Hey guys! Check my intro here, and have a good time with this article :-)
Caffeine makes me anxious. Crazy anxious. I just can't use it. If I drink a cup of green tea there's a 100% chance I'll start having anxiety 2-3 hours later, on top of being jittery. Honestly, it sucks. I'd like to be able to geek out on different kinds of tea and I love the taste of coffee. Worst of all, when I need a boost, I can't rely on good old caffeine like the rest of you addicts.
Nicotine comes in
A favorite podcast of mine is Robb Wolf's. He's an early paleo and crossfit adopter (he started the 1st and 4th crossfit affiliates), and he's had his podcast for a few years. He shares a bunch of tips on health and habits, and he's also humble and nerdy. At some point he mentioned using nicotine gum as a cognitive enhancer for when he had to push harder at work. I looked into it, tried it, and it works pretty damn well!
Turns out nicotine kicks ass for intellectual work. A meta-analysis from 2011 showed " significant positive effects of nicotine or smoking on six domains: fine motor, alerting attention-accuracy and response time (RT), orienting attention-RT, short-term episodic memory-accuracy, and working memory-RT" . It can act as a stimulant or a sedative depending on the dosage. And MEGA-BONUS for me and the rest of you who are like me: it doesn't trigger anxiety (it can even reduce it).
Won't it turn me into a depraved addict and ruin my health though?
Probably not, but you know yourself better than I do. Studies have shown that users who use products containing nicotine (patches, gum) to stop smoking have the same relapse % as those who don't use any, i.e. nicotine isn't the only thing responsible for the addictive effects of smoking, and actually has very mild addictive qualities. Turns out there's a synergy between the many thousand chemicals in cigarettes, and that's where addiction comes from (plus, it was fucking cool to smoke for a few decades).
As for the health effects, again, smoking burnt chemicals is the issue here, not nicotine itself. Smoking increases risks of suffering from Alzheimer's. Taking nicotine by itself protects against Alzheimer's. There isn't much research on it yet (it's a quite unpopular substance), but nicotine could be effective against the damages of diabetes and against depression, and probably a few others.
Read some studies about it if it stresses you out. I was convinced pretty fast by my own research and experience.
My experience
My first try was about 2 years ago. I needed to get through a block in my Master's thesis, and I decided to give some chewing gum a try. I took a 2mg gum, which is about 1-2 cigarettes. Thing is, I'm a lightweight with most drugs. For 2 hours I had an insane focus, but I was tripping hard. Effective for a one time deal, but not something I could use daily. I stored the pack of gums in a drawer and forgot about it.
About 3 months ago I gave it another shot, but taking about 0.5mg bites each time. I take them 1-2 times a week when I need to do some writing, and the results have been stellar.
- No anxiety at all. Actually less than usual since it helps me relax more.
- Creative focus, unlike caffeine, which tended to make me a bit more robotic.
- No addiction whatsoever.
- Easier time relaxing at night and bigger appetite, which is an issue for me. I move a lot, but when I'm stressed I don't feel like eating, and I get overtrained fast.
- Much smoother "down" than with caffeine.
Only issue I've had is that, like any other stimulant, it's energy on credit. I'm careful not to use it too much, because I need to compensate with extra rest afterwards. I still suspect the overall effect is positive, as I don't get that tired compared to the productivity boost I get.
If you're coding, blogging, writing a book, playing music, doing art or simply planning something, nicotine might be what you've been missing so far. It's definitely a pretty big cheat for me, and my grades in school would have been much higher in school if I had thought of using it for exams.
Thanks for reading, and happy chewing!
Upvote if you liked the info, don't hesitate to comment, and check my other posts about habits and efficiency here and here. I'll write more soon! :-)
