As someone who is not now, and never was addicted to nicotine, I have a different perspective.
You don't vape nicotine, regularly?
With text, my tone may not be coming across. I am surprised by this assertion, but simply don't know and am curious if you are a vaper. It is plausible to me to be a vaper, but not be an addict. Though implausible to vape nicotine regularly (or heavily) and not be an addict.
I am quite certain that for many people SMOKING is the addiction, and nicotine just happens to be in there.
I would say smoking (like vaping) is a habit. Nicotine, the drug, is where the addiction comes in.
But if it was about the nicotine, the patches and the gum would work.
But they don't work.
How are you using "work" in the above statements. I believe they do have some success ratio around them in terms of (some) people feeling little to no cravings for tobacco smoke while using them. I have personally met 2 people who chewed the gum. Both did it for well past 6 months and no issue with their choice to do so.
I have not done either, but not cause I don't think they would work. I just prefer to go cold turkey when desire for nicotine is no longer there (and I'm committed to overcoming the addiction).
If you were off nicotine for eight years, why would you still dream about smoking?
Unless maybe it was smoking you really missed, and not the nicotine?
I missed the habit, the rituals, the cool factor, while also being quite content over the pros that come from being free of the habit / addiction. For sure the nicotine had left my body after sometime, early on I reckon. During my waking moments, by around 9 months into the first year, the cravings were down to occurring in the neighborhood of once a year, maybe less.
I'm not sure I can tell you, for sure, why I dream about anything I dream about. I do think dreaming, at a fundamental level, is about self deception, but also about desires working themselves out at an emotional level when the mind is at rest (and more willing to not have other agendas interfere).
I think for many people it is simply the act of smoking that is missing.
For cold turkey people (and perhaps gum/patch users), I tend to agree. For vapers, I think it is flavor that is missed. But as vaping covers that (in spades), it is somewhat illogical until the vaper realizes / acknowledges that smoking flavor isn't being captured through vaping.
I think that in general the entire world overestimates the role of nicotine in smoking...
And vastly underestimates everything else about smoking.
Can't say I go along with this. Nicotine is that addictive that it is plausibly on equal footing with the habit / rituals with smoking. IMO, it is actually greater, and I believe vaping somewhat proves that out. Vapers generally have not much of an issue stopping smoking, but imagine if a vaper had to go cold turkey (from nicotine) tomorrow? I say without any commitment to the desire for overcoming the addiction, they would not last very long. Once that first real craving hit, they wouldn't reason that a smoke would be great right about now, but instead reason that vaping, perhaps at lower level of nic, would surely help in this moment.
Don't get me wrong though, because I do believe there are many people that are very much addicted to nicotine.
But I am convinced that the actual NEED for nicotine is not as universal as the world likes to think it is.
I am interested in hearing more from your perspective regarding need / addiction to nicotine. I truly am. I think of nicotine as among the most addictive substances on the planet. And yet that need can be overcome, and so logic would say there is something within us that is more powerful than that need / addiction.
tempting me. I had to have it one more time then one more time again. I just couldn't get far enough away from sex to quit I tryed many quit programs none of them worked for long, I had a monkey on my back it was just to easy to get.
