I wrote a thing on vaping.com which you may like to read: Dr Michael Mosley - Still not hooked! - vaping.com
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Read this! Dr Michael Mosley. Not hooked!
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A very interesting article, can only hope more people are willing to provide honesty driven and accurate information.
When I put the analog cigarettes down in favor of vaping, interestingly enough, I found I was addicted.
Addicted to a mysterious chemical in which I was always told was nicotine.
However I soon found out that considering I had nicotine going in to my body, through ecigarette liquid, yet still had a severe craving for that 'something'. That something is what at that time and continues to strike a bit of mental fear in me. What in the blazes was I putting in my body!?
After a short time, while continuing to use the ecigarette, maybe one month give or take a few extra weeks, I no longer had the drastic 'I must have a cigarette' feeling, yet this craving continued sporadically for many months. Until I completely forgot about it.
The question here, again, is what is being put into the 'tobacco' slurry, which is addicting enough to keep an analog cigarette user entranced. Find this chemical, and we find the real death dealer.
While I find this interesting, just because Dr. Mosley didn't get "Addicted" to the nicotine doesn't prove that nicotine isn't addicting to those of us that are addicted to nicotine. Look at all the kids who tried smoking but never got hooked...it's because they don't have addictive personalities or whatever smokers have in their DNA that gets them hooked.
We all have nicotine receptors in our brain, some maybe more sensitive than others but not sure if anyone has studied or researched that yet.
I, for one, would prefer if we stopped calling ourselves "nicotine addicts," and I certainly don't agree that I suffer from a genetic personality flaw that kept me smoking. There are enough people calling smokers derogatory names without us vapers joining in the chorus.
HERE is an excellent 3-part article by Carl Phillips on the topic of "addiction," which he says has no clearly established scientific or medical definition.
And please don't be so quick to believe that nicotine alone is addictive. There is mounting scientific evidence that nicotine is no more addictive than caffeine. If it's so addictive, where are all the nicotine gum addicts, nicotine patch addicts, nicotine lozenge addicts?
If nicotine were as addictive as some claim, then vapers would be using higher and higher concentrations of it in their e-liquid. In actual fact, the opposite is typically the case. I went, in stages, from 36mg/ml to 3 mg. This is the way it typically works with a majority of vapers and many are at 0.0mg.
There have been numerous studies involving lab animals trying to get them to show a dependence response to nicotine, similar to the response to ......., etc. Researchers have found that nicotine doesn't produce that kind of response. The animals are "meh" when it comes to nicotine.
Drugs such as ......., barbiturates, and ...... are considered addictive (a somewhat better term would be "dependence inducing") based on their ability to intoxicate, cause social damage, and produce dramatic physical withdrawal syndromes. The nicotine in e-cigarettes has none of those effects.
With these other substances, in the initial stages of use more and more of the product is required to produce the same effect, i.e., “tolerance”; it is “reinforcing,” meaning that it is sufficiently rewarding to spur self-administration; and abrupt cessation can lead to powerful craving and a recognizable withdrawal syndrome. This doesn't seem to be the case with nicotine when it's not paired with the other substances in tobacco.
Tobacco companies learned long ago that the introduction of certain chemicals enhanced the psychological and physical effects of smoking. There are roughly 600 additives approved for use in cigarettes, including a number of pyrazines which have effects on the human body and brain which are still erroneously attributed to nicotine. It's now been shown that monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) greatly enhance the dependence-creating properties of nicotine. These are present in cigarettes but not in the extracted nicotine used in patches, gum and e-cigarettes. Additionally, a number of tobacco alkaloids such as anatabine, cotinine myosmine, acetalehyde and nitric oxide work in similar fashion.
E-cigarettes have very little appeal to non-smokers because their brains aren't conditioned to want, need or use nicotine, so it has little significant effect on them.
ETA: This forum doesn't allow references to certain controlled narcotics. Thus the "......."
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I agree, nicotine does not seem to be a more is better thing or all of us would not be reducing our Nic level which is very much the norm. Longer you vape less Nic required.
There is some additive in cigarettes that cause the craving. It is worse now than it was back in the earlier days when I smoked. I did not have the cravings I did in later years of smoking. It was tough getting off those darn cigarettes!
There is some additive in cigarettes that cause the craving. It is worse now than it was back in the earlier days when I smoked. I did not have the cravings I did in later years of smoking. It was tough getting off those darn cigarettes!
I had a similar experience. There is definitely something else in the smokes to keep you hooked - took me a couple months to get past it. But then I tried a smoke after being free for almost 6 months and it made me feel ill.
I definitely agree with what is being said about the additives causing more of an addiction than just nicotine. Also there is a small amount of minor alkaloids in tobacco that can help cause the cravings that nic alone won't. When nicotine liquid is made the minor alkaloids are not in the final product. That's why some people like myself ended up turning to snus and WTA liquid to help curb the cravings.
This is one of the reasons why e-cigarettes and, for that matter, conventional cigarettes are different from other dependence-inducing substances. And, unlike smokers, alcoholics often lose their jobs, their families and friends, and end up on the street. Lumping smokers and vapers in with alcoholics and drug addicts is unfair and misleading.
Is there someplace where we can watch the show? Or has it not been broadcast yet?
Bear with me as I would just like to touch on a few topics in this post.
"And please don't be so quick to believe that nicotine alone is addictive. There is mounting scientific evidence that nicotine is no more addictive than caffeine."
Actually, caffeine withdrawal in a heavy coffee drinker is well known and established. Based on personal experiencing, it's also quite unpleasant, with real physical symptoms (I'm down to 2 to 3 cups a day, way better than I used to be)
"If it's so addictive, where are all the nicotine gum addicts, nicotine patch addicts, nicotine lozenge addicts?"
Well, I was a gum addict/nasal spray addict, and every time I tried to stop using them, I ended up back on cigs. Of course, there were other factors that made cigarettes more appealing, primarily so I would not have to address the fact I couldn't get off the damn things.
"There have been numerous studies involving lab animals trying to get them to show a dependence response to nicotine, similar to the response to ......., etc. Researchers have found that nicotine doesn't produce that kind of response. The animals are "meh" when it comes to nicotine."
There have been numerous studies published in medical journals documenting the effects and physical withdrawal syndrome in both rats and mice. Here's a link to a nice review paper that contains information on nicotine dependence models in both human and mouse models published in the N.Y. Academy of Science in 2014, which has about 300 citations to articles demonstrating this. Here's a link Mouse models for studying genetic influences on factors determining smoking cessation success in humans
I am thrilled that vaping has finally given me a way to stop smoking cigarettes after all this time in a manner that is more satisfying than gum/patches/nasal spray, probably because it best mimics the actions of smoking, including draw and "smoke", than the other methods of delivery. I think there is a solid basis to recognize that e cigs and vaping provide smokers with a better and seemingly more effective method to stop using cigarettes. But I believe it is unproductive to not recognize the varying addicting effects nicotine can have.
For example there are people who can "social" smoke, have occasional cigarettes in what used to be a social setting (not much social anymore about standing outside the bar/restaurant to have a cig) and be quite comfortable going days or weeks without a cigarette. Other people can have a cigarette and find themselves becoming a "regular" smoker in a short period of time (see the twin studies for a human model as mentioned in the article above). Using one person's experience with vaping does not establish lack of risk for nicotine addiction.
I don't want to see vaping products, or even crappy cig-a-likes that have allowed lots of folks, including me, to stop inhaling burning tobacco removed from the market. For that matter, I am strongly in agreement with the recent Royal Society of Medicine position paper to accept vaping and cig-a-likes as a means to help people stop smoking and reduce the medical consequences and burden of cigarette use. But, IMO, failure to recognize the potential for nicotine dependence in an individual isn't the best approach to improve the acceptance of vaping.
Not much to add, except I wholeheartedly agree with the comments so far. Took many months of vaping before the desire to light up a cigarette passed. Now, the smell of a lit cigarette makes me ill.
I had that "still wanting something" (specifically a calming feeling) when I woke up for several weeks that vaping didn't give. I tried WTA but that didn't cut it for me. I did some Googlefu back then and thought it most likely the MAOI's based on what I found so I bucked up and it eventually went away. I still can't drop below 16 to 18 mg/ml tootlepuffing (I've tried numerous times) or I get the jitters (different feeling than missing the calming) returning so there is some mild withdrawal from nicotine for me. I do feel it would be much easier to forgo vaping nicotine than smoking if I felt inclined to do so, but I don't.
"Nicotine, the substance most implicated in tobacco addiction, has been shown to have "relatively weak" addictive properties when administered alone.[32] The addictive potential increases dramatically after co-administration of an MAOI, which specifically causes sensitization of the locomotor response in rats, a measure of addictive potential.[33][34] This may be reflected in the difficulty of smoking cessation, as tobacco contains naturally-occurring MAOI compounds in addition to the nicotine.[35][36][37]"
"Antidepressants including MAOIs have some dependence-producing effects, the most notable one being a withdrawal syndrome, which may be severe especially if MAOIs are discontinued abruptly or overly rapidly."
Monoamine oxidase inhibitor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I see it the other way around, that the ones that can smoke and quit without any effect are the genetically flawed. There are by far fewer that have whatever brain chemistry allows that can do that. I personally only know one person that can smoke or not for protected lengths at a time and it is just baffling to me.
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