Everything you need to know about tobacco, nicotine and electronic cigarettes
Tobacco sucks. But nicotine is a great drug. That's why you have to stay away from her like the plague.
In its newest version with Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock Holmes has quit smoking, but is addicted to nicotine. He puts on patches to think better.
Nicotine sherlock
It's an improvement. The original Sherlock was a cokehead.
Let's get things straight from the start. Tobacco is a drug. People who have trouble quitting smoking are drug addicts. That's the end of the matter.
If you are a smoker, there is a nicotine-controlled part of your brain. That part is asking you right now to stop reading. It's causing you discomfort. Don't do that. Give yourself a chance.
Tobacco, besides a drug, sucks. Vacuuming the smoke from these dead leaves causes cancer, impotence, emphysema, heart attacks, Alzheimer's disease, bad odor and, in addition, equally harms the people around them.
However, compared to others, nicotine, the active ingredient in tobacco, is a most interesting drug. Electronic cigarettes also promise a way to access nicotine without the hassle of smoking. It is the beginning of a new era.
The magic of nicotine
Nicotine is a unique drug because it can be both stimulating and relaxing. In low doses it is stimulating. Glucose and epinephrine (adrenaline) are released. It increases levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, as do amphetamines and cocaine.
In higher doses, nicotine is relaxing, increasing levels of serotonin and endorphins. Smokers know this without knowing it. Smoking with short, fast draughts results in a low blood nicotine level that is stimulating. Long, deep draughts produce a higher concentration of nicotine that is calming.
Nicotine also has these effects:
Increases concentration and memory
Increases metabolism and reduces appetite
Increases alertness and amplifies senses
Calms pain
Activates the brain's reward circuits
In slightly higher doses, nicotine kills you in minutes. Poisoning from an intravenous nicotine drop looks like this: first euphoria, then nausea, vomiting, hypertension, tachycardia, and tremors, followed by hypotension, muscle weakness, paralysis, coma, respiratory failure, and death. Laugh (warning, spoiler) Game of Thrones.
Tobacco garbage
With all the goodness of nicotine, getting it by smoking burnt tobacco leaves must be the stupidest and most inefficient way to get high in the world.
There are more than 7,000 compounds in tobacco leaf smoke, of which 250 are toxic and 70 carcinogenic, among others:
Tar tar
Cyanide
Benzene
Folmaldehyde
Methanol
Acetylene
Lead
Toluene
Ammonia
Radioactive elements
If there were a leakage of only one of these products, people would lock themselves in their homes in panic. And then, to calm down, they would smoke a cigarette and put them all in their lungs at once. Human beings, that species.
Tobacco is harmful in all its forms, there is no good, none is less bad. No rolling tobacco, no pipe, no cigars or water pipes. Low nicotine cigarettes are the world's biggest scam, because what the smoker wants is nicotine! With half of nicotine, the smoker ends up smoking twice as much to get his dosage.
A Nobel Prize in medicine once said in public to have the cure for half of all cancer cases. When asked what it was, he said,"Quit smoking."
Electronic cigarettes
Then salvation comes. Electronic cigarettes vaporize a nicotine solution, offering the right dose of the drug without any of the inconveniences of burning dead toxic plants. Smokers expel odourless water vapour, which in theory does not disturb or harm passive smokers either.
Are you sure? Like all novelties, they have drawbacks. There is little or no control over its manufacture. Small amounts of nitrosamines (cancer), diethylene glycol and glycerol* have been found in cartridges of different brands.
THE TRUTH: The possible toxins present in electronic cigarettes are in concentrations much lower than normal cigarettes. With time and regulation, they may become a safe way to administer pure nicotine.
The question is, do you really want to put pure nicotine in your body?
Nicotine and your brain
The answer is no. If you're worried about your health, stay away from nicotine and plague. Nicotine is psychoactive. That means it modifies your brain.
You think you like smoking? It's not you talking, it's nicotine.
You think it relaxes you? It's actually the lack of nicotine that makes you more nervous, smoking gets you back to normal for a while.
As a young man you admired someone who smoked and that's why you started? I'm sure what you admired about them was something else, not that they were drugs.