This is a war. Understand your enemy

[intoxicated yoda]

I have always wondered why the success rate for smoking cessation with NRT was so abysmally low.  If nicotine was truly the addictive component then NRT should have a super high rate of efficacy.  I've known people who used the patch (me included) and would be desperately trying to recharge it by mid afternoon with a Marlboro Light.  I tried the gums as well with similarly spectacular fails.  Then a few days ago I ran across a video, which I will link below that described a whole different mechanism of addiction regarding cigarettes.  It may not be 100% accurate but it certainly makes a lot more sense to me than the current narrative surrounding cigarette addiction.  And please understand, I'm NOT posting this to use as an excuse to keep smoking, on the contrary, it makes quitting cigarettes more important than ever and getting a better understanding of the true enemy and why the path is so difficult and traumatic may help firm up our resolve to stay quit.  So what is the real culprit?  Surprise, it's not tobacco or nicotine.  At least not by themselves, but rather an additive called pyrazines that are added to the tobacco.  According to a study put out in 2015 based on the tobacco industries own research, " substantial evidence exists to suggest that nicotine's reinforcing effects alone are not sufficient to account for the intense addictive properties of tobacco smoking and the high relapse rates among smokers after quitting even when provided nicotine in forms other than tobacco."  It was also noted that nicotine had a very limited ability to induce self administration in animals.  So according to this paper nicotine by itself has a very low potential to induce an addiction.  However, with addition of certain pyrazines along with a few other chemicals, and by a few I mean hundreds, they found they could make the nicotine highly addictive.  

 

Personally I don't think that nicotine is the culprit at all.  I think it's most likely the pyrazines and/or the other hundreds of chemicals and the smoking population were the lab rats in the 50's thru the mid 80's as they refined the formulas.  I remember going out to the bars in my younger days and having young attractive females approach me to take a survey and get a free pack of smokes.  I was to drunk and stupid to realize I was part of someone else's science experiment.  Anyway, if you are struggling to quit, remember that you aren't fighting a natural substance.  You are up against a highly weaponized product meant to keep you imprisoned in an addiction that is so subtle when you feed it's hard to see but so relentless when you don't that it is almost unbearable.  Don't buy into the 3 days to beat the physical withdrawal.  That probably is true for nicotine by itself but that is not what we are fighting.  The best case scenario is we are fighting a weaponized version of it and the worst case scenario is it isn't the nicotine at all.  We don't know what they've done to it but we do know they push the nicotine replacement therapy as a way to quit so that could be a tell.  And I don't know about anyone else but that shit never did anything for me.  Quitting is a war so be prepared to fight for your life.  The good news is that you have the ultimate weapon if you choose to use it, and be ready to use it a lot.  That weapon is that you are always in control.  You control when you choose to acknowledge the crave and when to ignore it.  You are in control when you choose to maintain the quit or cave to the crave.  The physical withdrawal lasted months for me and it was relentless.  I still have little skirmishes from time to time but I don't dare entertain the thought of testing those waters.  There is a chemical cocktail in todays cigarettes with the addictive power of heroine and getting out of that trap at all is a miracle.  

 

Below are links to the video and the paper.  Take it for what it's worth.  Don't let these unscrupulous bastards beat you.  

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4941150/

 

https://www.bitchute.com/video/QjCmLeoyrcDh/

 

 

[Doreensfree]

Great post yoda...

The Tabacco Companies go to great lengths to make sure the poor smoker stays hooked.

They have managed to get away with 

Mass Murder !!!

[Gus]

Thanks for the information Yoda! I wholeheartedly believe that it is the withdrawal from the additives that affect us so much and that we are fighting so hard against in our quits. As for the nicotine patches, they helped me. I could not handle the increased anxiety I had without them. Even though I skipped the Stage 1 and reduced the time frame by half for the Stage 2 and eventually just forgot to apply the Stage 3 patches, they helped. Weaponized tobacco. How sad is that terminology? Tobacco companies, their lobbyists, and un/mis—informed or just greedy politicians will never be held accountable while on this earth. The anger I felt upon learning how I had been played by these people because of their greed is the main reason I stayed true to my quit and am able to persevere. My vengeance is staying quit and helping others do the same. Reducing their cash intake is the only way to hurt them, but it never seems to be enough. Anecdote: When I was a young girl, early 70’s, I was running up a fallen tree covered in ivy and I slipped and fell into a beehive. After I ran a good quarter mile while periodically dropping and rolling to get rid of the bees, my dad sent my brother to the store to buy cakes of ‘chaw’ that he soaked in water and then applied the juice pretty much everywhere as I had stings from head to toe. Owwies and yuckies! I have no recollection as to how long I had to have walked around with brown streaks, splotches, and patches! LOL 

[DenaliBlues]

6 hours ago, intoxicated yoda said:

you aren't fighting a natural substance.  You are up against a highly weaponized product meant to keep you imprisoned in an addiction

^^^^ YES YES YES, YODA!

 

The junk they put in cigarettes and vaping juice is designed to keep us hooked. Although this paper has some limits (it’s not a controlled study, it’s a discussion of fragmentary tobacco company documents), lots of what it says rings true to my experience.

 

I had a very strong preference for two “light” cigarette brands that contained high doses of pyrazines. I experienced those brands as intensifying the rewards of smoking. Nicotine alone in the form of NRT did, actually, help me quit. Zero doubt in my mind about that. But neither is there any doubt that it felt “incomplete” as a substitute. I was hooked on nicotine plus something else - some pyrazine cocktail, perhaps - that took much longer than 3 days to clear my system. The indications that pyrazine additives activate 5HT in the central nervous system would help to explain some of my longer term withdrawal struggles, too. The chemical cocktail I was hooked on had hijacked my brain’s serotonin and dopamine systems… all my “feel-good” chemicals were held hostage, and my digestion was altered also.
 

I’m glad to he able to read and reflect on this article, because understanding more about how I was hooked can help me better understand what support I need to recover from this addiction that causes so much suffering for so many.  In the meantime… 

 

16 minutes ago, Gus said:

My vengeance is staying quit and helping others do the same.

^^^ Right there with you, Gus!
 

Fury over being controlled is a big factor that fuels my quit. I refuse to be owned any longer. 

 

GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH! 

[Doreensfree]

Thats It !!!!!!

Never give them another penny 

Of your hard earned money ...

They dont care how many people  die ..often far too early..

Grrr...

 

[garry mhudson]

Great post! I`ve always heard about the additives in cigs but you think in this day and age our government would prohibit such crap. Greed fuels the madness and the truth is kept from us. Thanks for the info. Best

wishes and stay strong.

[intoxicated yoda]

13 hours ago, DenaliBlues said:

The chemical cocktail I was hooked on had hijacked my brain’s serotonin and dopamine systems… all my “feel-good” chemicals were held hostage, and my digestion was altered also.

I feel ya on the digestion thing.  That is actually what spurred me to join this forum.  If you read my earliest post you'll see that I literally was full of shit.  LOL.  But the way they were able to take something that was probably about as addictive as weed (which I could smoke or not smoke at will and never had a crave for it) and turn it into something that is so subtle and yet so hard to give up is almost admirable.  We are a genius lot even if some of us are evil asf.   Anyway, glad the NRT worked for you and @Gus.  

[Christian99]

You make great, important points here, Yoda:  one of the implications of them (for me) is that there are fewer downsides to NRT than many cold turkey advocates sometimes suggest.  Claims of the quitters who, for instance, are still chewing nic gum years after they stopped smoking are wildly overstated and hyperbolic IMO, and I've always been concerned that such messages (and the overall fetishization of the Cold Turkey quit) have limited overall quitting success rates (because people who might benefit from NRT are instructed and that the "best" or even only way to quit is CT).  I'm not nearly as active in the cessation community as I used to be, so I don't know if the CT message is as strident and even exclusionary as it used to be.  But my sincere hope is that more people have come to understand and honor the many different ways to effectively and healthily quit smoking.      

 

Christian99

21+ Years Quit   

 

  

[Gus]

20 hours ago, Christian99 said:

But my sincere hope is that more people have come to understand and honor the many different ways to effectively and healthily quit smoking.      

Exactly.  I’m 56. I remember “Cold Turkey is the only way to quit.” I don’t remember the last time I’ve heard it though. I believe the acceptance of using nicotine replacement therapy and prescription medicines to assist someone in their quit is directly related to the broadening of society’s acceptance of psychiatric drugs in general. Very few quitters that I speak to quit cold turkey. They almost all used something to aid them. Why shame someone for the method they used to quit? Why does it ‘have’ to be so hard? No matter the method, a person is only going to quit and stay quit when they truly want to. Support. Newbies and not so new newbies and even some vets need our support, not snobbery. Nor any type of negativity. As @intoxicated yoda said, 

 

On 4/21/2023 at 12:28 AM, intoxicated yoda said:

Quitting is a war so be prepared to fight for your life.

 

On 4/21/2023 at 12:28 AM, intoxicated yoda said:

There is a chemical cocktail in todays cigarettes with the addictive power of heroine and getting out of that trap at all is a miracle.  

So very thankful that I’m out! So very thankful for the help  so many on board here give with their words. 

[Brioski]

I’ve read this post multiple times and am enjoying reading the replies , too.  I kind of still see the “cold turkey is the only [acceptable] way” - not with you guys here - but for example via fb link on the whyquit website, which I’ve read and skim once in a while still.  I went cold turkey this time, last year I used patches. Both suck and it just sucks in general, at least for me right now. I don’t know the right answer.  We have those weight loss shots spreading like wildfire right now, why can’t there be magical smoking cessation shots we can give ourselves….smozempic, anyone? 

[Doreensfree]

Ive always said..

All Roads lead to Rome...

Just get yourself there..ive tried every method known to man to Quit in the past ..without success..

Cold Turkey worked for me ..

Taking everything off the table ..

I played the halfhearted quits for over 50 years ..

It was the best way for me ..

Cut all ties ..

Do whatever works for you...

Your life depends on it ..