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Comment by radlad | Hacker News Reader

I did and while I like Gwern's writing, I think in this case it's plain wrong. I say this as a smoker who switched to e-cigarettes for a few years and then quit cold turkey. Switching was easy. The first 72 hours of quitting was a nightmare.

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.

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> I did and while I like Gwern's writing, I think in this case it's plain wrong. I say this as a smoker who switched to e-cigarettes for a few years and then quit cold turkey. Switching was easy. The first 72 hours of quitting was a nightmare.

Are you implying that by smoking I caused irreversible changes to my brain that meant I was now capable of being addicted to the pure nicotine in the ecig that I switched to? I switched entirely to ecigs for two years before quitting.

My brother is still addicted to his ecig despite numerous attempts to titrate down.

> Are you implying that by smoking I caused irreversible changes to my brain

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.

While permanent changes to a brain are a thing, I don't think being addicted to smoking means you are addicted to drinking so I don't follow the "logic." You're stating that nicotine is not addictive unless you were previously addicted to nicotine in the presence of MAOIs, in which case nicotine on its own is addictive now?

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?

> 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.

It's pretty hard to get addicted to nicotine patches, if you never smoked.

I suspect that if I took up nicotine patches now, years after quitting nicotine (e-cigs), it would be similarly difficult - but not impossible - to get addicted.

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.

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