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Comment by dageshi | Hacker News Reader

Genuine question based on personal experience, is nicotine itself addictive or is it nicotine + method of delivery?

Cause as someone who smokes cigars (don't inhale, do absorb nicotine via the mouth lining) I really don't find them addictive at all, that seems broadly the case with most cigar/pipe smokers we generally aren't addicted to them.

And yet cigarettes are obviously super addictive, so is it something else in cigarettes that's adding to the addictive nature? Or inhaling into the lungs, where presumably you'd get a much faster hit or higher dose?

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I've been a daily nicotine gum user for years, and I'd say I'm addicted. I've tried to quit several times. I'll kick it for a couple of months, and then I'll have a stressful week and I'll buy a box. Then I'm back on it for a couple of weeks until the box runs out. And sometimes I just go buy another box.

For me, it's not addictive in the sense of "I experience withdrawal symptoms", but I have very strongly conditioned habits with specific triggers. Nicotine spikes my dopamine, and also improves my concentration and memory when I'm using it. Which makes me like it, and also chemically encourages situational cravings.

As an example, I chewed it when I was driving to work every day for a while - and now I think about it almost every time I drive anywhere. It's not really an "I need a piece right this second" kind of feeling for me, but more like a "Man, some nicotine would be awesome right now" kind of feeling.

One aspect of the addiction that I think many nicotine users would agree with - it's not an instant process. I knew I was developing the habit long before it was a full-blown addiction. I kept telling myself I wasn't going to get addicted, that I was stronger. Turns out maybe not so much.

Another Gwern link: https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

Highlight: "Wikipedia summarizes Guillem et al 2005 as "Technically, nicotine is not significantly addictive, as nicotine administered alone does not produce significant reinforcing properties" - the addictiveness coming from MAOIs (eg. Khalil et al 2000, Khalil et al 2006) & possibly other compounds present in tobacco"

So I'd expect cigars and pipe smoking to be addictive. My personal experience is smoking cigarettes occasionally (average less than one a day), and I wouldn't say I was addicted either.

My current hypothesis for why cigarettes seem more addictive is frequency. Searching "cigarettes per day average" turns up estimates mostly around 15 per day; most cigar/pipe smokers aren't anywhere near that.

(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or scientist.)

As Pete_D linked below there is now some evidence questioning the addictiveness of pure nicotine, however for ethical purposes these studies are generally done using animal models, most commonly rats so YMMV. Animal studies don't always correlate 1:1 to human studies. The majority of studies I have read still find nicotine more addictive than placebo. Definitely traditional cigarette products, many of the manipulations done in treating most brands of cigarettes (the exception being brands marketed as natural i.e. American Sprits) made them more addictive by adding additional constituents and potentiators. In the combustion of tobacco products as well you have the active constituents bound to the smoke molecules, which are larger and therefore more absorbed in the lungs. So yes you would be getting more effect from lung-inhaling a combusted product. Vapor products have a much smaller particulate size so are mostly absorbed by the mouth and upper airway and much less lung-dependent. The other issue that may help to influence addiction is that there is some evidence that exposure to nicotine while the brain is still developing, leads to a tendency to use higher doses as an adult. This may translate to developing brains get used to this powerful nootropic and are more addicted as adults, as speculation, it would be hard to design a study to test this. In terms of vapor, freebase nicotine has traditionally been used in vapor products, these tend to show slower absorption and more even blood levels over time. What Juul innovated, and why their product is so much more effective that previous electronic cig-alikes (like Blu) that use freebase nicotine is the development of nicotine salts that allow for increased peak absorption more mirroring the absorption curve of a traditional cigarette. The relative addictive potential of nicotine salts vs. freebase nicotine has not yet been scientifically investigated. The World Health Organization and other health organizations that tend to prefer harm-reduction and scientific objectivity estimate vaping is at least 95% less harmful than tobacco as a nicotine delivery system. (Source: can cite links, RN who reads journal articles for fun. Smoker since 14 y/o switched to vape full-time almost a decade ago.)

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