[anbende]

Research anecdote here. I’m a psychologist in a different area and a friend who did his PhD in cocaine research with rats told me this.

Addiction is highly dependent on the immediacy of the drug’s effect on the brain. For this reason, people who smoke cocaine (directly or as crack) are highly likely to get addicted. It may be the majority. People who snort it are less likely to get addicted. And there are a lot of casual cocaine users (snorting) who do not develop a long term life altering addiction. I believe he (researcher friend) said it was 10-15% who go on to become addicted. Still substantial and dangerous but much less than smoking.

His research was looking at delayed onset of cocaine in rats after they pushed their cocaine lever. At longer delays more and more rats showed little interest.

This is part of the overall addiction picture. Decoupling drug use behaviors (smoking, snorting, and lever pressing) from noticeable drug onset prevents reinforcement of the behavior and makes addiction less likely, often much less.

This would explain why nicotine patches and gum would potentially be much less addictive than cigarettes.

[bilsbie]

I’ve never heard this idea. It seems like coffee bucks this trend though? I’ll take 20 minutes to drink a cup but still wildly addicted.

[baby]

I don’t think people are addicted to coffee in the same way they’re addicted to cocain

[nucleardog]

I’m going to go ahead and generalize my own experience as an alcoholic, smoker, and coffee drinker with a highly addictive personality from a long line of addicts: It’s not remotely the same kind of addiction.

Waking up in the morning and finding I’m out of coffee is an issue on par with, I don’t know, waking up and finding we’re out of milk and I need to eat some toast instead of cereal. Not the way to start the day, but I’ll grumble and get through.

Waking up in the morning and finding out I’m out of nicotine is immediate 11/10 anxiety. My brain is focused only on how to get some. Can I make it to the store and back before my first meeting of the day? If it’s tight, I can be a bit late. If I can’t, I’m basically autopiloting myself through my morning until the first free minute I have to run out and get some. That is the _only_ thing on my mind.

From past experience, if I’m down to my last $10 and have the choice between food and coffee I’ll pick food. If I have the choice between food and cigarettes, I’ll pick cigarettes.

If I'm traveling, I'll take the risk that the hotel doesn't have coffee for some reason. I don't pack coffee in my suitcase. There's probably some mini-bottles or something in there though in case I can't get my hands on some alcohol along the way.

[hume77]

But cigarettes, not nicotine. I have used nicotine lozenges for weeks or months at a time when I need to concentrate on some critical projects and for me it has always been easy to stop, but I once was drinking 7 or 8 cups a day and decided I needed to stop and that took nearly a year and many terrible terrible headaches.

[standardUser]

You'd be surprised! Some people have as hard a time quitting coffee as they do nicotine. And lots of people do coke and never become addicted. It varies a lot from person to person, which is a fact that is underappreciated. Luckily, there is a lot of research now to support this.

[GordonS]

Agreed. I drink coffee because I like the taste and the caffeine gives a little boost. I could be said to be dependant on caffeine, as I get withdrawal symptoms on cessation (headaches) - but I feel no compulsion to drink coffee, as there would be with addiction.

[blitz_skull]

It also has to do with the size of the dopamine impact on the brain. Andrew Huberman's metaphor about a "wave" really helped me understand the concept of dopamine addiction in the brain.