Huh? Nicotine ain't addictive either. See https://gwern.net/nicotine for more than you wanted to know.
Just don't smoke. Get your fix (whether nicotine or marijuana) in other ways. Vape or chew gum or use edibles or stick on a nicotine plaster, etc.
Nicotine being the addictive part is also why many smokers are successfully able to make the switch to e-cigarettes.
Nicotine by itself is at most very lightly addictive.
> Nicotine being the addictive part is also why many smokers are successfully able to make the switch to e-cigarettes.
I don't think we can draw that conclusion. Just because something helps you get over an addiction doesn't mean it's the addictive part.
Compare and contrast the absolute ineffectiveness of nicotine plasters for getting people off their cigarette habit. (Even though they are a great nicotine delivery mechanism otherwise.)
Similarly, I don't think anyone ever got addicted to nicotine plasters.
I think it's horrible to tell people nicotine is not addictive. Quitting is very difficult.
A quick Google offers plenty of alternative study results.
I personally know people who were addicted to nicotine patches. One reason they are likely not as addictive as smoking is because they take much longer to reach noticeable concentrations in your bloodstream. Vaping also takes longer than smoking but not nearly as long as patches.
Compare this to oral vs IV drug use.
Edit: I will add that while I do strongly believe nicotine is addictive, I also believe smoking is more addictive and that it is primarily all the other chemicals in tobacco smoke that cause most physical harm to the body.
My brother is still addicted to his ecig despite numerous attempts to titrate down.
Yes. Once an addict, always an addict. ('Irreversible changes to a brain' are quite common. You remember having smoked, for example...) More importantly, this was something emphasized before, and so it is irrelevant to bring it up as a supposed counterexample.
I fail to understand how nicotine on its own would satisfy an addictive craving created by a different chemical or combination of chemicals, if it isn't addictive itself.
I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean about a previously emphasized counterexample either. Could you elaborate?
It's pretty hard to get addicted to nicotine patches, if you never smoked.
I don't see this as an argument that nicotine is not addictive - just that different routes of administration are more or less addictive, similar to IV vs. oral opiate use.
Then I found myself taking a one or two of these 1mg tablets during the day when driving as I want to increase good habits when driving. Then habitually whenever I felt like it, sometimes with a coffee and a book. They were the weakest mg you could get, and there was no direct feeling of their effect. I did feel increasing anxiety which lead to physical symptoms during this time, but the tablets didn't seem to make any direct effect on the anxiety, I didn't take the nicotine to calm down and I didn't connect the two together (its only now writing this comment that I'm thinking they may be connected)
So it was definitely addicting, however, when the box ran out, stopping seemed to be instantaneous and painless. I did quit because I realised I wasnt using it as I wanted to initially and it was becoming a habit. I do remember a couple of times looking for the tablets, checking to see if there wasn't some in the car. mild. The feeling of anxiety is gone now too.
So I'm not sure if I would say I was addicted, but maybe I was. It was certainly habit forming!
Nicotine isn't really absorbed well that way. That's also why Gwern's self experiment didn't really work.
In any case, yes, stimulants can cause anxiety in people. (Weirdly, they can also help with anxiety. The brain is weird.)
When you abstain from nicotine, you will get physical withdrawal symptoms. Nausea, headaches, heart racing, that type of thing. But you'll also get psychological symptoms - paranoia, anxiety, irritability.
I know for a fact it's the nicotine because:
1. Vaping contains a lot of nicotine, too, and it satisfies the craving.
2. You can actually feel the nicotine hitting your blood when you relapse.
3. Nicotine patches remove the withdrawal symptoms.
Nicotine patches aren't perfect, and the reason they might be less addicting is because there's no hit. It's a constant stream of nicotine which ends up feeling like no nicotine at all. Instead, it feels like it's just preventing the affects of a lack of nicotine, i.e. it's inhibiting withdrawal. But it's not giving you the effects of nicotine.
Like when you smoke a cigarette you immediately feel relaxed and happy and it's a very sudden effect. But with nicotine patches since there's no curves you don't get that.
Nope. I never smoked, but tried patches, and I certainly felt the effects. (And I didn't have any withdrawal that I needed to inhibit.) My non-smoking friends who tried had the same experience.
But, as a cessation tool, which is what they are, this has been my experience.
And, I would be hesitant about using nicotine patches or something like Zyn recreationally. Nicotine, even by itself, is harmful to the cardiovascular system over a long period of time.