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As someone who can relate: nicotine spray has been a great alternative for me with the following advantages:

- better dose control for sensitive people, since you can use just one puff (unlike a patch, which delivers the full dose)

- much faster onset

Downsides: strong flavour and the need to spit it out if you have a sensitive stomach.

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> much faster onset

That's what causes addiction though, which is a function of how quick and how large is the spike in dopamine levels over baseline. Nicotine patches take ~4 hours to reach peak dosage in the bloodstream, which is why I even considered them in the first place, as an ex-smoker that doesn't want to get addicted to the stuff ever again.

Nicotine from a cigarette, in comparison, takes about 7 seconds to cross the blood-brain barrier.

Great point. If addiction is a concern (and rightly so with nicotine), that makes faster onset a bug rather than a feature. For me it’s fine, because a single pack lasts me a year.

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