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Comment by nicotine_throw | Hacker News Reader

I'm an adult with moderate ADHD and use nicotine gum as my treatment. I've been on Concerta and Adderall and find the gum works just as well but with no side-effects at all. I also don't have to request a refill every 30 days and it's MUCH cheaper.

I've never smoked a cigarette or vaped in my life. The dose required to alleviate my symptoms is so low (6~8mg a day) that addiction is basically non-existent. I don't take it on weekend unless I'm working and am totally fine.

I get salty when people demonize nicotine, it's made my life tolerable.

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Can you go into some detail as to how nicotine improves your symptoms?

I can definitely see how there could be some overlap, although I've never actually had nicotine sober. Still, seems hard to believe it could be as effective for significant ADHD considering the standard suite of amphetamines is a bazooka by comparison.

Still, the symptoms that get grouped together as ADHD are so diverse that I could see it helping people. Biggest issue is probably relative addictiveness, since after 15 years of adderall use I feel absolutely no desire to take it on weekends or vacation, and that's probably not totally the same for nicotine.

Not the op, but nicotine seems to reduce my tendency to be involuntarily distracted at random noises and other stimuli. However, I don't have a diagnosed ADHD (never bothered to, I have only very mild signs of it).

> so low (6~8mg a day)

That doesn't sound like a very low dose for a non-smoker? While addiction to gum is very unlikely, the probability of developing tolerance is high. How long have you been using this dosage?

That's a pretty low dose for a daily basis. A single cigarette varies a lot on how much nicotine it has but on average it's around ~12mg and most smokers probably don't smoke a single cigarette a day so 6-8mg is quite low.

Sure, but smokers shouldn't be the baseline for what is healthy behaviour.

The absorbed dose from a cigarette is closer to 2mg, so 6–8mg is 3–4 cigarettes per day. That's an order of magnitude down from the dosage of heavy smokers, who smoke multiple packs (of 20 cigarettes) per day. But it's not the half-cigarette's worth you're suggesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine

Nicotine patches are probably a less addictive option than gum, but gum itself is much less addictive than smoking.

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