Thoughts on Nicotine Addiction and Addiction in the Main.

The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines addiction as ‘a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences.‘ (1).

For the first leg of my adult life nicotine has been a feature. As we know in many countries, the scale of e-cigarette smoking is a concerning phenomenon. On the other hand, many experts make the credible point that it is an ‘effective aid to quitting smoking and less harmful than smoking’ (2). I find myself correcting people who make the vehement claim that vaping is worse- the jury is still out on the extent of its harm. My feeling is that tobacco smoking will always prove more risky. Having said that, evidence is mounting that the presence of dangerous chemicals in vapes and e-cigarettes have links to specific types of lung damage. The American Lung Foundation points out that ‘acrolein’, a chemical found in e-cigarettes, has been associated with ‘acute lung injury and COPD’ (3).

No offence to anybody living with COPD or a lung injury- it is entirely possible for you to live very well- but given the choice I’d rather avoid it.

But you see, in the past couple of weeks, vaping found its way back into my life. I can look back in my diary to the day I cessated from nicotine following long-term use, but there have been some slip-ups along the way. The past week or so is the latest blip. It’s a point of shame to see the scornful, bemused, or amused expressions on the faces of the friends who thought I had left nicotine in the past. When I was in the throws of the habit, there was constantly a vape in my hand, and I would find it difficult to sit still for a moment without tokeing on the electronic device crackling away in my clenched fist.

I find it difficult to imagine I haven’t caused some damage to myself. Maybe it’s minor stuff, or maybe I will grow to resemble a Fallout supermutant before long. Addictions can worsen your health, and the repocussions might not be felt immediately. Addiction is the sacrifice of the future for the present. If I continue to oppress my lungs with unnatural fumes, emphysema might kick my arse when I’m older. So for the sake of the future, let’s expound this topic a little bit. Addictions can take many forms. I’m writing this blog post as a reminder to myself - don’t let the nicotine creep back in. I also need to be more conscious of my eating habits. I know what I need to do, and I have some thoughts I want to share.

Addiction

If people are addicted to nicotine, then I would argue my junk food habit has similar correlates. I’m always hitting the chocolate, and I always find the time of day to hike down to the local shop to get my snacks. The reason? So I don’t have to go a moment without grazing, or consuming, or being stimulated. As far as the vapes are concerned, you simply have to inhale a vape and a stimulant chemical rockets to your brain and dances around on your neurotransmitters. I speak of nicotine, of course. It triggers ‘the release of the chemical dopamine in the brain’ (4) which may be integral to the ‘reinforcing effects of tobacco smoking and nicotine’ (5). As far as I can tell, the same dopaminergic process takes place when I consume junk food (6). Hell, even the act of walking to the shop and returning with the food releases dopamine. My fantastic mother cooks meals for us nearly always… so I really have no excuse to accompany those meals with spades full of processed garbage from the store. I can see how compulsive behaviour destroys lives. When I sit here and describe these addictive behaviours to you, it may sound pathetic on the surface.

Some people are addicted to heroin; this blogger is complaining about food addiction and his little vape pens?

For what it’s worth, I have wasted thousands of pounds on junk food, and don’t get me started on what nicotine does to your finances. Addictive behaviour is addictive behaviour. It’s all an issue, and I owe this reckoning to myself. I do understand why people are dismissive about these things. Some people deny the entire concept of addiction, especially when you apply it to food. This doesn’t get my back up, I find their objections quite interesting.

Mail-on-Sunday journalist Peter Hitchens is one of the people arguing that there is ‘no such thing’ as addiction (7). The columnist said in a BBC Newsnight debate that ‘you have a choice whether you drink or not. You have a choice over whether you take drugs or not’. The lived experience of addiction speaks for itself, and ‘Structural MRI studies have demonstrated that chronic drug exposure can enlarge or shrink some regions of the brain.’ (8). I do not agree with the way Hitchens asserts his position, but it’s worth keeping his perspective in mind. Personal responsibility should be a part of this discussion, but so should other factors like poverty, trauma, violence and mental health.

An addiction state is not akin to a flesh wound that can be observed, but its consequences are measurable at every level of society. Not to mention, many medical concepts feature a degree of subjectivity. For example, ‘pain’ is a purely experiential affair, but your doctor still needs to ask you about it. Addiction is real, it’s not going anywhere fast, and we will keep having to talk about it. The relationship between addiction and homelessness paints the picture of the problem. Skid Row is a place in Los Angeles full of catatonic people dying in slow motion, the agent of atrophy being the stimulants and opioids inside them. According to Teun Voeten from the Independent, ‘70 per cent of [Skid Row’s] homeless drug users were taking crystal meth’ (9). People can only be expected to do so much in these situations. We need more services for addicts that go beyond giving them a room to inject drugs within.

Nicotine

I can only speak for my addictions. Namely, the impulse to use nicotine that I’m now having to stave off again. I have plenty of psychological mechanisms that accompany my participation. I would say to myself ‘I need to enjoy this evening, so I need to vape. I’ll quit next week.’ It was always ‘next week’ that I would select as the time to take action, or next month. It took me a long time to make the connection that if you constantly abdicate responsibility to your future self then your present self never changes. The powerlessness and embarrassment I felt when I would try to quit and fail- especially if I was emphatic about it to others- exacerbated the habit. If I thought someone else was pressuring me, for example, then I would push back and get ‘Stuck in a Loop of ‘Wrongness’ (10), convincing myself I was quitting at the wrong time or in the wrong manner. I tried to stop using nicotine for nearly as long as I’d been using it. I didn’t like that I was trying and failing to stop. I’d allow myself to carry on to prove I could be cool about it and that I was in control. This would let me distance myself psychologically from the inherent weakness of my inability to stop.

Sound mad? Well, I have many symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. I reckon this is related. It has affected my life in many ways, such as acting as if others are telepathically controlling me. I don’t think it’s easy to explain just how it can interfere with your life. I have had times in the past where I was determined to step away from an activity, such as vaping, but I’d think to myself ‘I just had a bad thought about a friend as I took that puff… I need to vape again tomorrow morning otherwise my final puff will always be connected to that bad thought.’ That’s the obsessive-compulsive brain. It definitely made cessation more difficult. A correlation of ‘obsessive-compulsive symptoms with substance misuse’ (11) has been observed in a Swedish cohort, and ‘People who have substance use disorders often have other mental disorders’ (12).

I rely on honesty to tear myself away from these obsessive thoughts. This should be helpful to all readers, we all have misgivings about ourselves and the world:

Honestly, I lack the control I wish I had. I do accept that consuming a substance is a choice unless you were literally forced. Honestly, I am weak in this way. I am flawed. The voice in the back of my head tells me I should use nicotine because I should be able to control it. The cool people at college used to smoke and vape, and they’re not sitting here obsessing about it, why can’t I just be like them? Honestly, I care about measuring up to others more than I usually let on.

You can’t solve your problems if you aren’t honest.

‘I’m stopping for real today’ is a sentence I’ve said to many mates, many a-time, before returning to them clutching the same vape pen. The problem was the way I responded to this failure. It made me feel like I’d failed the task I had set myself. It made me feel like I was weak in the eyes of others. So what should I do about that? Okay, I must carry on vaping to the point that I can control it. I know it’s stupid, it was a compulsion.

The late Allen Carr, founder of the EasyWay clinic(s), produced some brilliant work on smoking cessation. ‘Allen's central point [is] that in reality there is nothing to give up because smoking provides you with no genuine pleasure’ (13). Much of the genius of the EasyWay project stems from Carr’s revelation that ‘smoking is an addiction to the feeling of relief that cigarettes provide, rather than to the nicotine itself’ (14).

In the course of agonising over this, I stumbled across a simple question:

Why do I think I need nicotine?

The option of using nicotine throws up these points of contention. The option of abstaining makes the turmoil go away. So there you are, I should not use it. Case closed.

Society

I am not interested in debating the origin of addiction, I don’t see its relevance to this discussion, which is more about cessation. Your addictions may be bedrocked in your genes, or perhaps have an ulterior cause, but you’ve got the same present issue.

In our society today, addiction is encouraged. Why do you need to make your own food when you can press a button and it’s at your door? Why do you need to trudge out in the cold and buy your own clothes when you can press a button on Amazon? This is cheap dopamine, and it just so happens to be profitable. Don’t get me wrong, I am no enemy of social progress, but oftentimes when barriers are removed, people seem to lose the ability to navigate future barriers. Once you no longer need to go to the high street shop for clothes, you may be less resilient to that cold breeze the next time you go out. This is relevant to the addiction conversation because the easier path is more oft travelled. Once you are used to hot food at your door, the process of making it à la your parents seems like an arduous task. It’s a form of dependency. ‘Use it or lose it’ (15) is the reasoning you must follow, its a mantra often repeated in the management of age-related cognitive decline. I think we should all be conscious of that in the 21st century.

When you google something, such as me googling ‘how many beetles are in africa?’, Google generates an AI overview telling me there are over 40,000 species. Thank you very much Google, but this is a piece of information I would be privy to simply by clicking one of the articles that comes up. When the next generation is provided with all their information- in bold- infront of their faces, how will they know how to conduct research? I try to ignore the AI Overview Google throws up. I try to find the article I need and then read it through. I do it to train my attention span and maintain my skills of inference. The consequences of the technological age are becoming more apparent.

Gloria Mark PhD has looked at this topic.

‘Mark's research suggests we're giving into digital temptation more and more. In the early 2000s, she and her team tracked people while they used an electronic device and noted each time their focus shifted to something new—roughly every 2.5 minutes, on average. In recent repeats of that experiment, she says, the average has gone down to about 47 seconds’ (16).

We are ushering in a new era of distractibility. A new world where there is so much to do and much less patience and margins for error. As new technologies enhance our lives we trade autonomy for comfort. That is perfectly fine, these civilisational forces are good and the natural consequence of human development. I will posit that it would be positive to resist instant gratification as we go forward into the techno generation. Everything in moderation: resisting the urge to always chase stimulation. You don’t need to give up TikTok and you don’t need to go and live in a cave. All I’m saying is, if you’re chronically online, you should think about what to do when there’s a power cut. That’s the new world.

In my view the vape pen is the symbol of this era. It stands for the inability to be at ease without being entertained. The ability to be not distracted and to feel okay with the moment you inhabit. We might be forgetting how to do that as a society. We are junkies for screens, food, likes and sounds. When your phone dies and you have to stand in the cold and wait for the bus, you can opt for a small glowing stick containing a stimulant drug to get you past the lack of entertainment (I’m talking about the vape, of course). And if it isn’t the vape, you stick your airpods in your ears and blast your silia with music produced to be addictive. Perhaps the silence and the darkness would be less painful if you didn’t have the option to avoid them. Perhaps you could greet them and learn to live with them again. Blasting yourself with stimuli of various forms seems like it could dysregulate you in the long run. As a society we are charging towards this, in any case.

To clarify, I think the world today is better than it’s ever been. I am not a doomsday preacher who will claim artificial intelligence is moments from murdering us. Everything will be okay, but the humans of today and the near future need a robust philosophical education. I’m trying to do that for myself. Honesty is a good place to start…

…and honestly, it’s time for me to get my act together.

The Vow

I need to buck my ideas up surrounding the way I eat. Maybe that will be the subject of my next blog post.

Most importantly, I am making a vow today to never consume nicotine again.

You can use nicotine if you like. This whole thing is horses for courses. You might want to tackle your alcohol consumption, for example, whereas I have always had a good relationship with it. I do not think I’m better than you, but quitting nicotine is something that’s better for me.

I invite you to make your own vow, dear reader. Whatever that thing is that you’ve been avoiding. It’s time to open the book that was left at the end shelf of your mind. What are you doing now that is setting you up for failure? Have a think about it.

You and I, we are more than our bad habits.

Yours faithfully.

Sources

(1) What is the Definition of Addiction? (2025). American Society of Addiction Medicine. Available at: https://www.asam.org/quality-care/definition-of-addiction

(2) Nearly 3 million people in Britain have quit smoking with a vape in the last 5 years. (2024, August 12). Action on Smoking and Health. Available at: https://ash.org.uk/media-centre/news/press-releases/nearly-3-million-people-in-britain-have-quit-smoking-with-a-vape-in-the-last-5-years

(3) The Impact of E-Cigarettes on the Lung. (2024, December 17). American Lung Association. Available at: https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/e-cigarettes-vaping/impact-of-e-cigarettes-on-lung

(4) Smoking and Mental Health. (2021, March 9). Mental Health Foundation. Available at: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/a-z-topics/smoking-and-mental-health

(5) Boileau, I. George, T. Houle, S. Payer, D. Wing, C. (2015). Abstract of Measuring Cigarette Smoking-Induced Cortical Dopamine Release: A [11C]FLB-457 PET Study. Neuropsychopharmacology, 4;40(6), 1417–1427. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4397400/

(6) Correa, M. Salamone, J. (2015). Dopamine And Food Addiction. Biological Psychology. 22;73(9), 15–24. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4450088/

(7) Aitkenhead, D. (2012, October 21). Peter Hitchens: 'I don't believe in addiction. People take drugs because they enjoy it'. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/21/peter-hitchens-addiction-drugs-war

(8) Chang, L. Fowler, J. Kassed, C. Volkow, N. (2007). Imaging the Addicted Human Brain. Science & Practice Perspectives, 3(2), 4–16. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2851068/

(9) Voeten, T. (2021). Skid Row: Inside the epicentre of LA’s homeless and crystal meth crisis. Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/photography/skid-row-la-homeless-crystal-meth-crisis-b1934786.html

(10) Gavin, K. (2018). Stuck in a Loop of ‘Wrongness’: Brain Study Shows Roots of OCD. Michigan Medicine. Available at: https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/stuck-loop-wrongness-brain-study-shows-roots-ocd

(11) Fernández de la Cruz, L. Larsson, H. Kuka-Halkola, R. Latvala, A. Lundström, S. Lichtenstein, P. Mataix-Cols, D. Rück, C. Sidorchuk, A. Suvisaari, J. Virtanen, S. (2022). Association of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms With Substance Misuse in 2 Longitudinal Cohorts in Sweden. American Medical Association - JAMA Network, 5(6). Available at: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2793020

(12) Co-Occurring Disorders and Health Conditions. (2024). National Institute on Drug Abuse. Available at: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/co-occurring-disorders-health-conditions

(13) Allen Carr's Easyway To Stop Smoking - TOP TIPS. (2014). Allen Carr Clinics. Available at: https://mb.cision.com/Main/8804/9516889/197214.pdf

(14) Clancy, L. Gallus, S. Keogan, S. Lugo, A. Scala, M. Possenti, I. (2023). The effectiveness of Allen Carr's method for smoking cessation: A systematic review. Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, 9(29). Available at: https://www.tobaccopreventioncessation.com/The-effectiveness-of-Allen-Carr-s-method-for-smoking-cessation-A-systematic-review,172314,0,2.html

(15) Vseteckova, J. (2020, June 8). The ageing brain: 'use it or lose it'. OpenLearn. Available at: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/health/the-ageing-brain-use-it-or-lose-it

(16) Ducharme, J. (2023, August 10). Why Everyone’s Worried About Their Attention Span—and How to Improve Yours. Time. Available at: https://time.com/6302294/why-you-cant-focus-anymore-and-what-to-do-about-it/