One thing many people want to know before quitting smoking is how long the effects of nicotine will take to stop. This isn't exactly a simple answer, because while nicotine leaves the body quickly, the mental effects of being a long time smoker take time to go away.

Nicotine itself has a half life of twenty to thirty minutes in the body.  That means that all but the last traces of the drug will be gone within two to three days. Thing is, nicotine isn't the major reason why you smoke.

So, what really makes cigarettes and tobacco so addictive? Your mental attachment to it. Your addiction is largely based on a learned association between various events during your day, or triggers. For example, a common trigger for many people is leaving work. It doesn't matter how many (or few) cigarettes you've had that day, leaving work almost every smoker lights up.

This is because you\'re so used to smoking when you leave. Over the years, it's become a learned response to leaving work, to the point where if you don't follow it, you feel weird. That feeling gets written up as nicotine withdrawal, which is why so many people say that nicotine withdrawal is awful.

In short, nicotine withdrawal only takes a few days, but the mental withdrawal from smoking is what people say is rough. Tackle that, and quitting smoking is easy. That's why so many of the replacement therapy programs have trouble working: they treat the nicotine addiction, but don't do anything about the fact that nicotine addiction isn't what causes problems.