suggested that neurotic type people suffer more from the negative affects of nicotine withdrawal. The effects of