| I often joke (but dont take serious at all) that addictive smokable plants are addictive due to natural selection: Most people I know who either smoke tobacco or marihuana, are addicted to either and can smoke the other without getting addicted. In my case I am addicted to nicotine, and I like smoking weed but never get addicted to it. I.e. one addiction is sufficient. But for what? Another observation is that individuals that never smoke don't feel addicted, i.e. there is no innate attraction towards a substance, only after using it for a while. Any smoker knows that after a while you need to smoke again. The jokke/hypothesis is as follows: fire was important for human survival, tribes with fire were at an advantage over tribes without fire. Yet smoking is not healthy. The tribe only needs a few members to keep the fire going, so instead of innate attraction to keep the fire going (which would be unhealthy to each member of the group), only people who are initiated by the current fire-man get addicted, but should get addicted lest they not neglect the fire (i.e. a biological timer reminding you to inhale from the portable pipe). This way nomadic tribes that had a propensity for addiction had access to fire and its applications, and the tribe survived better than those tribes that could not get addicted (and occasionally lost their fire, possibly executing the specific fire-man at fault, a selection pressure). I say joke, and that I don't take it serious for multiple reasons: species that probably never benefitted from fire -like spiders- feel the effects off say nicotine. Another hole in the theory is that tobacco was imported after the discovery of the new world. But I can immagine other plants having fulfilled similar roles. |