I've been a heavy cigarette smoker for 12 years (pack a day min.). When I switched to vaping, I vaped continuously the entire day.

There is no human on earth that can smoke continuously the entire day for very long. A pack a day smoker means smoking one every ~30 minutes circa.

it also stops being unpleasant once your brain has associated it deeply with the dopamine

if anything, the strong smell and taste sensations makes it even more addictive

That said, the patches are great for focus and anxiety when used in low doses in moderation

There is almost no good evidence of this. Effect sizes are tiny, if any. Just placebo and anecdotal. The effect is so small it's not even worth it from

I smoked for roughly 30 years and was not in very good shape when I gave up eight years ago - that improved rather a lot.

The problem is that nicotine is not the only addictive substance involved. If it was then you could chew gum, wear patches or whatever and off you go. There is an extremely complicated set of chemicals involved in fag smoke. There is also the habit effect and other complications.

In the end I think that boring old will power is the only way and any trick or tool or whatever that you can deploy to bolster that is how you give up.

My initial plan was to vape but I soon found that unsatisfying and it looked to me like trying to substitute one habit with another.

Once I started stopping, I didn't want to stop! It was extremely hard but I always reminded myself that I had got so far and that that time would be wasted if I had to start again. I followed doubled up time periods - one day, two days, 1/2 a week, a week, a fortnight, a month, two months ("cripes, this might work") and so on.

A mental tool I developed was a couple of mantras: "I don't want to smell" and "I don't want to die". Whenever I felt the cravings I repeated those to myself and I have no idea why but it did work for a while at a time. Gradually the need tailed off (say around two years)

I remember having quite vivid dreams where I would "crack" and start smoking again. I had to do quite a lot of mental verification to prove to myself that it was just a dream. At one point I even smelt my clothes to prove to myself it was all a dream.

We are all different and there is no right or wrong way to quit. One thing we can all agree on is it is hard, very hard but not impossible. Pick a strategy that might work for you and be prepared to change it but please do have a go. It really is worth it.

How did you taper off patches? Are you still on them?

I deleted my comment talking about it because it usually goes badly with the HN audience and their preconceived notions.

But I have had the hypothesis (as a layman) that growing around smokers affects the brain of a child, they self-medicate with tobacco, and the cycle continues, and it has for many generations until today when smoking is frowned upon and self-medication is no longer readily available. I don’t think smoking is the cause of all of ADHD, but we’ll eventually learn that dopamine dysfunction has a lot of different causes.

ADHD people get hooked to smoking quite easily. Nicotine's a stimulant after all.

And carcinogenic

What is?

Nicotine isn't just 'extra effective caffeine.'

The research seems to indicate it's a cancer accelerant -- it doesn't cause cancer directly, but it promotes the growth and spread of existing tumors.

Studies suggest it does this through several pathways including:

(a) preventing cancer cells from self-destructing (b) making tumor cells divide more quickly (c) stimulating the growth of new blood vessels in and around tumors, helping them grow; and (d) helping cancer cells metastasize more easily by increasing mobility via epithelial-mesenchymal transition.

It also lowers the effectiveness of chemo and radiotherapy.

Admittedly, most of these are animal/lab studies, in part because it's hard to design a good study in humans since so many patients also use/used cigarettes and vapes, which confounds the results. Still, there's enough evidence out there to be cautious.

> rather than just extra addictive extra effective caffeine

That is a severe understatement. Nicotine is consistently ranked as one of the most addictive drugs, near cocaine and heroin.

Only about 6% nicotine users manage to quit every year.

https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-n...

It's two very touchy subjects: nicotine and ADHD. I'm not fond to talk about it because misinformation and ignorance is just rampant. Nicotine has indeed been turned into the boogeyman.

Anyway, I told my psych about my plan, and he agreed there is research indicating nicotine works as a third-line stimulant medication for ADHD. In many modern, Western countries adult ADHD is not even recognized, let alone medicated, so one has to make do with what's available.

In my experience it is almost as effective as amphetamines, with fewer side effects, much longer lasting (a patch lasts 16+ hours), and very cheap - if you get them on ebay from China. Addiction potential is null: addiction is a function of how quickly the effect peaks, and it takes 3 hours. Not even lisdexamfetamine can compare with how unaddictive patches are.

That said, if I had access to prescription amphetamines, I'd go back to them, but I sure don't miss the days all it did was making me incredibly horny and focused scrolling social media all day long. It was a little too effective at keeping me engaged for my own good, so using a subpar medication means learning to live with ADHD, adjusting your life around your own quirk, rather than only relying on the medication to fix everything for you.