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Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

The fascinating thing about this stuff is that you can have outlier people. For instance, tobacco is supposed to be highly addictive.

Well, I picked up smoking from a girlfriend in college and we used to smoke all the time. Like ten cigs a day for a year and a half. Real bad, right?

Well, one day, I decided "Meh. I'll just stop" and I did. Not because of any reason. I just chose not to.

Now cigarettes are way addictive but I just chose to stop. More addictive than Benzos and shit and I just stopped cold turkey without any other reason.

Many of my friends struggled with quitting but eventually did. But I did it way easy. It's unlikely that I'm some super outlier, but clearly I'm some near the right edge of the bell curve in ease of exiting cigarette dependence.

That makes me think there are other outliers. This guy must be a heroin outlier. And considering the dependence inducing strength of that drug, he must be a far outlier.

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In the science of addiction what people have found is that if you change your environment you can literally get rid of any addiction. The studies from this are from Vietnam.

Experts were expecting an unprecedented heroin epidemic from veterans returning from the Vietnam war as drug use among soldiers was rampant. Turned out these soldiers came back and were no longer addicted. Scientists are guessing the causal factor for the loss of addiction was a "change in environment." It is literally the same thing that happened to the European person who replied to your post. Your brain hard wires dependencies to certain drugs but when you change your environment it may trigger something in your brain to actually unconsciously eliminate these dependencies. This makes evolutionary sense.

No doubt about it, people think that the above description means that the addiction is some sort of conscious decision. It is not the case. Addition is real, but the tricks to get out of addiction may be simpler then most people think.

So the question to ask is, when you quit tobacco, were you in the process of moving? Were there big changes going on in your life that would change the environment around you?

Nothing notable in my case. I'd broken up with the girl halfway through the period of using but I was still using after.

I know grandpa quit cold turkey after my dad (newly invested as a medical doctor) came home and said "You will die of lung cancer almost surely if you keep this up". And an uncle quit after his 8-year-old daughter (my cousin) said "Papa please. I don't want you to die" plaintively or something like that.

I guess some things just change the game for people.

I don't know why you'd assume you're the outlier. Never mind the differences between physical and psychological dependence and problem use (which can happen without dependence, and one can be dependent but not using problematically), you personally experienced underwhelming withdrawal effects on multiple drugs that don't all affect the same parts of your brain, and some more physically addictive than others (benzos on top of that list). As for your friends, you know about their struggles because they had struggles in the first place. Just as the news doesn't report things when nothing bad happens, it's unlikely that, with the potential of stigmatization and jailtime, most people would volunteer something that caused them no issues but can only cause issues if they let it be known. If I were in your shoes I'd not assume that you and this guy happens to be the outliers, but rather, selection bias, the well-documented history of our drug laws being based on racial panics (Chinese for opiates, cocaine for African-Americans, marijuana for Mexicans, the crack sentencing disparity, et cetera) that happens to fund a lot of the economy via the prison-industrial complex, it's not much of a leap to think that a great deal of the harm linked to drug use is linked really to the various behavior undertaken to hide from detection and not necessarily from the drugs themselves, most of which - diamorphine included - are classified as having some medical use somewhere, although for whatever reason MDMA and marijuana are classified as having none. I think it's not hard to buy into the idea that problematic use is not the outlier because that's been taught to us for decades. But if your personal experience doesn't indicate that, why jump directly to thinking that you're the odd man out?

A fair question. I haven't thought about it deeply. But smoking is a very social habit. No one hides the smoking. And it's really hard to hide because smokers have a sharp odour that's really hard to mask. So among the people I know, I know the smokers (or knew, since vaping wasn't common when I was young and had the habit).

So I guess I had a pretty good hold on what the population of smokers was, and so I know most struggled to quit.

As for the other drugs, yeah, I'm open to thinking otherwise. I have lots of friends who recreationally use cocaine, MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, and whatever else. Personally I've tried all of those and really just use shrooms now occasionally¹. No particular addictions there among my group of friends, so I'm open to your school of thought there.

¹ Cocaine is boring. MDMA is great. LSD is cool. Shrooms has massive therapeutic effects for me. I can skip my Adderall for two weeks after a trip. I feel so motivated to work and find it trivial to focus.

I think it's selection bias.

Lots and lots of living people have smoked at some point. However, many (most?) of those people quit smoking at some point.

So, the remaining people are the people that are most addicted, which gives us the impression that tobacco is highly addictive for everyone.

Edit: the CDC says that 62% of people who have ever smoked have quit.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/cess...

The part that breaks that is that in the population I'm talking about, I have known the people continuously from age 15 to age 34. Twenty years continuously, over 20 people. No one ever tried to hide the habit (hiding your smoking is a thing no one did 20 years ago). So I can observe this population fixedly and not suffer from survival bias.

It could be selection bias. Maybe I hang out with other people with addiction potential because of who I am. But it's definitely not survival bias (which is sort of what the rest of your comment talks about). The thing that makes it unlikely and the article's premise unlikely is that the weight of evidence is on this stuff being addictive.

But, you know, I'm a huge fan of the therapeutic effects of many scheduled drugs, so I'm open to the idea that addiction works differently from currently understood.

That doesn't mean quitting was easy for them.

Considering only tobacco, I'd assume he is an outlier. I'd assume so because of the many quite intelligent people who started smoking before the Surgeon General's warning, tried to quit after it, maybe eventually quit after a dozen years of work, maybe never did.

Back during one of the big buyouts of ca. 1980, an executive of KKR explained why it was buying some cigarette company: You make it for a dime, you sell it for a dollar, and people are addicted to it.

I used to smoke a cigarette or three a year. Get drunk on NYE, smoke a couple cigs. Wake up the next day with a hangover and have zero impulse to ever touch a cigarette again for another year.

I outright abused alcohol early in 2020 because shit got a bit cray-cray. Then just stopped because alcohol got boring. Done that a lot with alcohol.

Had an experience with Xanax several years ago though and I'm not touching that stuff again ever unless I'm terminal (then, yes, please). Still managed to identify the onset of addiction and stop it before it really got going, but I'm not touching that chemical again.

Addiction is an incredibly fascinating endless hole to get into, including these outlier folks.

My wife for example has struggled to quit smoking for at least 10 years. As in very hardcore struggle.

When I was young my father managed to quit from a 3 pack a day habit to nothing cold turkey. But it was obviously pretty tough on him during the process and took a couple of years to really break out of.

My brother has a pretty bad pot addiction, a relatively harmless drug with almost no known chemical mechanism for addiction. Yet he can't shake it and it's haunted him his entire life.

I'm a bit like you w/r to tobacco. I occasionally smoke cigars and have played around with cigarettes from time to time. Once I lose interest I just stop and it's over. No urge or desire or anything else.

On the other hand, I have a bad day at work and all I want to do is shove shit food in my mouth.

I have repeatedly tried to stop eating pastries and candy but can’t do it. I can’t imagine how much willpower it takes to get off truly addictive drugs.

Sweets can be very addictive.

You addiction might seem trivial in comparison, but you could be experiencing something quite similar to someone who is addicted to a "hard" substance.

Indeed, it's very dependent on the individual. Nicotine has me by the balls, very firmly. Alcohol even more so, it's something that I'm trying to quit for over a decade to no success.

Cannabis? Smoked for months every day, decided it wasn't for me and that was it. Same for many other chemicals, including cocaine. I just... stopped.

I feel like I could stop nicotine intake within a few weeks. Could be wrong about it. But not alcohol, that's the number 1 enemy. Every time I think about it, there's an insane urge to drink some, it's insane.

I mean, I literally have access to something with effects between alcohol and cannabis, yet I go with alcohol. Ridiculous.

That is interesting because alcohol was extremely easy for me to quit. I decided at the start of last year to not drink for a year and that was that. Haven't hadn't a drink since last January. But 2 weeks without my morning decaf coffee, oh boy was that hard.

I honestly don't think it's actually an outlier issue.

In highschool almost everyone I know got into smoking pot, at least for awhile, and within a year or two 90+% of them just lost interest in it, maybe 5% kept using and maybe a quarter of them literally made pot the center of their lives and are still daily users with big impact on their lives and careers (or, honestly, lack thereof for all but one). The same thing happened with alcohol.

As an adult, I've seen the same pattern repeat for people who just didn't try things, for whatever reason, or perhaps people who changed.

What's actually happening, IMHO, is that you have a ton of overlapping processes that are filtering for with people who are vulnerable to becoming addicted to a given drug. Obviously those people will have trouble quitting.

There most certainly are outliers, and you are likely one of them for nicotine at least. What you want to avoid though is using your outlier status to influence people into thinking "hey, maybe I'm an outlier too, maybe I can use highly addictive substances and still stay in control too" because statistically that's going to end in a public health disaster.

Pretty much. My mom's soon-to-be-former partner had been an alcoholic previous to their relationship and was clean when they met. She got him some whisky for Christmas and figured it would be fine if he drank a little, because its never been a problem for her. Big mistake.

People are very very different in their drug tolerances and really shouldn't give advice to other people, because they are not the same.

Same here, stopping to smoke was really easy but my candy addiction is real hard. It's like day and night for me. I struggle and have been struggling in not eating candy for years (or at least a lot less) but I have failed each time.

I think different substances are differently addictive to people.

Likewise, I found it impossible to quit sugar. Fruits especially still ruin me. I'll eat any amount of fruit you place before me.

With any kind of addiction, it's worth exploring what the triggers are. There might well be some underlying emotional thing that makes you eat fruit.

For me: I eat cookies because my Mom baked a lot, and I lost her early. This is a way to feel close to her. Knowing that makes it easier to not eat all the cookies. That doesn't mean all addictions are rooted in early childhood or psychological symptoms, or that your life gets fixed if you just talk about your parents a lot ;) But especially with addictions that only create mild physical addiction symptoms, it's worth looking at.

Sugar is one of the hardest addictions to kick. I've kicked cocaine and alcohol too.. sugar was by far the hardest physically. It's also hard to stay sober because it's so accessible in foods and accepted by society.

Yeah it's like if people would put nicotine in every product, it would most likely make smoking harder to quit as well.

This video about our primate cousins, the alcoholic vervet monkeys in St. Kitts, might give some insight into addiction. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm7BcQHWXk

Very cool. Thanks.

My dad quit smoking cold turkey one day and never thought about it again, my mom smoked until she died of lung cancer, she would take the oxygyn mask off to take a puff.

It's bizzarre the genetic/environmental differences in addiction.

i remember struggling to start smoking tobacco in 8th grade to impress a girl (heh i saw her get sent home for wearing a Metallica Kill'Em All concert shirt, I was instantly in love).

I just couldn't stand it the feel of tabacco. Same goes for weed, i hung around very heavy smokers all during college but just hated the feeling from THC so i never really got into it.

Nicotine is well established as a nootropic and use of it correlates with reduced incidence of dementia (even when corrected for mortality biases). I am at a really high risk for dementia and I keep trying to vape in hopes of that (possible) benefit but I keep forgetting to do it. Note that the logic for your health choices get weird when accounting for high odds of being a zombie after the age of 65. Plenty of room to dump externalities onto "zombie-you"

Yeah, I mean some people smoke all of their lives and live to be 90 and die of natural causes. Doesn't mean that smoking isn't incredibly dangerous and bad for you.

edit: this is agreement with the original comment, not sure why I'm being down voted. Just highlighting how outliers can exist, but it doesn't reflect on the danger of the underlying activity in general

The argument the author is making is that addiction is an outlier. Many many many people drink, snort cocaine, smoke cigarettes and in the author's case, use heroin, and never develop addiction.

I can understand why this infuriates people who've seen or known people who've died from an addiction but it's important for people to understand that alcohol, drugs, gambling, facebook, the internet, shopping, and everything that can turn into an addiction are not the problem. The problem is deep emotional pain from traumatic experiences.

You had me until your last sentence. There are people who are born with huge lung capacity, they are able to swim faster and longer than anyone else. We would never believe that it's emotional pain that is keeping everyone else from swimming as well. And people are born colorblind, they don't lose that ability because of emotional pain. Physics and our individual body chemistry at birth plays a deep role in our unique life experiences. There's every reason to suspect the same mechanism affects addiction proclivity.

I think OP is saying that trauma leads to addiction, not necessarily the act itself; ie, shopping addicts are addicted to shopping because of past trauma not necessarily because of the act of shopping itself. As a prior nicotine addict I don't necessarily agree with this, as I have felt firsthand what the addictiveness nicotine feels like and I don't believe it's psychological (and, it seems like heroin may be similar)

I think it makes sense that people who, due to trauma or other lived experiences (in addition to those who are genetically predisposed), have a brain chemistry that leaves them not feeling as well as they could, would be more vulnerable to getting addicted to substances that make them feel better (or ”normal”, even).

Look up Gabor Mate

Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park . It's not conclusively relevant to humans, but it does at the very least cast doubt on the models historically used to understand addiction.

I did the same thing. In fact, everyone I know who successfully quit smoking for a long time quit the same way. I’m not really sure that proves that cigarettes were any less addictive for you, unless you’re saying you never had any significant craving or desire to resume.

Interesting. None of my friends smoke any more, with the last having quit two years ago after a long struggle and then reading Alan Carr's book and working with patches and gum. Cold turkey quitting hasn't been the norm. Most have tapered off.

And no, I don't really even 'want' a cigarette. I know what addiction is, in that I feel this strong pull towards sweet stuff. I must have any kind of dessert, and if I see a novel food, I must eat it. I just must. It's like a fugue state. Try as I might I fall. Also with online validation for comments I write or stories I tell. The dopamine hit from an upvote has a debilitating hold on me.

But with no drugs have I felt this desire. Not even shrooms which I enjoy or MDMA which has been my all time favourite. I have some shrooms and some LSD in my fridge so I can partake any time. I just don't.

I'm amenable to the Rat Park hypothesis too. Maybe it's all Rat Park stuff.

> Well, one day, I decided "Meh. I'll just stop" and I did. Not because of any reason. I just chose not to.

My girlfriend smoked for almost a decade and did the same thing as you, including drinking. She's been 2 years clean.

This is a bit silly. You never developed an addiction to cigarettes so you were able to easily quit smoking them. Well, yeah, of course.

The hard part is quitting something when you want to but cannot make yourself i.e. addictions are what is hard to quit.

The majority of people are able to smoke, drink, eat, and fornicate without developing an addiction. The people that become addicted are the outliers.

Are the majority of people able to smoke without developing an addiction? That's not been my experience growing up. I only know three people total who quit cold turkey and I'm one.

That's interesting, though.

The parent comment is being downvoted for some reason, even though the viewpoint is exactly the same as the original article.

Oh and now I'm being downvoted for pointing out a fact. Well done HN. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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