Anyone have any notion of the size of the IQ boost suggested by the link to a paywalled paper?
FWIW my biggest intelligence boosts are as follows: sleep, exercise, proper diet, no depression.
Nicotine as a useful stimulant
121–130 of 138 posts
Re: Nicotine as a useful stimulant
#122"Effects of nicotine on perceptual speed" [1] is behind a paywall, and I can't tell from the abstract whether the results also apply to non-smokers. However, the abstract of another of the articles, "Effects of Cigarette Smoking on Performance in a Simulated Driving Task" [2] states that the effect was only measured on minimally abstinent smokers. Are any of the other studies measuring the beneficial effects of nicot…
I found quitting smoking very easy. I felt weird for the first day or two and then I just wasn't a smoker. I thought it would be hard based on what everyone told me, but it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.
Re: Nicotine as a useful stimulant
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Its possible I've missed something? I don't have time to read all the papers you cite, but from titles/abstracts they all appear to be talking about the effects of MAOIs. Well, yes, what exactly else would you expect papers to be about when someone claims that nicotine+MAOIs is different from just nicotine...? Presumably the papers are going to have titles like "Monoamine Oxidase Inhibition Dramatically Increases t…
Perhaps I wasn't very clear; in your article, you contrast the apparent non-addictiveness of pure nicotine with, to quote directly, "the addictiveness coming from MAOIs & other compounds present in tobacco." And it is precisely the latter part of the phrase "MAOIs & other compounds" that I was asking about when I said "other compounds." The implication seemed to be that there were other things beyond MAOIs in tobacco…
> The implication seemed to be that there were other things beyond MAOIs in tobacco that were (or helped nicotine to be) addictive; is that not the case?
Well, I don't know that it's not the case. There's a lot of stuff in tobacco, it wouldn't surprise me if there were other chemicals besides MAOIs with relevant psychoactive effects. But from the snippet you quote, I see why you might be reading that as a stronger claim than I intended. I'll amend that to '& possibly other compounds' so it's clearer.
Re: Nicotine as a useful stimulant
#124I don't know, but I think cigar and pipe smoking are a perfectly valid way to get nicotine on your own terms while avoiding addiction. I have never seen someone cowering in the rain cradling a big cigar to get their fix.
cigar smoker here. As others described, they are mildly addictive, but quite different from cigarettes. I smoke for nearly 17 years, started from having too much free time in a foreign country on my first expat assignment. During this time I moved from occasional smoke once a month, to a regular smoke once a week. There is however, one obvious trend that I noticed, whenever I have too much free time and cigars nearby, I would smoke one. As in, 1-2 cigars a day during vacations. On the other hand, if I am out of cigars, I forget about them for weeks and do just fine.
Re: Nicotine as a useful stimulant
#125From anecdotal experience, nicotine has quite a similar effect to amphetamine (therapeutic dosing.. i.e. Adderall). Nicotine, in low doses, by itself (i.e. outside of tobacco, which contains MAOIs, which potentiate nicotine's effects), is not terribly addictive. I'll occasionally supplement it for a few days at a time, then stop. I would caution anyone supplementing nicotine NEVER to smoke tobacco, at the same time.…
Hence why I think the "ADHD Overdiagnosis Epidemic" in the USA is bullshit -- the fact of the matter is that 45% of the USA smoked in the 1950s, a number which has since been cut in half [1]. Considering the hypothesis that intoxication is a basic human need, it stands to reason that, given the stigmatization and taxation of tobacco, that we're now just relying on amphetamine rather than nicotine. I'd suggest that AD…
A friend of mine is a psychiatrist who specializes in treating ADHD. She told me about a conference she went to recently, where someone presented an interesting paper.
Apparently, there was an amazing study done relatively recently (last five years), in which they demonstrated that, in mice, exposure to nicotine during pregnancy results in higher rates of ADHD in the grandchildren (passed down through the female offspring exposed to nicotine in utero, not the males).
I can't find the study at the moment, but the findings would be monumental if they also apply to humans too.
Re: Nicotine as a useful stimulant
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Effects of nicotine on perceptual speed" [1] is behind a paywall, and I can't tell from the abstract whether the results also apply to non-smokers. I need to apologize a little bit here; I've been checking my article and it seems I inserted the wrong link for that citation. The one I actually wanted is http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02245346 'Smoking and Raven IQ', Stough et al 1994. Also paywalled, bu…
What in tobacco is addictive other than nicotine?
MAOIs present in tobacco
Re: Nicotine as a useful stimulant
#127I can't imagine life without stimulants. I hope to move off into the woods one day and live a completely natural lifestyle for a while. Reset myself. No caffeine, no nicotine, no amphetamines. Just me, a dog, and a nice ranch property in the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile, nicotine is a staple of my day-to-day. I quit smoking a long time ago, now I stick to Swedish snus and vaping. For a period I was chewing gum too. D…
Snus is an awesome alternative to smoking. I've tried chew and nicotine lozenges, but snus is a happy medium. I've come up with a way to get off nicotine, which I do from time to time: dissolve about 8 nicotine lozenges in a bottle of water. Take a sip when craving hits. The craving goes away immediately. ymmv.
> Snus is an awesome alternative to smoking.
Doesn't it cause oral cancer?
Re: Nicotine as a useful stimulant
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Snus is an awesome alternative to smoking. I've tried chew and nicotine lozenges, but snus is a happy medium. I've come up with a way to get off nicotine, which I do from time to time: dissolve about 8 nicotine lozenges in a bottle of water. Take a sip when craving hits. The craving goes away immediately. ymmv.
> Snus is an awesome alternative to smoking. Doesn't it cause oral cancer?
The package has a warning that it can cause gum disease and tooth loss. It's not as bad as smoking in my opinion.
Re: Nicotine as a useful stimulant
#129I can't imagine life without stimulants. I hope to move off into the woods one day and live a completely natural lifestyle for a while. Reset myself. No caffeine, no nicotine, no amphetamines. Just me, a dog, and a nice ranch property in the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile, nicotine is a staple of my day-to-day. I quit smoking a long time ago, now I stick to Swedish snus and vaping. For a period I was chewing gum too. D…
Ramping off caffeine is actually quite simple. You go to the pharmacy and get 100mg or 50mg caffeine pills, and start taking 10% to 20% less caffeine per day than you were taking beforehand.
Do a little research beforehand, but the average cup of coffee has ~100mg caffeine. So 5x50mg caffeine pills for a week or two, and gradually decrease, and it becomes very easy to quit. I've done this successfully (and also chosen actively to get back on caffeine for performance/training reasons, which once lapsed, I then used the method again successfully).
Re: Nicotine as a useful stimulant
#130"Effects of nicotine on perceptual speed" [1] is behind a paywall, and I can't tell from the abstract whether the results also apply to non-smokers. However, the abstract of another of the articles, "Effects of Cigarette Smoking on Performance in a Simulated Driving Task" [2] states that the effect was only measured on minimally abstinent smokers. Are any of the other studies measuring the beneficial effects of nicot…
I found quitting smoking very easy. I felt weird for the first day or two and then I just wasn't a smoker. I thought it would be hard based on what everyone told me, but it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.
From what I've read plus anecdotal evidence (people I know with radically different experiences quitting smoking), there's a large genetic component to how addicted you get, and how easy it is to quit.
Unfortunately most people have an extremely hard time (and most of the attempts to quit that I've observed have involved a lot of misery followed by a return to smoking).