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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

A lot of those kids are probably self medicating with nicotine for stress / anxiety / ADHD. I've never been a user myself but it seems like for many people who get nervous and have trouble focusing, a little nicotine helps steady them out.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not recommending that anyone, especially children, self medicate with psychoactive substances.

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(I'm a college student, not a highschool student) among my friends that smoked it wasn't self medication, it was an excuse to socialize. In some environments these can be hard to come by so smoking is an artificial one that lonely people sometimes pick up.

The problem isn't a little nicotine. The utter nastiness in cigarettes limits how much you can have. Vapes don't.

It's more complicated than that, but I have had multiple smokers espouse to me that it is more difficult to regulate consumption with a vape than with traditional cigarettes.

I'm not sure what the new vapes can do, but old vapes didn't have the ability to put a ceiling on dose for a single session (ie turn off after x pulls). With a cigarette, the act of burning through the cig acts as an indicator to stop. With a vape it's more difficult to understand when to stop because there is no physical indicator.

Nicotine is a stimulant, not a depressant.

Do you take Meth to 'even out'?

Me, I just quit smoking entirely 3 years ago.

It's not that simple. Nicotine is both a stimulant and a relaxant.

http://www.ti.ubc.ca/1997/10/31/effective-clinical-tobacco-i...

I don't personally take meth or anything like that, but low dose amphetamines are widely used to treat ADHD and related disorders.

It's good that you quit. I'm certainly not recommending nicotine to anyone. Just pointing out one factor behind the growing trend.

I take amphetamines to 'even out'...

Stimulants affect people with certain disorders differently, as the parent mentioned (ADHD, etc.).

The biggest lie of cigarette smoking: that it relaxes you. When you're a nicotine addict and crave it you get anxious, nicotine fixes that.

In my experience, when I had regular or constant anxiety, the nicotine crave blended with it but smoking calmed both. It is very possible that a non-nicotine method of relaxation would have also worked on both, but those are rarer and/or less quick and convenient.

That was one of the appeals of smoking.

Interesting. I should have written that was my experience. Anxiety isn't something I typically experience unless I've drank too much coffee or, when I was a regular smoker, needed a cigarette.

I take it you're a non-smoker now. I wonder how a vape would affect that.

Yeah after 20 years smoking, I had minor (unrelated) surgery and had to stay at home for a couple weeks, so I just cold stopped smoking and that was that. I am curious too but I refrain from experimenting.

Congrats, it's a hell of a habit to quit.

Methamphetamine has been approved by the FDA for treating ADHD

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