[sph]

Maybe they meant self-medicating? I used to be a heavy smoker, quit 4 years ago, and in hindsight quitting made me aware I had debilitating ADHD and I couldn't function.

I recently made the connection between quitting nicotine and my life spiraling down, that I reintroduced nicotine patches and I have found that they are better, cheaper and longer lasting than any amphetamine I was prescribed.

[arresin]

I can relate to this fully. I used to be a heavy smoker also (and also ADHD).

I think overall the health effects are less negative with low dose amphetamine (VERY low dose vs what abuse looks like).

[sph]

> I think overall the health effects are less negative

Possible but in my case amphetamines last 4 hours (lisdex lasts 6), and make me very hungry, horny and exhausted by 7pm. Also, they feel like I am the cart and the meds are the horse, i.e. they pull me around to do stuff even when I just want to relax a little.

Nicotine on the other hand gives me motivation, focus is still a bit iffy and not as pointed as with AMPH, but OTC patches last 24 hours, are cheap and don't make me tired at all (I remove the patch 3 hours before bed). Also I can drink coffee again without feeling like my heart's exploding, which is a major plus.

It's been 2 weeks of this nicotine experiment, and I feel more like myself than a very driven machine attached to an 8 hour battery. I'm using 7.5mg patches (15mg nicorette cut in half)

My med dosage was relatively low btw, I'm pretty sensitive to amphetamines. Nicotine by itself seems to be as dangerous as caffeine.

In any case, there is a lot of research correlating between nicotine inhalation (even from second hand smoke) while in utero or in youth and ADHD. My pet, non-scientific theory is that for some, their ADHD is simply "chronic nicotine withdrawal". The fact that there are a lot more diagnoses these days might be because smoking is not in vogue any more, everybody wants to quit (rightly so), but our smoking parents permanently ruined our growing brain in childhood, as so did the past 5 generations.

[arresin]

I personally noticed a steep drop off in efficacy once I built up tolerance each of the handful of times I’ve tried and then given up using nicotine as a medicine. It’s low reward and high risk (full blown addiction).

Interesting about your parents smoking. Mine did also, chain smoked with me in the car basically hot boxing and all their friends did too.

[sph]

How did you use nicotine? The addiction/tolerance potential is proportional to how quickly it gets in your brain. Smoked/inhaled nicotine takes 7 seconds, a patch takes about 4 hours to reach peak blood concentration.

Also I do not recommend tobacco, which is much more than nicotine.

[arresin]

> The addiction/tolerance potential is proportional to how quickly it gets in your brain.

Very good point. And that goes for amphetamine also (snorted vs ingested).

I used nicotine lozenges as they were big on longecity forum at one point and I had experience with them from quitting tobacco.

So a lot faster than the patch. You can feel it like seconds after resting it inside your lip.

[AbstractH24]

Curious how you define low dose