Smoking: worse addiction that heroin or crack cocaine?

It's bad, but I wouldn't compare it to heroin. Not even in the same league.

Well, I've kicked addictions to both nicotine and crack. I can honestly tell you that it was a lot easier to get off of crack. There were hardly any physical withdrawal symptoms, and very little obsessing over crack once I quit. Cigarettes, on the other hand, proved much more problematic. I tried and failed to quit at least a half dozen times. I spent a year addicted to nicotine patches and Skoal, thinking I was doing well by not smoking. Finally after about 3 years of trying to quit, I just went cold turkey. It sucked. I was tired all the time, I bumped into a lot of walls, and I ALWAYS wanted a cigarette. However, I've been told that heroin is much, much worse.

Hard drugs are there only to be used recreationally or to be abused. They have no other purpose. But tobacco, or nicotine, is another matter. It is a soothing and mind-calming substance. It probably has many beneficial uses that we've overlooked because it was oversold and misused for too many decades, and it is hard to think about dispassionately. All we can think of is cigarette addiction and its attendant diseases--which are caused not by the nicotine but by the sludge in the smoke itself.

And how did this cigarette epidemic start in the first place? The trench warfare of the Great War was made endurable through the soothing effects of nicotine. Prior to that time almost no one habitually smoked mass-produced cigarettes. By the Second World War it seem virtually as a patriotic duty to smoke, or at least to send cartons of cigarettes to the boys overseas. Cigarettes were seen as healthful, fortifying, a way to fend off despair and shell-shock. They were a cheap and acceptable drug-delivery system that kept the forces manageable and prevented the mental hospitals from becoming overloaded.

British Subject By Birth wrote:

A lot of people I have known who are still trying to stop smoking say this is so.

What I used to see whenever my Dad tried to stop. Brutal.

That's just because they are weak. So was your Dad.

Can't compare to heroin or crack - those weren't part of my "experimentation" twenty years ago - but can vouch that cigarettes can be extraordinarily tough to quit.

Different things work for different people; after years and dozens of attempts to quit, I've finally succeeded (well, ask me again in five years... but so far so good). The final piece in my puzzle was Allen Carr's book The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. That combined with running 80+ MPW nudged the endeavor from the "impossible" category into merely "brutally difficult".

Is it possible that nicotine appeared harder to quit because of the fact that tobacco isn't illegal? If crack was as easily available as cigarettes, maybe the temptation would have been equally as strong, or even greater.

I read somewhere that lab rats, given a choice between heroin and cocaine, will pick cocaine over heroin. Once they train lab rasts to smoke, I'm sure we'll get the correct answer.

That's just because they are weak. So was your Dad.[/quote]

You prick.

The vast majority of the 101st that held the SS at the Bulge, the 82nd that took the bridge at Nijmegen and the Marines that stormed ashore at Tarawa were smokers.

They were ten times the men you and your non-smoking wimps will ever be.

Harry Kooter wrote:

It's bad, but I wouldn't compare it to heroin. Not even in the same league.

Can you give me an example of why?

If a person had a prescription for H (they have it in Europe; diacetylmorphine (sp?)), they could essentially live like any normal person assuming they took it whenever it was needed.

A smoker would die from lung cancer before the H user would, so long as they used sanitary means for consuming it.

Prudent Pru wrote:

Hard drugs are there only to be used recreationally or to be abused. They have no other purpose. But tobacco, or nicotine, is another matter. It is a soothing and mind-calming substance. It probably has many beneficial uses that we've overlooked because it was oversold and misused for too many decades, and it is hard to think about dispassionately. All we can think of is cigarette addiction and its attendant diseases--which are caused not by the nicotine but by the sludge in the smoke itself.

Really? So the government makes and prescribes oxy-contin and fentanyl because they have no use?

How about the relaxing feels that they give you, like you say cigarettes do? A heavy smoker needs to smoke every 30minutes. A heavy user would need a shot every few hours. A heavy user could get a minor buzz/just avoid WD take away the pain. Doesn't sound recreational at that point. At that point, you consider not being sick a recreational act.

i second the Alan Carr book. after trying for five years, in every conceivable way, this book did the trick. and i really did find it easy! in my fifth non-smoking year after seventeen years of a two-pack a day habit.

get this book!! it will work.

Reefer Madness wrote:

Really? So the government makes and prescribes oxy-contin and fentanyl because they have no use?

How about the relaxing feels that they give you, like you say cigarettes do? A heavy smoker needs to smoke every 30minutes. A heavy user would need a shot every few hours. A heavy user could get a minor buzz/just avoid WD take away the pain. Doesn't sound recreational at that point. At that point, you consider not being sick a recreational act.

What a farrago of confusion we have here. Where to begin...

1. The government does not manufacture 'oxy-contin' or 'fentanyl' [sic], nor are they recreational drugs.

2. The government did in fact subsidize and encourage the cigarette industry--did so until quite recently, in fact.

3. A heavy smoker needs a cig a bit more often than every 30 minutes. (Two smokes an hour? At that rate you'll never get through your four packs a day.)

4. Most users of hard drugs or recreational drugs do not shoot up, nor do they face agonizing withdrawal symptoms every day. You are equating drugs with heroin, and imagining that all users act like the desperadoes you've seen in sensationalistic movies or tv shows.

?estion wrote: i second the Alan Carr book. after trying for five years, in every conceivable way, this book did the trick. and i really did find it easy!

Yeah, actually 95% of the time was surprisingly easy for me too. Just a few particular situations which continued to be tricky for me, for a while, but I was able to get through 'em largely because so little effort was required the rest of the time.

Reefer Madness wrote:

Harry Kooter wrote:

It's bad, but I wouldn't compare it to heroin. Not even in the same league.

Can you give me an example of why?

If a person had a prescription for H (they have it in Europe; diacetylmorphine (sp?)), they could essentially live like any normal person assuming they took it whenever it was needed.

A smoker would die from lung cancer before the H user would, so long as they used sanitary means for consuming it.

The original poster, if I understand him correctly, was saying that you can't compare nicotine to heroin in terms of how difficult it is to quit using them--he wasn't saying anything about how harmful they are.

No to 2012 wrote:

The vast majority of the 101st that held the SS at the Bulge, the 82nd that took the bridge at Nijmegen and the Marines that stormed ashore at Tarawa were smokers. They were ten times the men you and your non-smoking wimps will ever be.

What does that have to do with anything? They weren't trying to quit smoking. Nobody then was. They were ten times the man you are too. Who cares?

Well, I think kicking smoking is hard because there's not as huge an incentive to quit. You can hold down a job while smoking. You can't smoke crack all the time and have a job.

Nicotine is the most versatile, and therefore the most addictive drug available. It can be used to calm or settle your nerves. It can also be used as a stimulant. This versatility makes it so addictive. This can not be said for other drugs which tend to only work on the nervous system in 1 way or the other. Nicotine also requires much more regular doses, and addicts adjust their dosing without even realizing it - depending on the nicotine levels in their system. From a standpoint purely of which drug is most addictive, hands down nicotine. Its been a while since I took behavioral pharmacology, but I do believe that the withdrawl symptoms are also worse....though on that point I am not 100% certain. Anyone else have any knowledge on that??

I've kicked just about every drug mentioned in these conversations about 17 years ago...Ironically, I was out running this morning and saw someone smoking and felt bad for him. Out of all of the drugs mentioned, the one I had THE MOST difficult time quitting was cigarrettes(Nicotine). Come to think about it, In a test between a marijuana smoker and a cigarette smoker...who would you say would be more prone to having a nervous breakdown if prevented from smoking? I can say with all certainty that the cigarette smoker would lose.

Yeah that was a mistake to say the government puts OC's out, I thought about it after I posted. They are in a war on drugs, and oxy is a dangerous drug. Great 'gateway' drug too.

Where am I saying anything like you wrote in #4? Did you even read my post, your response makes me think you misinterpreted everything I wrote.

Porn addiction is horrible.