And nicotine, don't forget that. Smokers built the modern world (and then developed lung cancer for their troubles).
Makes you wonder what kind of selective pressures it exerted on the evolution of modern man. Select for chill and veg out types? For believers in cure-all panaceas (and snake oil)? For people who enjoy sucking on things? Or for something more sinister. It is the most fascinating evolutionary pressure.
Because in March of this year 2026 Nature published research that revealed that nicotine and its agonist buddies that stimulate niconitic acetylcholine receptors in the brain majorly screw with the reward system in the effort department.
The Nature March 2026 research showed that nicotine receptors make meaningless behavior meaningful as if you expend effort on it and vice versa makes meaningful effortful behavior meaningless. That displaces ambition and is very insidious cumulatively in all sorts of overt and sneaky ways. It's not even zombification, it's fundamentally creating bees that not only enjoy being worker bees but have zero ambition for anything else. I mean, we can talk about how profound this is and has been, but tobacco lobby will stifle any serious conversation before they even commence.
*nicotinic receptors, which are activated by acetylcholine. But I only saw nicotine mentioned once in the paper, and in the titles of two citations.
To me, it seems like a big stretch to say that nicotine "makes meaningless behavior meaningful" - could you explain how that's supported by the paper's data?
In boxing, you do not talk your opponent through as you knock him out.
In research, pick any field, say, astronomy, you do not mention that Earth is not flat and that the Earth orbits the Sun.
In biochemistry research, you do not spell out that nicotine binds to NICOTINIC acetelcholine receptors as an agonist, that's literally Biochem 101.
- Presence or absence of other nicotinic agonists, inverse agonists, and antagonists, and relative concentrations of each
- Effects vary wildly with nicotine concentration levels in plasma/interstitial fluid, as if it's an entirely different drug depending on how much is present
- etc.
You're drawing a direct line from one agonist the paper only mentions once to a psychological effect that the paper doesn't even describe. You may or may not be right, but this paper is at best a citation for a separate study to test your hypothesis.