Vaping nicotine as a never-smoker, why not?
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I think this is the crux of the differences in thinking. The behavior looks one way, but that (IMO) should not be called addiction (at least not automatically). I will leave the house in the middle of the night just to go get a bottle of soda water from the store (if my cartridge on my Sodastream got empty at an inopportune time). My wife just laughs because I just have to have soda water on hand at all times! Now, can I stop drinking it? Probably, but I really don't want to. And just becasue I don't want to does not mean I have a disease. I don't think I have gone one day in the past two years or so without drinking soda water (I drink about 2 liters a day on average). I have gone several days without vaping, drinking alcohol, coffee or sex (I've even gone whole days without food), but no way will I entertain not having my fizz!
I do the same bluecat. To the best of my knowledge using glass containers with good caps and minimal air space we'll lose a percent or two of the nic content per year. I have no idea how long the mix will remain viable to vape, but 10 years has been mentioned as a reasonable timeframe and maybe longer.
Kurt, our resident chemist did a few good posts about it as well as Rolygate. If I find links later I'll post them.
Here, Kurt says 5.5 years and going strong.... Nicotine Comparisons | Page 120 | E-Cigarette Forum
There are two possibilities here...
1) What you experienced is not what he is calling a craving
2) What we generally construe to be mental vs physical may not be correct, at least in mosspa's context.
He's a smart guy and I think we are lucky to have him here, and can learn from him. But we need to keep an open mind.
You seem to post your bunk science to justify your own personal nic use. Why do you need to rationalize your nic use here? I just don't get it. I am a vapor. I am a former 40 year analog user. I use nicotine. I don't need to rationalize to myself or anyone here whether it is okay or not and get my hackles up when someone disagrees with bogus information I post even though I believe it to justify my own personal behavior. Give it a rest.
Such a joke. Yea just stop vaping and all nic use. Resign your membership to ECF and give it all a rest since you aren't addicted.
You forgot to add that you can quit anytime and need something to fiddle with.Do you seriously think this all makes a point? Before I change my settings to make this thread not look so, ahem, repetitive, I just want to respond one last time.
What type of little box does your reasoning live in where anything that we engage in daily, that is not absolutely critical to survival, must be due to addiction? I heard sex is "addictive," and since I tend to have a good deal of it, I guess that means I am...what? Addicted to sex? By your logic of 1+1=3, I must be. All this time I thought I just liked sex.
I really should not be dignifying your comments with a response, but it boggles my mind that you think you can insinuate that people have an addiction when you know nothing real of whom you are talking to. Okay. So here we go, here is something real: I DIY my own liquid and order liquid in 0 mg/mL for those times when I am not in the mood for nicotine. But I do too use nicotine for those times when I want some. This came in the mail for me on Friday. I would also show you my DIY that is zero nic, but I am sure you wouldn't believe it was real. You'd probably just say I was in denial about what was really behind that self-made label of zero mg/mL.
Okay. Alakazam alakazoo. 3, 2, 1. Poof.
Peer review conclusion is mindless speculation as well. Posting bunk science is mindless speculation.
Edited for those having a hard time following along.
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And you can quit anytime...then quit and you don't have to log onto these ridiculous threads anymore.
Dissociated analogies prove nothing other than there are no valid argument points left.
Hello Professor, thank you for joining us, I really appreciate your contribution to this discussion.
I have also been reading through your thread and 45mg sounds really strong, according to what I have read on most places where they recommend 36mg at most, for people going over from >2 packs of cigarettes a day.
Granted though, it does make sense, approaching vaping as a drug delivery system rather than an activity, where the main purpose is getting a dose of nicotine delivered in the most efficient and quickest way possible, in contrast to smokers which casually go about it, vaping for hours on end.
With that being said I keep hearing about "throat hit", a burning sensation produced in the throat caused by irritation, that smokers/vapers get pleasure from. Apparently this gets more intense as the nicotine concentration increases. Though having never experienced it, I can't really know what it's like, wouldn't 45mg/ml be cause an overly harsh/intense "throat hit"?
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Thank you, fascinating read. Your hypothesis strongly resonates with part of an essay I have read describing the implications of nicotine in habit formation.
Here is the relevant part:
HABIT-FORMATION
Besides the nootropic effects, nicotine can be used as an relatively precise self-reward - faster acting than other stimulants like caffeine and modafinil, but with a combination of weak addictiveness and habit formation which is seems to be neural23and epigenetic24 and affecting sensitivity of the reward system. This use of nicotine to strengthen habits is in accord with at least some research into nicotine; from “Nicotine Creates Stronger Memories, Cues To Drug Use”, Science Daily, describing“Dopamine enables in vivo synaptic plasticity associated with the addictive drug nicotine” (Tang & Dani 2009; see also Davis & Gould 2008 and Levine et al 2011):
LessWrong user Wedrifid, has a fascinating series of comments:
I have had success working around ‘Ugh’ reactions to various activities. I took the direct approach. I (intermittently) use nicotine lozenges as a stimulant while exercising. Apart from boosting physical performance and motivation it also happens to be the most potent substance I am aware of for increasing habit formation in the brain…
And I do use nicotine for studying at times (usually patches that I have cut into the desired dose). Partly for learning mental habits and partly for enhanced focus and motivation without the agitation that comes (with methamphetamine (at least, for me)). Again, I don’t swear by it but it works…25
I have never smoked a cigarette. Nor have I ever had a remote tendency towards addiction to any substance. That is even one of the reasons I gave when describing why this is an effective technique for me personally. I am more at risk of becoming addicted to discussing substances on the Internet than the substances themselves….
I should note that the role nicotine lozenges are taking here is not primarily as a training reward, like giving the rat electronically stimulated orgasms when it presses the lever. Nicotine isn’t particularly strong in that role compared to alternatives (such as abusing Ritalin), at least when it is not administered by a massive hit straight into the brain via the lungs. No, the particular potency of nicotine is that it potentates the formation of habits for activities undertaken while under the influence by means more fundamental than a ‘mere’ stimulus-reward mechanism. Habits that are found to be harder to extinct than an impulse to take a drug. This is what makes smoking so notoriously hard to quit even with patches and makes the use of fake cigarettes to suck on useful.26Romeo Stevens:
Dose-wise:
“Our brains normally make these associations between things that support our existence and environmental cues so that we conduct behaviors leading to successful lives. The brain sends a reward signal when we act in a way that contributes to our well being,” said Dr. John A. Dani, professor of neuroscience at BCM and co-author of the study. “However, nicotine commandeers this subconscious learning process in the brain so we begin to behave as though smoking is a positive action.” Dani said that environmental events linked with smoking can become cues that prompt the smoking urge. Those cues could include alcohol, a meal with friends, or even the drive home from work. To understand why these associations are so strong, Dani and Dr. Jianrong Tang, instructor of neuroscience at BCM and co-author of the report, decided to record brain activity of mice as they were exposed to nicotine, the addictive component of tobacco.
…“The brain activity change was just amazing,” Dani said. “Compared to injections of saline, nicotine strengthened neuronal connections-sometimes up to 200 percent. This strengthening of connections underlies new memory formation.”…“We found that nicotine could strengthen neuronal synaptic connections only when the so called reward centers sent a dopamine signal. That was a critical process in creating the memory associations even with bad behavior like smoking.”
…“The brain activity change was just amazing,” Dani said. “Compared to injections of saline, nicotine strengthened neuronal connections-sometimes up to 200 percent. This strengthening of connections underlies new memory formation.”…“We found that nicotine could strengthen neuronal synaptic connections only when the so called reward centers sent a dopamine signal. That was a critical process in creating the memory associations even with bad behavior like smoking.”
I have had success working around ‘Ugh’ reactions to various activities. I took the direct approach. I (intermittently) use nicotine lozenges as a stimulant while exercising. Apart from boosting physical performance and motivation it also happens to be the most potent substance I am aware of for increasing habit formation in the brain…
And I do use nicotine for studying at times (usually patches that I have cut into the desired dose). Partly for learning mental habits and partly for enhanced focus and motivation without the agitation that comes (with methamphetamine (at least, for me)). Again, I don’t swear by it but it works…25
I have never smoked a cigarette. Nor have I ever had a remote tendency towards addiction to any substance. That is even one of the reasons I gave when describing why this is an effective technique for me personally. I am more at risk of becoming addicted to discussing substances on the Internet than the substances themselves….
I should note that the role nicotine lozenges are taking here is not primarily as a training reward, like giving the rat electronically stimulated orgasms when it presses the lever. Nicotine isn’t particularly strong in that role compared to alternatives (such as abusing Ritalin), at least when it is not administered by a massive hit straight into the brain via the lungs. No, the particular potency of nicotine is that it potentates the formation of habits for activities undertaken while under the influence by means more fundamental than a ‘mere’ stimulus-reward mechanism. Habits that are found to be harder to extinct than an impulse to take a drug. This is what makes smoking so notoriously hard to quit even with patches and makes the use of fake cigarettes to suck on useful.26
E-cigarettes are a really cheap nicotine delivery system. Like pennies per cigarette equivalent cheap if you mix juice yourself. I don’t see how taking advantage of the effects of nicotine is any worse than caffeine. I started vaping while I study and have seen huge productivity improvements from the reduction in ugh fields.
My lozenges (when I had them) were 4mg… which I would consider almost too much. About equivalent to a full double-dose can of energy drink. If I use nicotine as a stimulant now I tend to go with about 4mg of 16 hour patch. (That is, I cut the 24mg 16 hour patches into small pieces).
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This is part of a much more in-depth essay on Nicotine by independent researcher Gwern, which at the risk of repeating myself, I highly recommend everyone with an intellectual interest in Nicotine to read.
The highest I've ever vaped is 40 mg/mL. It's definitely got a wallop of a hit, but to me it's only pleasurable if vaping out of something like an ol' shool 510 dripping atomizer or even a carotomizer. Once it goes into tanks and more 'modern' atomizers, for me it starts to get some serious scratching/burning and not necessarily TH. Well, at least not the TH we used to refer to when the term TH first started popping up.
Edit: I think the TH phenomenon has more to do with nic and also types of vape styles. So if vaping with a lung-hit, it's going to be a lot different than a mouth-to-lung and one that I would not recommend to many people if we're talking about high nic.
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And you are the other one here telling us you are a mindless ideologue and we should not try to reason with you.
nicotine in and of itself has been considered of little or no concern
in the dosages in cigarettes since the 1964 Surgeon Generals report
on smoking.
regards
mike
in the dosages in cigarettes since the 1964 Surgeon Generals report
on smoking.
regards
mike
I agree for the most part. I look at vaping as a fairly benign vice that could be used to help with a whole bunch of things from quitting smoking, cutting down on cigs, being able to get nic fix where smoking is not allowed, weight loss (although not proven to help with this I think it does), and simply stresses of every day life. I had cut nicotine out completely but then after reading about the pluses added it back in a moderate amount. It is probably pointed out but I will say it anyway. I am not saying that I am overly concerned about this but I don't think it is the nicotine that those opposed to non-smokers vaping are warning others about. I believe it is the flavoring and long term effects of them being unknown at this point.
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