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Comment by whycome | Hacker News Reader

Nicotine. But not the smokeable kind. And low dosage. But not if you’re likely to get addicted. The absurdity is that your country definitely makes it legal for historical reasons rather than useful less addicting stimulants.

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Nicotine is amazing... for a week. Then you will be chasing the dragon forever. Tolerance builds up crazy fast and doesn't meaningfully lower even when you cease smoking for years.

Plus pretty bad for your health and crazy addictive. Absolutely not a good recommendation.

> Tolerance builds up crazy fast and doesn't meaningfully lower even when you cease smoking for years.

I specified not smoking it though?

> Plus pretty bad for your health and crazy addictive. Absolutely not a good recommendation

You’re saying that it’s “bad for health” as something separate from its addiction potential?

How is it bad for your health exactly?

Also, ‘Crazy addictive’ is related to delivery method.

Also, there may be critical differences to people who have never smoked before.

It wasn't till I quit nicotine that I began to struggle with undiagnosed adhd. I wish there was a way to make nicotine safe and non-addictive. I think it was far more effective to spike my nicotine level and tackle a task than adderall twice a day has been. Vaping was huge for controlled nicotine consumption.

You are being down-voted by people making big claims ("pretty bad for your health and crazy addictive", "nicotine is ridiculously addictive") without any proofs. In fact, I challenge anyone making such claims to reference a scientific study proving either of major addictive potential or significant health concerns of _nicotine patches_ since OP specifically mentioned "not the smokeable kind" of nicotine.

I mean, tobacco smoke is terrible for anyone's health but even nicotine on its own is not exactly good for you. It's definitely a stimulant and can give you the kinds of side effects you might expect from any stimulant, including a raised BP and heart rate.

> It's definitely a stimulant and can give you the kinds of side effects you might expect from any stimulant, including a raised BP and heart rate.

Sure, but people wouldn't downvote a comment suggesting having couple of cups of coffee per day to improve ADHD symptoms as hard, for example. And for me caffeine withdrawals symptoms have always been more difficult to overcome compared to nicotine.

For average tech worker HN user living a sedentary life-style, having stressful job in polluted city periodic usage of nicotine patches won't make it to their top list of health concerns IMO.

So much of the research and the general understanding is just conflated with cigarettes as the delivery type. They present a bunch of problems: the smoke and other chemicals makes it damaging in a lot of ways. People sometimes swap the terms “nicotine” and “cigarettes”. Cigarettes (and presumably vaping) have one of the highest and fastest nicotine deliveries — this is critical in creating the physical/chemical (dopamine) response that your brain and body use in addiction formation.

We can have two companies release the same code, but the ui/UX of the users interaction with it can make all the difference.

Wait, you’re just repeating general empty statements. Why isn’t nicotine on its own good for you? A raised heart rate and BP for a period isn’t a bad thing. It’s an expected response from any stimulant.

I mean, sex and exercise also cause the same responses.

nicotine is ridiculously addictive. everyone is likely to get addicted to it

I agree that it’s ridiculously addictive. There’s a big correlation to delivery type and how your brain can associate it to drive that compulsion. It’s very fast acting, esp when smoked.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/science/column-recent-resea...

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