Thread

People hooked on vapes try a new way to quit: cigarettes

248 points · 335 comments · alephnerd

sph · 1790065032 · focus · HN ↗
For the past 3 years I have replaced my ADHD stimulant medication with nicotine patches and they’ve been great, cheap, and legal in the country I live in now.
Recently I got the urge to try vaping again, bought all the paraphernalia and started vaping like a chimney 24/7. Got light nicotine poisoning as well. After two days, I caught myself compulsively reaching for the vape.
So I threw everything away and I’m back to patches. Took me a week to forget the compulsive hand-to-mouth urge. I now believe intradermal nicotine is the superior method of administration. At least with cigarettes the smoke is such an intense irritant you self-regulate pretty quickly compared to a cupcake flavoured vape you can just suck on all day long.
1. cucumber3732842 · 1790083559 · focus · HN ↗
  >For the past 3 years I have replaced my ADHD stimulant medication with nicotine patches
  My first thought was "That's a no brainer why didn't I think of that".
  Then I remembered that I grew up during peak anti-smoking and so they made nicotine out to be some sort of borderline meth boogeyman rather than just extra addictive extra effective caffeine that comes in bad for your health form factors and that all that propaganda got sent straight to long term memory and I was indoctrinated by it at such a young age it didn't even occur to me to think outside the box like that.
  Nicotine patches are expensive for what they are but they're basically free compared to meds.
  1. huurtehoog · 1790116147 · focus · HN ↗
    > rather than just extra addictive extra effective caffeine
    That is a severe understatement. Nicotine is consistently ranked as one of the most addictive drugs, near cocaine and heroin.
    Only about 6% nicotine users manage to quit every year.
    <a href="https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-nicotine-e-cigarettes/nicotine-addictive" rel="nofollow">https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-n...
    simoncion · 1790123817 · focus · HN ↗
    You:
    Only about 6% nicotine users manage to quit every year.
    Your linked article:
    Yet, only about 6 percent of smokers are able to quit in a given year.
    Other than when it talks about prescription smoking cessation tools, the article does not mention anything other than tobacco smokers. The last paragraph of the article actually discusses the observation that the ritual of smoking often provides substantial behavioral reinforcement to the smoker who is attempting to quit smoking.
    I also note that I was able to quit nicotine cold-turkey after smoking cigarettes for two years. I've never been able to quit caffeine... and -although it is notably shorter in duration- caffeine withdrawal is WAY worse than nicotine withdrawal.
    huurtehoog · 1790158235 · focus · HN ↗
    Thank you for checking the source. Celebrating that is more important than me being right so kudos.
    If we're going by anecdote I know way more people who quit caffeine than nicotine.
    simoncion · 1790232971 · focus · HN ↗
    > If we're going by anecdote I know...
    Given how sloppy you were with the article you implicitly claimed to have read, I have zero confidence in the accuracy of your anecdotes.
    > Thank you for checking the source.
    Respectfully, why the hell didn't you check it? It's only a couple of pages long. Did you do something dreadfully silly like employ some LLM to "assist" you with your conversation?
    astura · 1790158081 · focus · HN ↗
    It might be addicting, but it's still overcomable, since 2002 there's more former smokers in the US than active smokers. 66% of all Americans who have ever smoked have successfully quit.

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