Here’s why you find yourself ‘going back’ after giving up smoking, experts reveal

Why do some smokers find themselves irresistibly drawn back to the habit – even after they’ve spent months or years painfully dragging themselves out of it?

The answer might not be to do with the chemical, or even the habit itself – it’s to do with how smokers see themselves, a new study has suggested.

A study published in the Journal of Substance Use suggests that for many smokers, quitting means losing a part of their social identity – and they may relapse to get it back.

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The researchers interviewed 43 people who had tried to quit smoking – and found that many felt they had lost a ‘group membership’ when they gave up.

Dr. Caitlin Notley of hte University of East Anglia, said, ‘Although many people do manage to quit, relapse is very common.

‘Of course we know that smoking is physically addictive, and there has been research about the psychological side of it – but this assumes that people are unable to resist physical urges, or are vulnerable to social cues.’

‘When people attempt to quit smoking, what they are really doing is attempting to bury part of their old identity and reconfigure a new one.’