See the explanation about Figure 5B under the section titled "Intracranial self-stimulation and nicotine self-administration", here:
Historical and Current Perspective on Tobacco use and Nicotine Addiction
Note: There’s a lot of data here. I’m reading a link and commenting on it as I go, this may come out a little fractured for that reason.
This article seems to talk about the fact that nicotine was apparently central to the entire history of addiction sciences development. Seeing references to self administration animal studies I’ve heard of being used as a metric.
The “inverted U” concept is described.
From what I gathered the “U” describes the concept that below a certain blood level nicotine (apparently unprotonated nicotine) is not effective, and above it the unpleasant effects of nicotine are enough to reduce addiction potential a lot. I would equate this higher level drop off with being “nic sick”
This one seems to be behind a paywall, at least for me, so I personally can’t read it. Might not be if I was using a British IP address. Have to check that one later.
More recent findings are also in line with this; see the snippet above "Nicotine disrupts safety learning by enhancing fear associated with a safety cue via the dorsal hippocampus", here:
Nicotine as a modulator of behavior: Beyond the inverted U | Request PDF
Another pay wall. The pdf request is ResearchGate, which is basically a way of begging or buying a copy of the research at the option of the researcher. I personally have had little success with it personally as I have basically zero status in academia. I requested it but hold out little personal hope.
UPDATE: it seems the “citizen” option as well as the “student” option. At least from the iPhone version anyway, have been removed along with my researchgate account. If you have a verified job in the profession you are allowed to “apply” but are still not necessarily allowed to even make the request. ResearchGate has been made useless to the public.
Further, Public Health England (PHE) states that the addictiveness of nicotine depends on the delivery system; see "4. Nicotine", here:
Evidence review of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products 2018: executive summary
Not behind a paywall! Good find! The report itself is about the monitoring of smoking statistics in the UK, but part 4 and 4.1 appear to be summaries of research that IS behind paywalls or not available on the internet at all. One point removed, and we have to rely on the writer’s foreshortened opinion of the research they were able to see, but still much better than nothing.
Of particular note is reference to a study saying that nicotine does NOT itself affect fetus development in humans. That’s a study I’d love to see myself.
It also states that nicotine delivery methods seem to affect the behavior of the inverted U, which makes sense, as they affect the ability of delivery to remain in the “sweet spot” at the top of the inverted U, above minimum effective dose, and below “overdose” levels where addictive behavior drops again. I’m misliking the term “inverted U”. It’s just a weird way of saying “sharp hump”.
To further summarize a summarization, 4.1 seems to me to say “we don’t know much about this stuff. E-cigarette development is moving faster than monitoring research on it can keep up”. This seems to explain at least partially US FDA actions to slow the development of e-cigarettes. They may want to do it simply to slow movement to the point that it can be monitored.
AFAIK with the exception of e-liquid that contains Whole Tobacco Alkaloid (WTA), Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) and tobacco alkaloids are not found in e-liquid. Even if you vape on an RDA with big clouds, with the type of everyday normal e-juice that contains only a moderate (at or below 5mg/ml) concentration of freebase nicotine, I highly doubt that you can easily get addicted to nicotine.
that would depend on your ability to stay within the confines of the “inverted U” dose wise according to the research seen. Something that e-cigarette makers are apparently constantly striving to achieve. Since commercial liquid only seems to come in 6mg and 3mg. That would mean only at the very lowest available concentration for DL.
Countless vapers who successfully stopped smoking by vaping have also confirmed that they managed, pretty much spontaneously comfortably in fact, to reduce the nicotine strength of their e-liquid. (It took me about 12 weeks to go from 4.5mg-5mg down to 3mg, and, I never was a dual user.)
that’s fairly quick from what I’ve seen, but very much in line. My praising of various stories on ECF implies the effect is very common, though not universal (I would be an exception for example) and takes place at a variable rate of between several months and several years.
That plus the fact I can't seem to find anyone who became addicted to nicotine by using nicotine patches.
That would require a non smoker to spontaneously start applying nicotine patches. Something I can’t see anyone doing outside of a research study. There probably have been several of those though. They would have been required from patch makers by the FDA to allow the approval of patches in the first place. The question of blood level comes up then. Do patches maintain nicotine blood level within the addiction “sweet spot” above minimum effective dose, and below “overdose” level? I have no data. The data has no doubt been gathered though. More hidden science.
The impression I am getting from this is that Nicotine research seems to have been more or less outside the public domain since the 60’s. There is another level of research though comprising basically all the even vaguely modern stuff which includes both patches and protonated nicotine, which is almost totally private domain only and even so privileged that even governments that monitor such stuff are not allowed to see it but are forced to copy the already done research as best they might at what pace they can manage. Some isolated pieces of this private domain research are occasionally released if and only if it is in the interests of the corporation that did the research to do so. This research may further have been “cooked” by first doing the actual research, then redoing a given experiment in a method designed to produce desired results and then releasing that instead.
Does this research show nicotine is not addictive? Sort of. You need to be either below or above the “sweet spot” or the top of the “inverted U” or to add a new descriptor of the same thing “within the effective dose range” where it is either ineffective or it’s effects are so unpleasant that basic body defenses overwhelm the addictive nature. A point e-cigarette makers are getting better and better at avoiding.
