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Comment by navd | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why I see this popping up throughout the comments. Nicotine BY ITSELF is extremely addictive.

Nicotine by itself doesn’t seem categorically different than caffeine (coffee, tea, yerba mate, guarana, ...) or other stimulants (khat, coca leaves, ginseng, cinnamon, ...). Yes these are generally addictive, but not necessarily life ruining. Dosage, frequency of use, etc. matters a lot.

Frequent long-term use of any stimulant is probably not great for you; e.g. my mother has a pretty severe coffee addiction (she typically drinks 4–8 cups per day), and gets headaches and shakes if she goes a couple days without. But compared to other kinds of drugs, it doesn’t seem like such a huge public health threat that we should freak out about it.

I think you’re partly right. However comparing nicotine to caffeine is like comparing apples to oranges. They are similar, but nicotine affects the brain in a much more different (and arguably more addictive) way than caffeine does.

Technically, your example shows that not using coffee is not great for your mom.

Maybe because of this list of research papers collected by Gwern claiming that nicotine alone doesn't have strong addictive properties (not beyond caffeine level):

https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#addictiveness.

Apparently in most popular, educational and health-related communication, nicotine is treated as synonym to tobacco, leading to confusion.

I've smoked tobacco for 30-ish years. Organic, additive-free tobacco is definitely less problematic for me. Lately I've been growing my own Nicotiana Rustica [0], which contains plenty more nicotine than regular tobacco but is nowhere near as addictive.

I know what I would do if I was selling drugs and didn't give a crap about anything but profits, I would make them as addictive as possible.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotiana_rustica

How do you find the Rustica? I wanted to have a crack at growing it in my entheogen garden

Before I started growing rustica; I ordered a roll of real mapacho from south america, which was very nice.

I've only tried sun-dried leaves from my own garden yet, which isn't quite as exciting. The nicotine boost is still the same though.

The idea is to grow enough to make my own mapacho paste and ferment a roll for a while.

By itself it's pretty harsh, and trippy because of the nicotine. I prefer it mixed with Cannabis and/or regular tobacco.

They need nutrients, lots of nutrients (epsom salt works like magic). And loose, sandy soil or the initial roots won't go anywhere.

Seeds are available at most 'ethnobotanical' online stores. Tiny seeds: can get hundreds for a few bucks. Pretty easy to grow too.

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