I had a feeling.
I paused before responding several times ending on the thought "he'd make a good counselor/therapist".
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Can non-smokers that vape potentially lead to real cigarettes?
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I had a feeling.
I paused before responding several times ending on the thought "he'd make a good counselor/therapist".
Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk
What was established years ago is being debunked today. That's what we're trying to tell you. By your logic, cigarettes are safe...because that's what they established years and years ago....
It's a relatively new thing to study Nicotine separate from tobacco. Recent studies (not years ago) have shown that nicotine by and of itself, isn't addictive.
I see by your join date that you've been around for awhile... I'm curious as to where you've been. You want to accuse a respected member of spreading false information, when it seems that has been your strong suit lately. In numerous threads.
Look.
I'm not going to judge you.
Nobody here is in a place to do so.
So there's no reason to keep defending your stance on your addiction or mine.
We're not going to kick you out of the restaurant for lighting up or shun you to the smoker section.
There's no reason for self loathing or embarassment here.
We're all in the same boat.
So what if some of us still have one toe in the water!
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Yeap even tobacco by itself isn't as addictive as cigarettes with additives.
All the old science to do with nicotine doesn't apply to vaping at all since it was almost all done in conjunction with tobacco, read the pamphlet for the patch it shows that the patch hasn't been shown to be addictive.
In my youth I had aspirations of being a school counselor, helping youth through the trials of being young, assisting them in figuring out where they wanted to go and how to get them there. Then I started subbing and realized that school districts were likely never going to have the money to hire enough counselors to actually let them be counselors, instead of scheduling administrators, at least not in my lifetime. That and the the pressures of life led me down the path I'm on now where I do mostly customer support and system design. Not as rewarding, but fun enough and pays the bills. I do like to talk with people though so I tend to get further into discussions than I probably should
yeap and that was/is my favorite part about quitting smoking with vaping, every other method shames the smoker into quitting and once they quit many start to belittle and shame smokers, with vaping I feel empathetic towards them, I'm surrounded by smokers, the amount of times I've heard them say they want to quit or they are trying to quit is insane.. Wish the government was pro vaping here because they just see vaping as another way to smoke and refuse to acknowledge the benefits of making the switch and what's funny is the non-smokers who I've all talked to about it are on board with me trying to get people to make the switch except.... Ex smokers that quit via traditional methods...
soz for rambling...
I agree... and there is a lot for me to think about between what you and @beckdg have said.. (as a beside, quitters flu is physical withdrawal symptoms that are flu-like in nature, but is caused by the physical aspect of withdrawal and not actual illness)
I kept thinking I would have a response soon, but I have many things to mull over and consider so perhaps sometime in the future we will all revisit the topic.
I did want to thank both you and @beckdg for your well thought out responses though..
This is not what these folks are saying. They are saying nicotine is NOT addictive at all. BIG difference. Its misinformation.
To what degree is nicotine addictive? Depends on the individual. There is an interesting sort of denial going on here that I find disconcerting. With vaping and analogs, the two things for me that I need is throat hit and something to do with my hands. This is why things like gum, a patch, or even chewing tobacco / dip would not work for me.
I find it interesting that through the course of this thread, no scientific papers showing proper, large scale studies have been linked showing the argument that nicotine is not addictive at all. There have been links to web articles where information has not been sourced, but nothing based on the realm of science.
Addressing biological medical opinions versus psychology, I will tell you what I have been told by several professors as I work to get my degree. Psychology is a very new field of study. Consider that up until the late 1800s, mental disease was not even something that was considered or known about.
Second, the brain was (and is) very difficult to study. It is easy to watch a heart pump blood and study its behavior. Its extremely difficult to watch the brain work. Deciphering what exactly all the different electrical signals are that are passing through the brain are difficult to measure and determine what they are doing, why they are being sent, what message is being sent, etc. Finally, we have thousands of years of herbal medicine for which to build a foundation on. From there, we can create medication with even better molecular structure than what we find in nature. We can create more pure forms of medication, modify and enhance the molecular structure to make it more potent (take a much smaller amount than its natural form and make it much more resistant to the digestive process for example). Psychology is a new field.
I dont disagree, some of psychology is hocus pocus. However, I watched it turn my mother from a crazy loony tunes into a decent human being. It took some work. She had seizures as a result of one prescription. Today however, she is relatively normal. Ive seen psychology change people for the better. including my brother who has autism. It again took time to figure out what works for him.
Understand this, my brother, 200 years ago, would have been burned at the stake for talking to himself. Today, we understand that autism is a thing.
It is incredibly insulting to see people who have had no experience with mental illness or no professional experience with addiction get on a computer and speak to things they know nothing about. These are both things I am personally very familiar with.
Understand, medical science, medication, etc went through all the same growing pains that psychology is going through now. You just werent around to see it. We have established practices in place to make testing much more safe than it used to be.. Thats the reason you dont see the truly grotesque stuff that you might have seen in the medical field many hundreds of years ago.
There are no large scale studies specifically addressing the addictive potential of nicotine by itself. What we do have are studies concerning nicotine as treatment for things other than tobacco cessation, with observations that the participants were were not smokers did not develop dependency. The sources are there in the links provided by the way, you just have to scroll down to the source material.
Nicotine is a somewhat effective treatment for tobacco addiction, but the fact that it is not more effective on its own should tell you something.
Ah, not entirely accurate. There are multiple studies, both in humans and in animal models that establishes nicotine addiction is real, and withdrawal is a physiological as well as psychological in both people and animals. A Cliff Notes version:
The receptor for nicotine in the brain is made up of several units. When nicotine binds to these receptors, acetylcholine is produced which then stimulates the release of dopamine, which is a sorta happy neurotransmitter. Things like changes in receptors will reach differing results with nicotine addiction and withdrawal. The several units of the receptor are produced by genes which may or may not be "functional", so depending on your specific genetic make up you could be highly susceptible to nicotine addiction, or have no interest in it at all.
Withdrawal in both people and animals isn't just really wanting or craving for a smoke. There are observable signs of withdrawal, but more important is actual test data looking for something quantifiable. Things like increased heart rate, EEG abnormalities (funky looking brain activity) and even changes in neurohormonal activity. Not "how do you feel?" or just monitoring critter behavior, but things like heart rate, EEG changes, and other neural hormonal changes. Besides, mice can't tell you "did you forget something today? and where's my nicotine fix?". They also lack opposable thumbs, so they can't even use a Bic even if no one is watching.
So, what we know is thanks to what subunits we get in our DNA when we were conceived (no, I've never seen a fetus with a cigarette hanging from their mouth) we may have a low propensity, intermediate, or high propensity for nicotine reward and higher withdrawal symptoms. That is why some are more likely to end up hooked than others.
Oh, and getting little critters addicted to nicotine with similar withdrawal symptoms and measurements isn't all that hard, unless you start breeding them with knockout genes for some of those receptor subunits and low and behold, these mice won't try to bum a smoke off the lab techs.
Nicotine is an interesting drug and a nice model for exploring addiction pathway. It might not be all that tempting to get into the habit of smoking for those lucky enough to have the "no crave" subunit coded in their DNA. And because there are several subunits that count, depending how they were shuffled provides a mechanism to examine varying risks and levels of addiction across a broad population, including the critters.
Some light reading (at least they're the full articles) with a bit more detail than my poor explanation.
Reward, Addiction, Withdrawal to Nicotine
Nicotine Dependence and Genetic Variation in the Nicotinic Receptors
I'd wager(though I can't prove at the moment as researching each article will take a lot of time) that most, if not all, of the human studies that that literature review in the first link is based on were conducted on smokers for the dependent group.
It would have to be. Knowing the potential health risks associated with smoking would make unethical to take non-smokers, hand them a carton of cigarettes, and have them come back next week to what's up. So is it a self selected population, just like this forum is a self selected population who vape, mostly to stop smoking.
Which is why we have to rely on studies on nicotine that focus on things other than addiction, like treatment for tourette's, and the observation that the non-smoker's in these studies did not develop dependence on nicotine. Makes for less than ideal sample sizes, but it's what we have.
1. I dont need to say anything more. No large scale studies, ie. not enough research. If only a very small number of people did not develop a dependency, that must mean its not addictive whatsoever... Umm...
2. I never suggested nicotine didnt have beneficial health effects. In fact, I have been one of the few who have said the exact opposite. The issue is, much like chocolate, caffeine, or any other substance, how much is too much? When does the harm outweigh the health effects? It has been suggested that 2 cigarettes a day has health benefits. This is equal to 2 ml of nicotine a day (there is approximately 12 ml of nicotine in a traditional cigarette, of which, the body absorbs only 1 ml of said nicotine). We do not yet know how much nicotine is absorbed by the body when it is consumed via a vaporizer, only that the body absorbs a significantly higher amount of nicotine than that of traditional cigarettes. Either way, it is safe to say that smokers and users of electronic vaporizers have a significantly higher level of nicotine than what is considered the amount suggested for its health benefits in their blood stream.
3. It doesnt tell me anything. While the gum, patches, and pills may not have a high success rate, they have worked for a small number of people. Why is that? Perhaps it is nothing more than a mental mind game, much like a placebo. Perhaps these tools really did help people get off a physical dependency. Who knows? Each individual is different.
We still dont understand how the brain works. "This medication is believed to work by x, y and z" ads plague the tv and radio these days.
To get on a forum and tell people definitively that nicotine is not addictive, plain and simple, the facts are in, shut up slave, the science is there, its over, there is no more debate, it is proven, that is dishonest, immoral, and unethical.
If you want to talk about your own experience with nicotine, thats completely fair. If you want to link to peer reviewed studies with verifiable source data where the methodology, data, and funding can be verified, that is also a good thing. The methodology and data should also be able to be duplicated and verified. However, the studies that have been done are extremely limited in scope. The funding, which is the most overlooked aspect of many studies must be looked at.
This is not science. Much of what we as a society see as science is not. We see a web article that supports our preconceived viewpoint and say "See, this supports what Ive been saying!" We read a wikipedia article and suddenly, we are experts on the subject.
The most accurate thing you can say right now is this:
We do not yet know concretely if nicotine is an addictive substance. We can pretty safely say that nicotine in a vaporizer is less addictive than nicotine found in a traditional cigarette. To what degree it is less addictive, we do not definitively know. What we can say is, xrays done on smokers lungs versus those who use vaporizers show that those who use vaporizers have much cleaner looking lungs which leads to higher oxygen levels in the blood than smokers (which has been studied and proven). We know that people feel better when they get off cigarettes. Many are able to do more physically before getting winded. Many who vape taste and smell things better than smokers. Many who vape sleep better than smokers. Vaporizers do not cause the morning pearls (ie. hacking up phlegm in the morning). There is significantly less risk to burning oneself from the lighting or cherry flicking (especially while driving) which, it also worth mentioning, no risk of rear ending someone while trying to light a cigarette while driving. Your car, home, and clothing will no longer smell like an ash tray. Your significant other will hug and kiss you more often because you wont smell like an ash tray. You'll no longer have to put up with the dirty looks from people while you have a cigarette, often times while hiding around the corner because of the public shaming and ridicule associated with smoking.
Many of these things may seem small. Many are small. Add a whole bunch of small benefits together and what do you get? One huge reason to stop smoking!!
That is how you tell the story honestly and ethically. We dont need to sell unproven data. This doesnt mean it wont it up being true in the end, it just means right now, it isnt proven. We arent doing anyone any favours stating things we dont know to be true.
Plenty of other reasons to quit smoking, nicotine addiction is the least of anyones worries.
*drops microphone*
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