Have you ever smoked tobacco? This isn't really true. Tobacco really does have psychoactive effects even before you are addicted. Yes, all things considered, tobacco is basically evil and should be replaced with something else, but it's not like people are just making shit up about how good it feels.
The best analogy I can give is to salt in food. Nobody would eat a teaspoon full of salt, but it makes everything else taste better. Nicotine is subtly but profoundly pleasurable; when inhaled, it delivers an instant and substantial hit of dopamine that noticeably enhances the context it is experienced in. Nicotine relieves fatigue, it lifts the mood, it suppresses hunger, it paradoxically induces both stimulation and relaxation. It's your morning cup of coffee, only infinitely more so.
Even the addiction is, in a strange sense, pleasurable. A nicotine craving is a purely objectified need that can be satisfied in a very direct and immediate way; that is a powerful experience if you have other important needs that cannot be satisfied. I might be miserable at work, I might be depressed and anxious in ways that do not respond to drugs or psychotherapy, I might be poor and lonely and justifiably hopeless about the future, but this one specific need of mine can always be satisfied with a pack of smokes or a Juul and a five minute break.
When you have very limited control over your circumstances, cigarettes give you some modicum of control over your mood. If you have never felt completely trapped by your circumstances, it is difficult to express how significantly that sliver of control can affect your sense of self.
The sociability of smoking simply cannot be emulated in any other way, because the act of smoking itself provides a profound sense of communality. Non-smokers do not and cannot understand why the smokers choose to huddle outside, which is precisely why we feel able to start conversations with complete strangers. We are bound together by a bewitching, maddening and frequently lifelong relationship with a very peculiar alkaloid.
I believe that nicotine has, for entirely respectable reasons, been demonized by the anti-smoking lobby; it has been characterised as a completely pointless drug that persists only because of the aggressive marketing of tobacco companies and its highly addictive nature.
I would argue that the potent addictive potential of nicotine is a product of its potent psychoactive effect and the complex role it plays in the life of smokers. E-cigarette users see e-cigarettes as a potentially lifesaving technology that satisfies a profound psychological need. I do not wish to endorse e-cigarettes, I certainly would not encourage anyone to take up nicotine use, but I would beg for some modicum of empathy on the part of non-smokers towards their nicotine-dependent peers.
Without reading the article: the nicotine in the cigs trigger certain brain chemical reactions which impact feels so good it is sought-after again and again and again.
This undermines much of what you've said. The addictive properties of nicotine have been well studied. The 'pleasantness' associated with smoking is mostly caused by the relief of the need for nicotine.
Another submission on this news item is getting a little more traction. I posted there about how tobacco does have some medicinal properties: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29499292
same here. smoking gives such a jolt of stimulation that you cannot get elsewhere, for that moment of smoking all your troubles are lifted, except you are slowly killing yourself too. The instant delivery of nicotine via smoking is why it does that. There is no other way to replicate it and is why it is so addicting.
You're a PhD in a medicine/biology field I hope? Because otherwise, it might seem overly presumptuous to think you fully understand the effects of nicotine on health enough to make overarching conclusions. Like, the effects on atherosclerosis.
Anecdotally, I've accidentally quit vaping several times, because I don't vape when I've caught a cold and that's coincided with me needing to buy supplies.
I've gone back to it because I find it enjoyable, but, having watched my father quit smoking several times, I can't say that I've ever had withdrawals like that, or really at all.
So my theory is, really, that cigarettes and tobacco in general is far more addicting and therefore far more bioactive than just consuming nicotine is.
reply