Is nicotine really just like caffeine?
Addiction Economy Thought for Today - Is nicotine really just like caffeine?
My thought for the day yesterday was a warning that the idea of the cig companies was to have vapes become just an 'acceptable' mainstream addiction like booze and gambling. A bit of fun on a night out and just a little bit of death, but lots less than the mass death from cigs.
I was going to use coffee as an example, but thought surely no-one would really compare nicotine to caffeine given that long term smokers feel so addicted to the nicotine in cigarettes that 50% of them feel they can't quit right up until it kills them. But look, they do! Here, in Rethinking Nicotine by ex ASH director Clive Bates interviewed in a magazine promoting nicotine pouches.
There is one fascinating aspect about nicotine which comes out of this. But first you need to know is he is a passionate advocate of Tobacco Harm Reduction or THR - the idea that weaning people off cigs through the use of lower nicotine products is a good thing. This has become a bizarre culture wars thing, with twitter on fire with aggrieved people on both sides and conspiracy theories about the WHO (who are not massively keen). He is at the heart of it and the guy I saw saying the WHO and health professionals were "like the tobacco companies at their worst in the 70's" because of their denial about the benefits of vapes. (Some of the more off-piste assertions in the article are rooted in that.)
https://lnkd.in/eXGTTmqP
He is saying that nicotine is just like caffeine - a little bit addictive, quite pleasant, but pretty harmless. Though he also says "the desire to use nicotine is much more resilient and robust than any way of taking it", ie people like it because it's addictive and they can't get enough of it in whatever form.
The fascinating thing I can't get my head around is that he might be right. There is lots of science saying nicotine is only mildly addictive, and the withdrawal symptoms not really terrible. And yet so many of us will die from the effects of the tar in the cigarettes rather than give up the nicotine.
John C. Dicey from Allan Carr's EasyWay talks about 'the little monster (nicotine or whatever) and 'the big monster' (the stuff going on in our heads which insists we need it). They are different and the big monster is what really keeps us addicted, not the little monster. Their programmes are incredibly successful because they help us with the big monster and we can then deal with the little monster more easily. (I haven't talked to him for this I may have it wrong!)
Whoa. What is that all about? Is the addiction to nicotine in our heads? Are we dying from an expectation effect?
This is such a bizarre thought, but keeps recurring in our research. Perhaps I am missing something blindingly obvious. Will ponder!