Nicotine thread

[Dolan]

What you are addicted to is a stress reliever, an association that you formed between a habit/behaviour and a feeling, through self-conditioning over the years.

But I CBA to make a fully fleshed out argument with references and stuff. Believe whatever you will. I guess my time is just as precious as yours if you don't want to look at the findings from that study I quoted. The data shows clearly that belief that you receive a nicotine substitute can be a stronger motivator to cut down on the number of cigs/day than knowing you get placebo, irrespective of whether you receive nicotine substitutes or just placebo. Seriously, if you get placebo and your rate of cutting down cigs is still about the same... I don't know what else would convince you that you conditioned yourself into needing a substance to alleviate stress.

If someone gives you something to smoke that has almost zero nicotine but you believe it's regular levels of nicotine, you'd still feel stress relief. Just because you formed an association between that burnt tar scent and stress alleviation, that's enough to trick your mind into thinking you are taking in nicotine, lol.

I mean, this has already been tested: smoking cigs with almost no nicotine at all reduces nicotine craving about as much as smoking cigs with a normal concentration of nicotine.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 5705000912

Existing evidence supports the notion that nicotine delivery and recentness of smoking mediate the effects of smoking, including decreases in tobacco craving. However, smoking placebo (denicotinized) cigarettes decreases tobacco craving after overnight abstinence. The present study tested whether the recentness of smoking was an important determinant in the ability of a placebo cigarette to reduce tobacco craving. Placebo (0.07 mg nicotine) and conventional (1.1 mg nicotine) cigarettes were used in a spaced smoking paradigm. In six experimental sessions lasting 240 min, subjects smoked either a placebo or conventional nicotine cigarette in intervals of either 30, 60, or 240 min. Heart rate (HR), exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) levels, and subjective (Schuh–Stitzer, QSU) measures of tobacco craving were obtained throughout the spaced smoking paradigm. HR and CO levels increased after smoking both types of cigarettes. Increasing the interval since the last cigarette significantly (p < 0.001) increased the baseline values of tobacco craving. Smoking either the placebo or the conventional cigarette caused a significant (p < 0.01) reduction in the craving score after smoking. However, the nicotine yield of the cigarette did not influence these patterns. It is concluded that acute tobacco cravings can be repeatedly diminished with cigarettes that do not deliver nicotine.

Placebo gets similar rates of reducing tobacco craving as the real thing. The mind = magic.

[Dolan]

Anything that is a stress reliever can form an addiction. Gaming, smoking, taking drugs, drinking, shitposting on ESOC ( ), binge eating.
It doesn't mean you have gaming receptors in your brain that make you addicted. Addiction is basically non-specific, it can find an object in lots of targets.

[fightinfrenchman]

Shitposting on ESOC doesn't relieve my stress at all. If it did I wouldn't have any stress

[Dolan]

Well, we could do an experiment. We could ask mods to ban you for a month, then you could report whether your stress levels have increased.

[fightinfrenchman]

Well, we could do an experiment. We could ask mods to ban you for a month, then you could report whether your stress levels have increased.

Tbh the times I've been banned were much less stressful (I've had a few lifetime bans and one particularly long one year ban which lasted nearly six months)

[Dolan]

Idk I remember you guys were desperately asking mods to unban the basement, back then. Didn't sound like you were so chill about it.

[fightinfrenchman]

I'm also not "chill" about posting

[occamslightsaber]

I’ve never tried smoking cigarettes, probably because my entire family stays away from such “vices” (alongside drugs and alcohol) for religious, health and professional reasons.

I have tried cigars three or four times, but I’m not exactly sure how they compare to cigarettes. On the one hand, I’ve heard that a cigar typically has many times the nicotine content of a cigarette. On the other hand, cigar smoking is different from cigarette smoking in that most of the smoke isn’t supposed to reach your lungs and just stay in your mouth, leading to less nicotine intake. But then again, it said on the cigar packagings themselves that cigars aren’t safe alternatives to cigarettes.

I don’t think smoking is just my thing, not unlike drinking. The first time I smoked a cigar, my body was so relaxed that I had trouble walking 10 yards back into my house from the backyard. Yet I didn’t really feel any sort of psychological relief and if anything, it pissed me off that I couldn’t walk steadily. I tried few more times after to see if I feel different and eventually I came to the conclusion that I just don’t enjoy smoking.

[fightinfrenchman]

Does nicotine actually give you a "high?" I've never experienced it but I find that interesting.

[Dolan]

I'm also not "chill" about posting

You probably reached a level of habituation to the reward you get from posting, so you get diminishing returns the more you post.

[fightinfrenchman]

I'm also not "chill" about posting

You probably reached a level of habituation to the reward you get from posting, so you get diminishing returns the more you post.

You're right, I should be posting more. Thank you for the suggestion

[occamslightsaber]

Sounds like the Ear is telling the mods to put him out of his shitposting misery.

[fightinfrenchman]

Sounds like the Ear is telling the mods to put him out of his ESOC misery.

That would be very crooked of them.

But for real can any smokers relate the feeling of smoking a cigarette to alcohol and/or weed? Earlier in this thread incog said he smoked two packs back to back, which to me (admittedly a nonsmoker) seems like a lot, but if you ingest a lot of weed/alcohol at once you're kind of out of commission from doing normal things for a little bit, which from what I see is not the case with nicotine.

[Riotcoke]

I'm telling myself that I'm gona quit when Ill have kids some day

Same. There were plans, but now I'm not sure if I want to have children due to multiple factors so it's making quitting even more difficult.

Show hidden quotes

Psychs have helped many people quit, i don't know if that's an option.

Tried it and ended up having a pretty bad trip. Didn't help

Yeah it's not for everyone, as long as you're in a good frame of mind going into you should end up fine though, maybe no on some analogs of LSD though which generally people end up finding awful.

I tried with shrooms since I read multiple articles about it. Did a guided meditation for the first hour or so. Saw some interesting things. Then saw some scary things, most notably multiple snakes in a corpse turning into two then one giant snake that became the corpse. This was a closed eye visual. I also saw an alien looking down on me from a tree an hour or so later, which was terrifying for me. This was with my eyes open. The alien was simply lights reflecting off the window, which I could logically deduce within seconds, but I also could still see the alien even knowing it was just a reflection of lights. Weird state for me and difficult to describe my emotions. Overall, not a good or helpful trip with regards to quitting smoking, though it was helpful in different ways.

LSD does make me smoke less. I noticed that I will light a cig and only take a hit or two of it. It just doesn't feel right to do any more than that. I do also smoke less the following day or so, but the minimized frequency doesn't last for longer than a few days.

Addiction to smoking is purely psychological, it's like any operant conditioning. It's like when you hear something that reminds you of delicious food, which makes you drool.
It has to do with stress management, people who smoke do so because they think "having a cig" gives them a break from stress.

I don't believe in addiction to nicotine at all. It's just a fabrication of the industry that wants to sell you nicotine patches as a substitute for cigs.

that's funny I thought there was science that showed that it was indeed addictive

but I've also heard that sugar is more addictive than nicotine as well

I just smoked 2 packs back to back, let me see how I feel when I'm done with the last cigs I have left

the nicotine high is real though

Don't let Dolan fool you. It's not purely psychological. There are biological forces at work just as with other chemical addictions. The psychological aspect probably is the core component for most people, but to simply dismiss the chemical dependency of it is irresponsible.

Yeah in regards to shrooms i always find they're much more random than LSD as whole, even though the amount of time is far shorter. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 ... 16.1170135 Here's an interesting article on the topic as a whole, my uni gives me access i don't know if you just read it normally though.

[iNcog]

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[fightinfrenchman]

Don't you live in Colorado lol

[iNcog]

-- deleted post --

[fightinfrenchman]

I do, why?

Weed is recretionally legal there, why haven't you tried that?

[iNcog]

-- deleted post --

[fightinfrenchman]

Damn that's dumb. Is it like a regular thing or randomly?

[gamevideo113]

What you are addicted to is a stress reliever, an association that you formed between a habit/behaviour and a feeling, through self-conditioning over the years.

But I CBA to make a fully fleshed out argument with references and stuff. Believe whatever you will. I guess my time is just as precious as yours if you don't want to look at the findings from that study I quoted. The data shows clearly that belief that you receive a nicotine substitute can be a stronger motivator to cut down on the number of cigs/day than knowing you get placebo, irrespective of whether you receive nicotine substitutes or just placebo. Seriously, if you get placebo and your rate of cutting down cigs is still about the same... I don't know what else would convince you that you conditioned yourself into needing a substance to alleviate stress.

If someone gives you something to smoke that has almost zero nicotine but you believe it's regular levels of nicotine, you'd still feel stress relief. Just because you formed an association between that burnt tar scent and stress alleviation, that's enough to trick your mind into thinking you are taking in nicotine, lol.

I mean, this has already been tested: smoking cigs with almost no nicotine at all reduces nicotine craving about as much as smoking cigs with a normal concentration of nicotine.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 5705000912

Existing evidence supports the notion that nicotine delivery and recentness of smoking mediate the effects of smoking, including decreases in tobacco craving. However, smoking placebo (denicotinized) cigarettes decreases tobacco craving after overnight abstinence. The present study tested whether the recentness of smoking was an important determinant in the ability of a placebo cigarette to reduce tobacco craving. Placebo (0.07 mg nicotine) and conventional (1.1 mg nicotine) cigarettes were used in a spaced smoking paradigm. In six experimental sessions lasting 240 min, subjects smoked either a placebo or conventional nicotine cigarette in intervals of either 30, 60, or 240 min. Heart rate (HR), exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) levels, and subjective (Schuh–Stitzer, QSU) measures of tobacco craving were obtained throughout the spaced smoking paradigm. HR and CO levels increased after smoking both types of cigarettes. Increasing the interval since the last cigarette significantly (p < 0.001) increased the baseline values of tobacco craving. Smoking either the placebo or the conventional cigarette caused a significant (p < 0.01) reduction in the craving score after smoking. However, the nicotine yield of the cigarette did not influence these patterns. It is concluded that acute tobacco cravings can be repeatedly diminished with cigarettes that do not deliver nicotine.

Placebo gets similar rates of reducing tobacco craving as the real thing. The mind = magic.

If anything the study you mentioned is proving that placebo effect exists and can be as strong as a real stimulant (it totally can!). It doesn't prove that nicotine doesn't have any physical and psychological effect on the body. On the contrary, it does have effects on the body which are also pretty damn easy to get addicted to. It binds to the nicotinic receptor which is found on neuron cells, increasing the release of dopamine, serotonin, and vasopressin, and also on the ganglia that control heart activity and adrenal glands (releasing adrenalin). I don't know if you've ever tried smoking, but it's quite easy to tell that it boosts your heart rate and in turn your concentration (since it boosts the blood flow to your brain too). That's also what any other smoker will tell you. As you say, it's possible (and very likely) that this addictive effect is also due to psychological conditioning - someone who always has a cigarette at the same time in the morning will have a very hard time skipping it - but the actual effects of nicotine on the body are undeniable.
Also, other substances contained in tabacco seem to have an inhibiting effect on enzymes that usually break down dopamine molecules, meaning that the dopamine released inside your brain will have a longer lasting effect.
Ultimately, every addiction has to go through the dopamine circuit, so they're all "psychological", in a sense.

[gamevideo113]

Anything that is a stress reliever can form an addiction. Gaming, smoking, taking drugs, drinking, shitposting on ESOC ( ), binge eating.
It doesn't mean you have gaming receptors in your brain that make you addicted. Addiction is basically non-specific, it can find an object in lots of targets.

Yes, everything that makes you feel good can cause an addiction, thanks to the release of dopamine. Whether it's a videogame, a slot machine, cocaine, porn, sugar or whatever. Addiction is non-specific, as you say. As a matter of fact in the past centuries people used to treat cocaine addiction with heroin .
Nicotine does have specific receptors though. If it didn't it wouldn't be addictive because it would have no effect on the body whatsoever.

[iNcog]

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[Goodspeed]

Why would they do drug screening if it's legal? Are they screening for alcohol use too?

[Dolan]

If anything the study you mentioned is proving that placebo effect exists and can be as strong as a real stimulant (it totally can!). It doesn't prove that nicotine doesn't have any physical and psychological effect on the body. On the contrary, it does have effects on the body which are also pretty damn easy to get addicted to. It binds to the nicotinic receptor which is found on neuron cells, increasing the release of dopamine, serotonin, and vasopressin, and also on the ganglia that control heart activity and adrenal glands (releasing adrenalin). I don't know if you've ever tried smoking, but it's quite easy to tell that it boosts your heart rate and in turn your concentration (since it boosts the blood flow to your brain too). That's also what any other smoker will tell you. As you say, it's possible (and very likely) that this addictive effect is also due to psychological conditioning - someone who always has a cigarette at the same time in the morning will have a very hard time skipping it - but the actual effects of nicotine on the body are undeniable.
Also, other substances contained in tabacco seem to have an inhibiting effect on enzymes that usually break down dopamine molecules, meaning that the dopamine released inside your brain will have a longer lasting effect.
Ultimately, every addiction has to go through the dopamine circuit, so they're all "psychological", in a sense.

Even eating carbs can be a stimulant. If you form a habit of eating carbs to make yourself feel better, then yeah you formed a "physical addiction" that uses brain circuitry to entrench itself. That doesn't mean you had special receptors for bread and other carbs that made you become addicted and which prevent you from breaking the addiction. So of course you could do brain studies and see that while/after eating bread or scones your serotonine and dopamine levels increase, because you are "addicted" to eating carbs.

All addictions work through such similar mechanisms. You first form a pattern of behaviour and then, once you use that habit to "give yourself a break from stress" by indulging in it, of course your brain will produce neurotransmitters that make you feel reward. And reward has a calming effect on the body. Lots of things can have a stimulant effect on the brain, including some kinds of tea, that doesn't mean you're likely to become more addicted to them because the chemicals they release can have a stimulant effect. You could, though, form an addiction if you form a habit that you use to relieve stress, by indulging in that substance. It's really classical conditioning.