August 28, 2025 • 46 mins
Nicotine is everywhere - but not in the way we once knew it. It’s not just in cigarettes anymore. It’s in sleek vapes, tiny pouches, lozenges, gum, even diffusers marketed as 'wellness'. And somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like a vice and started looking... aesthetic. Clean. Even, normal.
In today’s episode, we unpack the ever-present boom of nicotine and what it reveals about our generation’s relationship with coping, craving, and control. Because this isn’t just about addiction - it’s about soothing anxiety, chasing focus, managing overstimulation, and the ways we self-medicate under pressure.
We explore:
- Nicotine as a stimulant and a coping mechanism
- Levels of conformity and links to the ‘in-group’
- How nicotine got rebranded for a new generation
- The role of dissonance in maintaining the cycle
- How to break the bad habit loop
Whether you’ve used nicotine yourself or just want to understand why it’s seems like everyone has a vape – this episode is for you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we break down the Psychology
of your twenties. Today, we are diving into a topic
I think that hits close to home for so many
(00:43):
of us, even if we don't always want to openly
admit it or acknowledge it. Honestly, my inbox has been
just like buzzing with requests for this episode. I think
I get this at least five times a week. We
are talking about the psychology of nicotine, and I definitely
(01:04):
saw a rise in requests for this episode after we
did our twenty Biggest Mistakes People Make in their twenties
episode and we talked about smoking, and I had a
lot of messages from people being like, how come you've
never done an episode on this, Well, guess what, there
was one right around the corner. This is that episode.
So nicotine is one of the world's favorite drugs, and
(01:28):
it is in fact a drug. It is highly addictive,
it is highly prevalent, its usage is very prevalent, and
the stuff it's packaged in makes it incredibly terrible for you.
We know that vapes, that cigarettes, that nicotine pouches, they
are not good for you, no matter how well the
(01:50):
marketing might try and make them same. So why are
so many of us, despite all of this knowledge, all
the education we have now now still getting hooked. Well,
I think there's quite a few interlinked reasons. Obviously, the
use of nicotine is absolutely not a new phenomena. It
has been used for so many years. It's also sometimes
(02:13):
had medicinal purposes, and it's often synonymous with socializing, with
stress relief, with status. I think, particularly with vapes even
more so than cigarettes these days, they're super accessible, even
at times affordable. You know, some stores do like multi
buy deals on them.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
They look enticing. There's this whole.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Allure around smoking and nicotine, and they have colorful packaging
and fruity flavors, and you know it's not discreete and
these items, cigarettes, vapes, they become like deeply ingrained in
social scenes. So that even if you've had all of
this education, it still kind of seems like, well, if
(02:58):
everyone else is doing it well, and why don't I.
It's like, oh, we're all hitched to the same wagon.
We're all in the same boat. As long as they're
going to face the same health consequences as me, well,
I may as well be part of the in group,
or may as well be enjoying it. Also, nicotine just
feels amazing. It just feels it feels good. And so
(03:19):
sometimes when you're in the moment and you're enjoying the
cigarette or you're enjoying the hit, it's hard to think
further down the line. So when the other side of
the coin flips over, and when the other side of
this habit comes and kind of bites you in the butt.
It's something that I think we're like, in the current moment,
(03:40):
we're not too great at acknowledging. And also because of
the fact that nicotine and smoking and vaping has had
like a revival in recent years, you know, the snowball
effect of more and more people doing it is making
it more and more enticing. It might be not very
surprising for you guys to hear it, but for the
first in decades, we are seeing nicotine use rates shift
(04:03):
significantly in younger populations, especially in Western countries. For many,
many years, the use of nicotine products was declining, and
then suddenly there has been this massive increase. There have
been studies in the UK in the US that show
e cigarette usage and nicotine uses. It is at the
(04:25):
highest it has ever been, maybe amongst eighteen to twenty
four year olds. So this isn't just a blip. This
is something that I think we really need to investigate.
But also not from a point of shame, not from
a point of like, how dare you do this? How
dare you poison your body? Like you should know better?
I don't think that's a healthier approach. Of course, we
(04:46):
know better for a lot of things, and we still
do them, and we still do them with things that
are a lot less addictive than nicotine. Nicotine is such
like it is truly like a miracle substance for our brain,
and it does such crazy, wild things to our neurochemistry.
Of course, people are getting hooked, and of course there
(05:09):
is like a whole there is a whole level of
addiction around it that needs to be discussed. So We're
gonna approach this episode from a perspective of just like
understanding psycho education, knowledge, fun facts, interesting studies, so that
you can kind of, yeah, just learn some war and
see how you might be able to get out of
(05:30):
a nicotine addiction, how you might be able to help
a friend, how you might be able to quit vaping
once and for all, quit cigarettes. Whatever your intention with
this episode is, there is something for you. Without further ado,
I'm very excited for this episode. I hope you learn
a lot. I hope you're as intrigued as I. An.
Let's get into it, all right, So let's cut to
(05:55):
the chase. How does nicotine actually work its magic or
maybe you should say it's mischief on your brain. Nicotine
is a tiny, tiny molecule, but it's incredibly powerful because
it knows how to play perfectly with your brain's natural chemistry,
and it's able to unlock all these different things in
(06:16):
our brain that feel amazing. Nicotine is actually a naturally
occurring substance. It is a nitrogen containing alkaloid that is
found in a tobacco plant at very high levels, but
also in small doses and things like tomatoes in potatoes,
in eggplants, which you may not know, but its main
(06:39):
The main place that we extract it is from tobacco
plants in the levels at which you're going to feel
something in your body. So when it enters your body,
it is quickly absorbed into your bloodstream and it zips
straight through your brain. It is absorbed especially fast if
you are smoking it because it's already in a form
(07:00):
that your body doesn't need to metabolize. And once it's
in your brain, which happens sometimes within like literally nanoseconds,
it activates your nicotinic receptors. Here's another fun fact. Even
if you don't smoke, even if you have never touched
a nicotine product in your life, you still have these receptors.
(07:21):
Every single one of us has these receptors. So when nicotine,
the product, the substance, the chemical binds to these receptors,
it triggers the release of a whole cocktail of neurochemicals.
You probably already know dopamine, serotonin. We'll get into those
in a second, but the main one is a neurotransmitter
(07:42):
called acetocholine, which is essential for voluntary muscle movements but
also for focus, which is why when you smoke, vape,
whatever it is, you may immediately feel more alert, more
in tune with your surroundings, and more concentrated on whenever
is in front of you. It's why a lot of
(08:02):
people in their twenties often get hooked to nicotine as
a focused substance when they're studying or working. It's why
a lot of people who work nights or our chefs
or work those really intense long haul jobs also get
addicted to this product because it does wonders for your brain.
There's no denying that the other star of the show is,
(08:26):
of course, dopamine. Acidalcolline is where I guess we get them.
We notice the main influence on our attention and on
our focus and on our mood. Dopamine is what.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Really hooks you.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So when dopamine floods your brain's reward pathway, specifically the
mesolymbic pathway, often called the brain's pleasure circuit, it creates
feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, even euphoria. And it's the same
pathway that is activated by food, by sex, by drugs.
So that hit you get from nicotine as soon as
(09:01):
that enters your body and your brain begins to associate
it with it with pleasurable feelings. It's just going to
keep screaming. We want more of that, we want more
good stuff, We want to feel better, feel more, pleasure more.
Nicotine also influences nora penephrine, which again makes you feel
more awake, more alert, more focused, and also glutamate, which
(09:28):
after the initial stimulant effect, will then have that counterbalance
of gabba which is going to bring you a sense
of relaxation and reduced anxiety. All of this is happening,
happening very very quickly, and the more you begin to
associate the puff of a vape or the puff of
(09:49):
a cigarette with that feeling, the more the biological mechanism
of addiction begins to really take a hold. This is
the biological trap of substances like nicotine. With repeated nicotine exposure,
those brain receptors that we mentioned before, they also become desensitized.
So after the initial perhaps weeks or months, maybe even
(10:13):
years of getting that same feeling of pleasure, depending on
how often you're using it, they are going to stop
responding as strongly to nicotine over time, and so to compensate,
your brain actually creates more of these receptors. This is
a process known as upregulation, and it means that your
(10:34):
brain now needs more nicotine to just feel normal or
to achieve the same effects as you previously did. This
is why I think it's so important that we understand
like the neuic chemistry and the biology of addiction, because
there is some like wild stuff happening in our brain
that we tend to ignore, and we put it all
(10:56):
down to our discipline, or to our morals, or to
our I don't know, our sense of like agency, when
we're actually fighting an uphill battle against our brain's natural
desire to experience more pleasure and to experience more dopamine
and here is a highly potent substance that does that
(11:20):
for us. So then when nicotine levels drop, maybe it's
been a couple hours since your last nicotine gum, whatever
it is, those extra desensitized receptors, they are no longer
being stimulated. And this imbalance is what creates really uncomfortable
physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms. So irritability, anxiety, difficulty concentrating,
(11:46):
you get restlessness like you're you get these cravings, even
like sometimes physical aches, and these symptoms are actually really unpleasant,
and we know through through this like repeated learning process
that the quickst way to alleviate them is just to
go back to the product, is just to introduce more nicotine.
This desperate and in fact sometimes unacknowledged kind of behavioral
(12:12):
loop really fuels our physical dependence and creates the compulsion
and creates the addiction. So you know, again, as amazingly
adaptive as your brain is, your brain also actively adapts
to a substance that is actually not that bad for you.
Nicotine is not bad for you. It's what it comes in,
(12:36):
and so you need more and more of it, which
means that you ingest more and more of these terrible chemicals,
terrible other substances that just like wear and tear your
body like not much else can do. Another part of
this physical and psychological dependency or addiction is also stress.
(12:58):
Stress plays a few role because nicotine is a special
kind of drug in that it is both a stimulant
meaning that it makes you happy and energetic, but also
a depressant, meaning that it calms down your nervous system.
I'm sure you guys will have seen the trope on
TV and in cinema of like the stressed out, overworked
(13:19):
character lighting up a cigarette with a glass of wine
at the end of the long day. I think it's
pretty fair to say that we as a generation in
this decade, those of us in our twenties, are as
stressed out generation.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
We are very stressed.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
It's a time of so much change, so much upheaval,
especially for like again, for our generation, who was dealing
with a whole litany of things that previous generations didn't
have to deal with. So it might be, you know,
not that surprising that a lot of us actually go
to nicotine as a perceived tool for emotional regulation. A
(13:55):
twenty nineteen study published in the journal Addiction Biology demonstrated
this by looking at how stress messes with the brains
of smokers, and the results of this study were pretty
illuminating and mind blowing. Researchers gave some smokers in the
study stress hormones to mimic a real life stress response.
(14:16):
Then they asked them to go into an MRI scanner
and to do a memory task. Normally, the part of
the brain that helps with self control, your prefrontal cortex
would light up to help you stay focused doing a
task like this, but under stress, activity here was massively reduced.
Then came the really interesting part. The smokers had to
(14:39):
choose between completing the task for money or puffs of
a cigarette, not even an entire cigarette. Those who were
taking the stress hormones, they went for the cigarettes way more,
even though they didn't report feeling more cravings. So basically
(15:01):
stress didn't just make them want to smoke. It quietly
kind of shut down the brain's ability to choose anything else,
even like a cash reward. You're feeling stressed, that is
the first place your brain is going to go. And
since our reducing stress takes a priority in our mind,
of course, that is the habit that you're going to
(15:22):
continue to choose, even when it's sometimes at the expense
of doing something that's perhaps more productive. This can also,
you know, crucially lead to a false sense of control
over our stress, and not just over our stress, but
you know, if you're going through a breakup, over your sadness,
if you're going through like a real identity change or
(15:42):
identity shift, your sense of existential dread, or your sense
of just like general life stress, nicotine often feels like
it helps with these feelings. It gives you a real
moment of calm. It gives you a moment of focus,
sometimes of peace in these situations. Can't deny that. But
does it actually help with the stress in the long term.
(16:04):
This short answer is no.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
It really doesn't.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
The immediate relief that you may feel when you smoke
or vape, it isn't genuine stress reduction. More often that
relief comes from two things. The fact is is that
you're actually putting your body under more stress because you
are addicted to a substance in constantly going through like
a miniature version of withdrawal from that substance unless you
(16:30):
are constantly using it. And it could also be that
it's not the nicotine that's helping you. It's the fact
that you're taking a moment out of your day, or
it's the fact that you have a sense of ritual
that's reducing your stress. It's not actually the nicotine entirely.
In reality, chronic nicotine use is actually associated with increased
(16:54):
anxiety and stress over time. A study published back in
two thousand and one, so a little while ago but
still relevant, it actually found that teenagers who regularly smoke
were significantly more likely to report higher stress levels compared
to those who had quit smoking. This is because the
nicotine disrupts the brain's natural stress regulation systems, making you
(17:17):
more prone to anxiety when you're not using it. The
perceived control is a trick your brain plays on you
because it wants the nicotine. You can kind of see
how this cycle becomes really tricky to break right. The
more you use it, the more stress you feel when
you can't use it, So the greater the pull towards
(17:38):
the substance is, and the more singular your coping strategy becomes,
whereby a cigarette or nicotine is the only thing that
you want. I think another element of nicotine addiction or
nicotine usage really comes down to the fact that at
(17:59):
different at times and continuously, smoking has been marketed and
perceived as cool, as rebellious, or like a symbol of
being part of the in group. This social dimension is
actually a huge psychological hook, particularly when we're in our
teenage years, but also when we're in our twenties and
(18:19):
you just really want to belong. You want to feel
like you know you're part of a group, you're part
of a crowd, that you're aligned with people. We can
think about this through looking at psychologists to Herbert Kellman's
different types or levels of conformity, which he theorized and
worked on in the nineteen fifties. Basically, he came up
(18:41):
with this theory of how we adjust our behavior to
match those around us, and you going to be applied everywhere.
Like this theory applies to cults, it applies to bullying,
It applies to why we like certain artists, why we
choose certain clothes. It also can be applied to why
we spoke. So the first level of conformity is compliance.
(19:05):
This is when you publicly go along with the group's behavior,
even if you don't privately agree with it, because you
want to gain rewards or avoid a sense of social punishment.
So you pick up a vapor at a party because
everyone else is doing it. You have the cigarette outside
because everyone else is outside. You don't want to be
the only one inside. You're conforming to fit in, you're
conforming to be accepted, but maybe at that point you're
(19:27):
not truly enjoying it or liking it. Interestingly, compliance stops
when there is no group pressure to conform, so you're
not going to have a cigarette unless you're in the
social situation. Next is identification. You conform because you like
or respect the group or person and you want to
(19:47):
maintain a desirable relationship with them, and you also want
to be more like them at all times. So maybe
you're older sibling vapes or like the cool girls in
the locker room like all tunick. You adopt the behavior
because it strengthens your bond with the group at all times.
You're probably performing the behavior even when they're not around,
(20:10):
or you're not getting pressured into it as much explicitly.
Thirdly is internalization. This is the deepest level of conformity,
and it happens when you actually come to privately accept
the belief or the behavior as your own because you
genuinely believe that it is beneficial, that it aligns with
your persona, it aligns with your values. This happens with
(20:35):
nicotine when you know you perhaps have been introduced through
those other mechanisms, and then you suddenly start to feel
the biological and psychological pool yourself, and so it becomes
integrated into how.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
You view your life.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
You know, you believe that smoking makes you calmer. You
believe that vaping helps you focus. You believe that you
know it makes you look a certain way. You're habit
has at that stage become deeply embedded into your self perception.
And it's also happening at the same time as a
lot of underlying biological mechanisms. The reasons for doing a
(21:11):
behavior changes over time, and it changes as your neurochemistry
is changing in response to this highly addictive substance. We
know that alongside this as well, So you're dealing with
this biological component, this stress component, this social component, and
(21:31):
then we have the marketing component. Tobacco and vaping industries.
The tobacco and vaping industry are incredibly good at what
they do in terms of getting more people smoking, and
they exploit these psychological vulnerabilities and very sophisticated, insidious ways
(21:52):
that often targets young people, often leverages social desirability and
the desire for belonging. So we're going to talk about
just how powerful these mechanisms are, but also how you
can I guess, act against them and maybe even escape
the pool and the addiction to nicotine. After this shortbreak,
(22:19):
flavored vapes, sleek designs, social media influences, and I guess
also the widespread retail availability of nicotine products are all
tactics designed to attract a new generation of users that
a new generation that needs to replace the generation that
used to smoke more Traditionally, these designs and flavors, they
(22:44):
have been cooked up in a lab and they are
often specifically engineered to appeal to younger, novelty seeking demographics,
which is one of the reasons we're seeing such a
growth in a younger audience taking up vaping. Huge part
of why vaping and nicotine is having a moment and
(23:04):
rising was its initial marketing as a healthy alternative to cigarettes,
or a safer way to quit smoking, or even just
a harmless recreational activity. This narrative was incredibly effective in
capturing a more health conscious generation that we found ourselves in.
And the thing is they weren't lying when they said
(23:26):
that it was healthier. It was healthier because there was
no longer tudinal studies proving otherwise, and because it was
just a different way of consuming the same product with
a different baseline of chemicals that didn't have as much
research as cigarettes, they were really able to play the
(23:47):
naive card.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
You know.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
It's it's really crazy.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
When you get into like the history of the tobacco
industry and how its little grimy fingers are in literally
everything every industry.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
That you can think of.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
I think public perception even now is often confused about
the relative harms of vaping versus traditional cigarettes, with many
of us wrongly believing vaping is harmless or significantly less
harmful than it actually is. You know, it tastes like blueberries, Like,
how could this possibly be unhealthy for me? And this
deliberate blurring of the lines is a powerful marketing tool.
(24:25):
It's leveraging misinformation to normalize and popularize usage. It's burying
research papers, it's burying people who say something against this
product by you know, undermining their credibility or by getting
(24:45):
paying off another group of researchers or another university to
write a positive paper. You know, they could shell out
millions of dollars to get the results they want for
this product they're trying to make money off of. And
here's where this is really really concerning is that like
vaping is actually and has been found to be more
(25:07):
addictive than traditional cigarettes, and it has people consuming higher
dosages and more nicotine than they would if they had
been smoking, especially for people who were trying to quit smoking.
They've done studies comparing the level of nicotine. I guess
the levels of nicotine they were inhaling slash consuming before
(25:32):
when they were smoking versus now when they're vaping, and
it's higher some individuals. And I know this is a
bit more anecdotal, but I've spoken to people who are
finding it so hard to quit vaping that they have
gone back to traditional cigarettes as a perceived stepping stone
towards quitting nicotine in general vaping mainly like they find
(25:54):
that cigarettes and their use of cigarettes are actually easier
to control because you can't do it in public spaces
as easily. You can't or slash. You don't want to
smoke in your home or in your car or in
front of people, so there's more of a barrier to
constant usage. If you want some evidence that this is
actually happening, or that it's not just observational, there was
(26:18):
one twenty twenty study I found from researchers at the
University of Southern California, which basically analyzed over three thousand
Twitter posts looking at common themes related to quitting Jewel
the vape brand it's kind.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Of gone a little bit out of style now. But
not only were.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Over a quarter of the posts talking about different methods
to quit using jewel, but there was quite a big
proportion of them joking about how they were going to
try picking up smoking cigarettes to do so. I also
saw a recent Reddit thread from someone basically conducting an
experiment on themselves by going back to cigarettes and attempts
(26:54):
to quit vaping to see if it was going to
be successful. They tried all these other things, they couldn't
do it. Even just a quick look over the other
comments that followed that showed that this was not a
unique situation. A lot of people were saying that the
strength and the availability of over the counter vapes, and
the social acceptance and the fact that they taste great
(27:14):
and they don't smell us terrible has made them even
more dependent on nicotine than they ever were before. The
initial promise of vaping that it was a healthier alternative,
that it was going to help people. I think it's
just simply created a new complex addiction pathway. Here's another
element of this that I just considered as well.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
I need to introduce this.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Our brains are really clever at making us believe we
don't have a problem, So now we're also phasing our
own minds, right, Our brains have this really great way
of convincing us that we could quit at any time,
that we're not smoking as much as we think we are,
that you know, we haven't under control, as a way
to keep us hooked because it does make us feel good,
(27:59):
even when rational we know that we're kind of lying
to ourselves. I had this friend who used to smoke
five cigarettes a day, but only five, Like she would
only have five cigarettes a day, and she would always say,
like when I turned twenty five, I'm gonna quit. And
one day we got approached by these like marketing people
on the street doing a survey when we were at UNI,
(28:21):
and they came up to us and they were like,
do do either of you guys smoke?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
We're conducting some research. And she said no.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
She's like, no, I don't and she fully like afterwards,
I asked her, I was like, why did you say no,
Like you do smoke, and she was like, oh, no, no, no,
like I don't smoke because I only smoke five a
day and I only smoked them when I'm out, and
I only smoked them on weekends or like when I'm drinking,
which back then we were in college so we were
drinking all the time, but she was like, no, There
(28:48):
was this cognitive dissonance. I don't smoke. I'm not a smoker,
even though she had literally had one five minutes before.
Cognitive dissonance is a powerful psychological discomfort we feel when
our beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors clash. In the context of nicotine,
the clash is very glaring, and that's a great example
(29:10):
of it right there. The deeply held belief of I
know that smoking and vaping is bad for my health
goes up against the fact that we are continuing to
smoke and vape. This creates an internal tension, kind of
mental unease, where two things can't be true, like those
(29:30):
two things that we know this is bad for us,
we know we care about our health, and yet we
continue to do it. They can't all exist at once
without making us uncomfortable, and so our brain does a
few things to kind of reduce the discomfort and kind
of rationalize our behavior or lie to us. So, for example,
(29:50):
we might minimize the harm its causing and say things like, oh,
it's actually not that bad, like oh, my grandma she
smoked a packaday and she never got care answer like
this is this is a lie some people just doesn't
hurt some people. We might think everyone does it, so
I won't be alone in dealing with the health consequences.
So surely again, like this isn't gonna hurt me, and
(30:14):
if it does, it all hurt other people as well.
We might convince ourselves that we aren't actually smokers. You know,
a smoker is someone who smokes more than five cigarettes
or who smokes, you know, a pack of day, And
if I'm not smoking that much, well then I'm not
a smoker. We might focus on the perceived benefits.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
You know, well, it.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Helps me relax and destress, and stress is more stress
is more dangerous than smoking, so actually I'm doing myself
a favor. We might also place it on external factors,
like well, I'm going through a breakup, or my job
is stressful right now, or everyone around me is smoking,
so I have to. It's not about me that's making
(30:55):
the choice. It's my circumstances, and the biggest one is
the promise of future action. So it's okay to do
this right now because I know I'm going to quit
when I'm twenty five. I know I'm going to quit
after this big exam after this holiday. I know I'm
going to quit, you know what, I feel ready, and
that I could do that at any time, just that
(31:17):
I don't actually have a problem right now. These rationalizations
are basically lies, often unconscious lies, we tell ourselves to
maintain a consistent self image and to again reduce that
internal psychological discomfort. They've become very powerful mental barriers, making
(31:37):
it easier to keep using nicotine, even in the face
of overwhelming evidence that it's going to harm us. Quitting
nicotine is notoriously difficult, precisely because it has and it
is known as a multi layered addiction. It's physical, it's psychological,
it's social, it's behavioral, it's cognitive, it's so it's just
it's cultural. There's so many levels to this. It's not
(32:00):
just breaking one chain, it's breaking many, many intricately woven
ones that want to keep you locked in on this behavior. Again, nicotine,
as it's in a pure form, is not actually bad
for you. There are nicotinic receptors in all of our brains.
It is acting on very positive chemicals in our brain.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
That are helpful.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
It's what it comes in that is so bad for us.
The intense discomfort of withdrawal symptoms as well. That is
a massive barrier, and that is why we continue to
consume what we know is a bad and harmful product,
even when we don't always want to. Your body genuinely
(32:42):
feels unwell. The quickest way to relieve that is more nicotine.
Of course, then it becomes deeply entwined as well with
that emotional regulation we were talking about. For long term
users as well, nicotine can also become deeply embedded in
their personal and social identity. I am a smoke, I
am a vapor. This is part of my look. Letting
(33:04):
go of that identity can feel like losing a part
of yourself. And that's not a silly thing. That's not
a small thing either. And if all your friends and
all your family still uses nicotine, again, the social pressure
direct or indirect, the fear of missing out on shared
rituals can make it incredibly challenging. So how do we
(33:25):
actually start to unlearn what is simply, at its core,
just a bad habit that is held up by a
lot of underlying mechanisms. We've already spoken about, how do
we unlearn the bad habit? So we need to target
all three levels of this addiction, the physical, the psychological.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
And the behavior.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
And it's a conscious act of reprogramming your brain and
your daily life to respond differently to the triggers or
I don't know, I guess yeah, the triggers is the
best word your triggers for you using nicotine initially, breaking
the physical cycle is really crucial. Approaches such as nicotine
(34:06):
replacement therapy using patches, gums, lozenges, and halos, whatever it is,
can really reduce physical withdrawal symptoms, giving you the psychological
space to focus on the more cognitive and behavioral aspects.
This helps your body kind of wean off the physical
dependency and lessen the physical cues that might tell you
(34:29):
that you need to vape or need a cigarette. This
might take you a couple of times, because you know
there are so many other things that are going.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
To be pulling you back.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
That's okay. Every time that you try is still a
win in my mind. Even if you end up going back,
that's still a couple of days that you gave your
lungs a break or that you you know, had a
bit of space just to like analyze what was really
causing this behavior. So, however, many times it takes. Once
(35:01):
you get ahold of the physical triggers, you can then
start to identify and disrupt the behavioral triggers. The first
step to this is, of course, self awareness. I know
it's going to sound so simple, but really pay attention
to when and why you want to use nicotine. What
are your most common psychological triggers. Is it certain specific
(35:21):
times of the day, certain specific emotions like sadness, like dread,
like stress like anxiety? Is it particular places, social situations,
even certain objects like when you're on your phone. Just
take a notice of when you have that overwhelming feeling
(35:42):
of like I need to cigarette right now or I
need to vape right now. You can then try to
temporarily avoid strong triggers, if possible, by just asking yourself
to ignore it for a minute, for a minute, and
then a minute in fifteen seconds and then just go
buy the seconds. I always think of that Kimmi Schmidt.
(36:03):
I think it's Kimy Schmidt quote. That's like, you can
do anything for thirty seconds. You can avoid smoking, you
can avoid vaping for just thirty seconds and then another
thirty seconds. More importantly, though, actively develop and practice healthy
replacement behaviors for those triggers.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
So we talked.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
About the physical replacements. But if you habitually smoke and
vape with your morning coffee or when you're stressed or
whatever it is, try and replace that behavior with something
else so you still have the ritual. So when you
are like having your morning coffee instead of vaping, try
(36:44):
and like just journal, have a pen in your fingers instead.
If you find yourself vaping when you're at Worth because
you're distracted or you're bored, get some gum. Start chewing gum.
Like that's I know it sounds small, but you've got
to like almost confuse your brain and be like, this
is what we used to do, and this feels remarkably similar.
(37:05):
It's almost ninety percent there, but like the ten percent
that's not there, like we can just hopefully ignore that
and hopefully feel like this is close enough. You know,
if you used to take smoke breaks at work when
you got stressed, take a five minute walk around the
block instead. Even pair this like walking around with buying
(37:27):
yourself a snack or buying yourself a treat, so you're
getting that little dopamine boost whilst replacing the thing you're
getting a reward from I also think setting a goal
that you could only do if you are not just
smoking one something you really want to do is really
really amazing. So for example, there are people who like
(37:47):
have kids, and they think, well, I want to be
able to do this with my children, and I won't
be able to do that if I keep smoking. That's
a great motivator. Start training for like some kind of
endurance race, or trying to get fitter, or trying to
do something that you just can't do if you're smoking,
even like.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Long haul flights.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
If you're really addicted, you obviously can't smoke or vape
on a plane, and maybe that's holding you back. What's
something that you know you could only do if this
product was no longer in your life. Since nicotine often
serves as a physical and emotional crutch as well, we
need to cultivate healthier ways to manage stress and boredom
(38:26):
or anger or sadness or.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Whatever it is. You know.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
The thing is is that I can't tell you what
that strategy is going to be for you, because it's
actually just like an entirely personal preference. For some people,
it's exercise. For some people, it's meditation. For some people,
it's like physical like hobbies that involve your hands, like knitting,
like coloring in, like sudoko. It's talking to a friend.
(38:50):
Maybe it's just therapy. The goal here is to replace
an unhealthy coping mechanism, because smoking is a coping mechanism,
with a beneficial one. Because we know, we also know
that our brain likes to rationalize our behaviors, as we
just spoke about, it's also important to try and restructure
these as well, actively challenge those lies and rationalizations and
(39:13):
false beliefs with the truth. You know, For example, we
might tell ourselves that nicotine helps me destress. This could
be restructured to something like nicotine relieves withdrawal, which feels
like destressing, but in fact, I know my overall anxiety
is going to increase long term. You know, we might
(39:34):
be saying to ourselves, Oh, but I'm not really a smoker.
Maybe you could say instead, a smoker is someone who smokes,
and what am I currently doing? I'm smoking. So if
I don't I don't know admire the identity of a smoker.
If I don't see this as who I am, I
(39:55):
have to acknowledge that it is who I am, and
that I'm in like I'm tied up with those things
and those parts of this activity that I don't find admirable.
What does that say about my self?
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Concept?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Just really question the deceptive narratives your brain tells you
and call it out for being sneaky. I think under everything,
a belief and an actual desire and your own ability
to quit is also super important. No one can quit
unless they actually want to, and unless they actually believe
they can. You can give people one hundred thousand tips
(40:30):
and tricks to stop vaping, but unless you want to
do it, which I assume you do considering you're listening
to this episode, you won't. So think about your why.
There is something calling you to want to quit or
to reconsider this relationship. Is it because you want to
live a long and healthy life. Is it because you
want to complete some kind of fitness goal. Is it
(40:50):
because you're starting to realize that this habit is actually
really uncle and that people are judging you. I think
at times when you are doubting your ability and whether
this is the right choice, just returning to this why
really helps anchor you in that personal drive you have
for quitting. On the back of that. I know we've
(41:11):
kind of introduced this in small dosages, but it's so
helpful just to set small achievable goals. For example, like
I said, just going thirty seconds or an hour without
trying this, like one smoke free day, rather than just
going cold turkey. I know a lot of people say
go cold turkey. I still think that like every small thing,
(41:34):
every small positive move in the right direction, every time
you show yourself that you can, even if it's just
for smaller and smaller than larger and larger increments of time,
The more you build self trust, self efficacy, the more
you see that, like, your life is not empty without
this substance. As we said earlier, you know this isn't necessarily.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
A quick fix.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
It might not have you quitting in the moment, but
it is a worthwhile interruption to the addiction cycle. Here's
a crucial, compassionate truth. Relapse is a common part of
the quitting journey for many many people. It is not
a sign of failure. Research and clinical guidelines show that
(42:17):
most smokers make multiple attempts, sometimes upwards of fifteen before
achieving long term abstinence. Seeing it as a setback rather
than a full defeat. Seeing this as part of the
journey that's going to get you to fully quit is
crucial for success. If you relapse, please resist the urge
for self criticism or shame because it only makes it
(42:39):
harder to get back on track. When you're like, well,
I can't believe I did this. You know again that
part of your brain that wants to protect your self
esteem is going to say something like, well, obviously this
is a sign that we're not strong enough, and so
we could we should keep doing this. Obviously this is
a sign that this is part of who we are
and that we need this, so we should keep doing it.
This keeps you stranded in the behavioral loop, in the compulsion.
(43:04):
It's so easy to throw in the towel at times
like this, but don't let one lapse turn into a
full blown relapse. Immediately try and get yourself to recommit
to quitting aust your strategy. This is an important learning,
this important lesson as to what drove you to relapse, Like,
there is a trigger there that was ignored, There was
(43:26):
a compulsion there that was just too hard to overcome.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
What is it? How can you gain mastery.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Over that the next time? And Finally, this is the
biggest tip I have for I think any kind of
quitting of any kind of behavior that you don't like,
tell your friends, tell your family, tell the people you
are around the most that this isn't this is something
you want to do, that this is something that you
are committed to doing, because it gives you accountability. If
(43:55):
you say to your friends, I really want to quit smoking,
I just feel like there's more of a barrier or
a sense of, you know, judgment sometimes if you're not
especially friends who don't smoke or friends who don't vape.
Of course, if you tell your friends who do smoke, like, oh,
I'm gonna quit, you know something, sometimes they don't want
(44:16):
you to quit because it continues to validate that they're
gonna be okay. So just tell people who you who
you know have opinions on this habit, who will encourage
you and help you stay kind of loyal to your goal.
It can be such an important form of extrinsic motivation.
So I think that's all we have time for. I
(44:38):
hope that this episode informed you.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
I hope that you learn something.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
I hope that you understand nicotine as a substance more.
But also the addiction behind it more as well, And
I hope you have compassion and empathy for yourself but
also the other people who are struggling with this. I know,
like nicotine usage is on the rise. That's very scary,
but I don't think that like all hope is lost.
And I know it's like times at the moment sometimes
(45:01):
it feels like a cigarette or whatever it is is
the only hope. But I promise it's not. And I
promise that yeah, one day you'll be able to be like, wow,
I can't believe I smoked back then. Oh yeah, I
used to be a smoker, but you're not anymore. So
that's my wish for you. If you enjoyed this episode,
share it with a friend who you think might need
to hear it. Maybe your friend who is sigarettely smoking
(45:24):
but won't tell anyone, or might like my friend who
said she wasn't a smoker because she smoked only five
cigarettes a day. Whoever it is who needs to hear,
share a link with them. Make sure that you were
following along wherever you are listening, and give a five
star review if you feel cold to do so. And hey,
if you're still here watching our emoji.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
B leave.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
I don't want to make it like a cigarette emoji
because that's too basic. Leave a little puff of smoke
emoji down below so I know that you made it
this far. Thanks for listening to the end. That's so
nice of you. I appreciate that so much. But until
next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
You've got this. We will talk very very soon.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Mh.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we break down the Psychology
of your twenties. Today, we are diving into a topic
I think that hits close to home for so many
(00:43):
of us, even if we don't always want to openly
admit it or acknowledge it. Honestly, my inbox has been
just like buzzing with requests for this episode. I think
I get this at least five times a week. We
are talking about the psychology of nicotine, and I definitely
(01:04):
saw a rise in requests for this episode after we
did our twenty Biggest Mistakes People Make in their twenties
episode and we talked about smoking, and I had a
lot of messages from people being like, how come you've
never done an episode on this, Well, guess what, there
was one right around the corner. This is that episode.
So nicotine is one of the world's favorite drugs, and
(01:28):
it is in fact a drug. It is highly addictive,
it is highly prevalent, its usage is very prevalent, and
the stuff it's packaged in makes it incredibly terrible for you.
We know that vapes, that cigarettes, that nicotine pouches, they
are not good for you, no matter how well the
(01:50):
marketing might try and make them same. So why are
so many of us, despite all of this knowledge, all
the education we have now now still getting hooked. Well,
I think there's quite a few interlinked reasons. Obviously, the
use of nicotine is absolutely not a new phenomena. It
has been used for so many years. It's also sometimes
(02:13):
had medicinal purposes, and it's often synonymous with socializing, with
stress relief, with status. I think, particularly with vapes even
more so than cigarettes these days, they're super accessible, even
at times affordable. You know, some stores do like multi
buy deals on them.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
They look enticing. There's this whole.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Allure around smoking and nicotine, and they have colorful packaging
and fruity flavors, and you know it's not discreete and
these items, cigarettes, vapes, they become like deeply ingrained in
social scenes. So that even if you've had all of
this education, it still kind of seems like, well, if
(02:58):
everyone else is doing it well, and why don't I.
It's like, oh, we're all hitched to the same wagon.
We're all in the same boat. As long as they're
going to face the same health consequences as me, well,
I may as well be part of the in group,
or may as well be enjoying it. Also, nicotine just
feels amazing. It just feels it feels good. And so
(03:19):
sometimes when you're in the moment and you're enjoying the
cigarette or you're enjoying the hit, it's hard to think
further down the line. So when the other side of
the coin flips over, and when the other side of
this habit comes and kind of bites you in the butt.
It's something that I think we're like, in the current moment,
(03:40):
we're not too great at acknowledging. And also because of
the fact that nicotine and smoking and vaping has had
like a revival in recent years, you know, the snowball
effect of more and more people doing it is making
it more and more enticing. It might be not very
surprising for you guys to hear it, but for the
first in decades, we are seeing nicotine use rates shift
(04:03):
significantly in younger populations, especially in Western countries. For many,
many years, the use of nicotine products was declining, and
then suddenly there has been this massive increase. There have
been studies in the UK in the US that show
e cigarette usage and nicotine uses. It is at the
(04:25):
highest it has ever been, maybe amongst eighteen to twenty
four year olds. So this isn't just a blip. This
is something that I think we really need to investigate.
But also not from a point of shame, not from
a point of like, how dare you do this? How
dare you poison your body? Like you should know better?
I don't think that's a healthier approach. Of course, we
(04:46):
know better for a lot of things, and we still
do them, and we still do them with things that
are a lot less addictive than nicotine. Nicotine is such
like it is truly like a miracle substance for our brain,
and it does such crazy, wild things to our neurochemistry.
Of course, people are getting hooked, and of course there
(05:09):
is like a whole there is a whole level of
addiction around it that needs to be discussed. So We're
gonna approach this episode from a perspective of just like
understanding psycho education, knowledge, fun facts, interesting studies, so that
you can kind of, yeah, just learn some war and
see how you might be able to get out of
(05:30):
a nicotine addiction, how you might be able to help
a friend, how you might be able to quit vaping
once and for all, quit cigarettes. Whatever your intention with
this episode is, there is something for you. Without further ado,
I'm very excited for this episode. I hope you learn
a lot. I hope you're as intrigued as I. An.
Let's get into it, all right, So let's cut to
(05:55):
the chase. How does nicotine actually work its magic or
maybe you should say it's mischief on your brain. Nicotine
is a tiny, tiny molecule, but it's incredibly powerful because
it knows how to play perfectly with your brain's natural chemistry,
and it's able to unlock all these different things in
(06:16):
our brain that feel amazing. Nicotine is actually a naturally
occurring substance. It is a nitrogen containing alkaloid that is
found in a tobacco plant at very high levels, but
also in small doses and things like tomatoes in potatoes,
in eggplants, which you may not know, but its main
(06:39):
The main place that we extract it is from tobacco
plants in the levels at which you're going to feel
something in your body. So when it enters your body,
it is quickly absorbed into your bloodstream and it zips
straight through your brain. It is absorbed especially fast if
you are smoking it because it's already in a form
(07:00):
that your body doesn't need to metabolize. And once it's
in your brain, which happens sometimes within like literally nanoseconds,
it activates your nicotinic receptors. Here's another fun fact. Even
if you don't smoke, even if you have never touched
a nicotine product in your life, you still have these receptors.
(07:21):
Every single one of us has these receptors. So when nicotine,
the product, the substance, the chemical binds to these receptors,
it triggers the release of a whole cocktail of neurochemicals.
You probably already know dopamine, serotonin. We'll get into those
in a second, but the main one is a neurotransmitter
(07:42):
called acetocholine, which is essential for voluntary muscle movements but
also for focus, which is why when you smoke, vape,
whatever it is, you may immediately feel more alert, more
in tune with your surroundings, and more concentrated on whenever
is in front of you. It's why a lot of
(08:02):
people in their twenties often get hooked to nicotine as
a focused substance when they're studying or working. It's why
a lot of people who work nights or our chefs
or work those really intense long haul jobs also get
addicted to this product because it does wonders for your brain.
There's no denying that the other star of the show is,
(08:26):
of course, dopamine. Acidalcolline is where I guess we get them.
We notice the main influence on our attention and on
our focus and on our mood. Dopamine is what.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Really hooks you.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So when dopamine floods your brain's reward pathway, specifically the
mesolymbic pathway, often called the brain's pleasure circuit, it creates
feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, even euphoria. And it's the same
pathway that is activated by food, by sex, by drugs.
So that hit you get from nicotine as soon as
(09:01):
that enters your body and your brain begins to associate
it with it with pleasurable feelings. It's just going to
keep screaming. We want more of that, we want more
good stuff, We want to feel better, feel more, pleasure more.
Nicotine also influences nora penephrine, which again makes you feel
more awake, more alert, more focused, and also glutamate, which
(09:28):
after the initial stimulant effect, will then have that counterbalance
of gabba which is going to bring you a sense
of relaxation and reduced anxiety. All of this is happening,
happening very very quickly, and the more you begin to
associate the puff of a vape or the puff of
(09:49):
a cigarette with that feeling, the more the biological mechanism
of addiction begins to really take a hold. This is
the biological trap of substances like nicotine. With repeated nicotine exposure,
those brain receptors that we mentioned before, they also become desensitized.
So after the initial perhaps weeks or months, maybe even
(10:13):
years of getting that same feeling of pleasure, depending on
how often you're using it, they are going to stop
responding as strongly to nicotine over time, and so to compensate,
your brain actually creates more of these receptors. This is
a process known as upregulation, and it means that your
(10:34):
brain now needs more nicotine to just feel normal or
to achieve the same effects as you previously did. This
is why I think it's so important that we understand
like the neuic chemistry and the biology of addiction, because
there is some like wild stuff happening in our brain
that we tend to ignore, and we put it all
(10:56):
down to our discipline, or to our morals, or to
our I don't know, our sense of like agency, when
we're actually fighting an uphill battle against our brain's natural
desire to experience more pleasure and to experience more dopamine
and here is a highly potent substance that does that
(11:20):
for us. So then when nicotine levels drop, maybe it's
been a couple hours since your last nicotine gum, whatever
it is, those extra desensitized receptors, they are no longer
being stimulated. And this imbalance is what creates really uncomfortable
physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms. So irritability, anxiety, difficulty concentrating,
(11:46):
you get restlessness like you're you get these cravings, even
like sometimes physical aches, and these symptoms are actually really unpleasant,
and we know through through this like repeated learning process
that the quickst way to alleviate them is just to
go back to the product, is just to introduce more nicotine.
This desperate and in fact sometimes unacknowledged kind of behavioral
(12:12):
loop really fuels our physical dependence and creates the compulsion
and creates the addiction. So you know, again, as amazingly
adaptive as your brain is, your brain also actively adapts
to a substance that is actually not that bad for you.
Nicotine is not bad for you. It's what it comes in,
(12:36):
and so you need more and more of it, which
means that you ingest more and more of these terrible chemicals,
terrible other substances that just like wear and tear your
body like not much else can do. Another part of
this physical and psychological dependency or addiction is also stress.
(12:58):
Stress plays a few role because nicotine is a special
kind of drug in that it is both a stimulant
meaning that it makes you happy and energetic, but also
a depressant, meaning that it calms down your nervous system.
I'm sure you guys will have seen the trope on
TV and in cinema of like the stressed out, overworked
(13:19):
character lighting up a cigarette with a glass of wine
at the end of the long day. I think it's
pretty fair to say that we as a generation in
this decade, those of us in our twenties, are as
stressed out generation.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
We are very stressed.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
It's a time of so much change, so much upheaval,
especially for like again, for our generation, who was dealing
with a whole litany of things that previous generations didn't
have to deal with. So it might be, you know,
not that surprising that a lot of us actually go
to nicotine as a perceived tool for emotional regulation. A
(13:55):
twenty nineteen study published in the journal Addiction Biology demonstrated
this by looking at how stress messes with the brains
of smokers, and the results of this study were pretty
illuminating and mind blowing. Researchers gave some smokers in the
study stress hormones to mimic a real life stress response.
(14:16):
Then they asked them to go into an MRI scanner
and to do a memory task. Normally, the part of
the brain that helps with self control, your prefrontal cortex
would light up to help you stay focused doing a
task like this, but under stress, activity here was massively reduced.
Then came the really interesting part. The smokers had to
(14:39):
choose between completing the task for money or puffs of
a cigarette, not even an entire cigarette. Those who were
taking the stress hormones, they went for the cigarettes way more,
even though they didn't report feeling more cravings. So basically
(15:01):
stress didn't just make them want to smoke. It quietly
kind of shut down the brain's ability to choose anything else,
even like a cash reward. You're feeling stressed, that is
the first place your brain is going to go. And
since our reducing stress takes a priority in our mind,
of course, that is the habit that you're going to
(15:22):
continue to choose, even when it's sometimes at the expense
of doing something that's perhaps more productive. This can also,
you know, crucially lead to a false sense of control
over our stress, and not just over our stress, but
you know, if you're going through a breakup, over your sadness,
if you're going through like a real identity change or
(15:42):
identity shift, your sense of existential dread, or your sense
of just like general life stress, nicotine often feels like
it helps with these feelings. It gives you a real
moment of calm. It gives you a moment of focus,
sometimes of peace in these situations. Can't deny that. But
does it actually help with the stress in the long term.
(16:04):
This short answer is no.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
It really doesn't.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
The immediate relief that you may feel when you smoke
or vape, it isn't genuine stress reduction. More often that
relief comes from two things. The fact is is that
you're actually putting your body under more stress because you
are addicted to a substance in constantly going through like
a miniature version of withdrawal from that substance unless you
(16:30):
are constantly using it. And it could also be that
it's not the nicotine that's helping you. It's the fact
that you're taking a moment out of your day, or
it's the fact that you have a sense of ritual
that's reducing your stress. It's not actually the nicotine entirely.
In reality, chronic nicotine use is actually associated with increased
(16:54):
anxiety and stress over time. A study published back in
two thousand and one, so a little while ago but
still relevant, it actually found that teenagers who regularly smoke
were significantly more likely to report higher stress levels compared
to those who had quit smoking. This is because the
nicotine disrupts the brain's natural stress regulation systems, making you
(17:17):
more prone to anxiety when you're not using it. The
perceived control is a trick your brain plays on you
because it wants the nicotine. You can kind of see
how this cycle becomes really tricky to break right. The
more you use it, the more stress you feel when
you can't use it, So the greater the pull towards
(17:38):
the substance is, and the more singular your coping strategy becomes,
whereby a cigarette or nicotine is the only thing that
you want. I think another element of nicotine addiction or
nicotine usage really comes down to the fact that at
(17:59):
different at times and continuously, smoking has been marketed and
perceived as cool, as rebellious, or like a symbol of
being part of the in group. This social dimension is
actually a huge psychological hook, particularly when we're in our
teenage years, but also when we're in our twenties and
(18:19):
you just really want to belong. You want to feel
like you know you're part of a group, you're part
of a crowd, that you're aligned with people. We can
think about this through looking at psychologists to Herbert Kellman's
different types or levels of conformity, which he theorized and
worked on in the nineteen fifties. Basically, he came up
(18:41):
with this theory of how we adjust our behavior to
match those around us, and you going to be applied everywhere.
Like this theory applies to cults, it applies to bullying,
It applies to why we like certain artists, why we
choose certain clothes. It also can be applied to why
we spoke. So the first level of conformity is compliance.
(19:05):
This is when you publicly go along with the group's behavior,
even if you don't privately agree with it, because you
want to gain rewards or avoid a sense of social punishment.
So you pick up a vapor at a party because
everyone else is doing it. You have the cigarette outside
because everyone else is outside. You don't want to be
the only one inside. You're conforming to fit in, you're
conforming to be accepted, but maybe at that point you're
(19:27):
not truly enjoying it or liking it. Interestingly, compliance stops
when there is no group pressure to conform, so you're
not going to have a cigarette unless you're in the
social situation. Next is identification. You conform because you like
or respect the group or person and you want to
(19:47):
maintain a desirable relationship with them, and you also want
to be more like them at all times. So maybe
you're older sibling vapes or like the cool girls in
the locker room like all tunick. You adopt the behavior
because it strengthens your bond with the group at all times.
You're probably performing the behavior even when they're not around,
(20:10):
or you're not getting pressured into it as much explicitly.
Thirdly is internalization. This is the deepest level of conformity,
and it happens when you actually come to privately accept
the belief or the behavior as your own because you
genuinely believe that it is beneficial, that it aligns with
your persona, it aligns with your values. This happens with
(20:35):
nicotine when you know you perhaps have been introduced through
those other mechanisms, and then you suddenly start to feel
the biological and psychological pool yourself, and so it becomes
integrated into how.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
You view your life.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
You know, you believe that smoking makes you calmer. You
believe that vaping helps you focus. You believe that you
know it makes you look a certain way. You're habit
has at that stage become deeply embedded into your self perception.
And it's also happening at the same time as a
lot of underlying biological mechanisms. The reasons for doing a
(21:11):
behavior changes over time, and it changes as your neurochemistry
is changing in response to this highly addictive substance. We
know that alongside this as well, So you're dealing with
this biological component, this stress component, this social component, and
(21:31):
then we have the marketing component. Tobacco and vaping industries.
The tobacco and vaping industry are incredibly good at what
they do in terms of getting more people smoking, and
they exploit these psychological vulnerabilities and very sophisticated, insidious ways
(21:52):
that often targets young people, often leverages social desirability and
the desire for belonging. So we're going to talk about
just how powerful these mechanisms are, but also how you
can I guess, act against them and maybe even escape
the pool and the addiction to nicotine. After this shortbreak,
(22:19):
flavored vapes, sleek designs, social media influences, and I guess
also the widespread retail availability of nicotine products are all
tactics designed to attract a new generation of users that
a new generation that needs to replace the generation that
used to smoke more Traditionally, these designs and flavors, they
(22:44):
have been cooked up in a lab and they are
often specifically engineered to appeal to younger, novelty seeking demographics,
which is one of the reasons we're seeing such a
growth in a younger audience taking up vaping. Huge part
of why vaping and nicotine is having a moment and
(23:04):
rising was its initial marketing as a healthy alternative to cigarettes,
or a safer way to quit smoking, or even just
a harmless recreational activity. This narrative was incredibly effective in
capturing a more health conscious generation that we found ourselves in.
And the thing is they weren't lying when they said
(23:26):
that it was healthier. It was healthier because there was
no longer tudinal studies proving otherwise, and because it was
just a different way of consuming the same product with
a different baseline of chemicals that didn't have as much
research as cigarettes, they were really able to play the
(23:47):
naive card.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
You know.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
It's it's really crazy.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
When you get into like the history of the tobacco
industry and how its little grimy fingers are in literally
everything every industry.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
That you can think of.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
I think public perception even now is often confused about
the relative harms of vaping versus traditional cigarettes, with many
of us wrongly believing vaping is harmless or significantly less
harmful than it actually is. You know, it tastes like blueberries, Like,
how could this possibly be unhealthy for me? And this
deliberate blurring of the lines is a powerful marketing tool.
(24:25):
It's leveraging misinformation to normalize and popularize usage. It's burying
research papers, it's burying people who say something against this
product by you know, undermining their credibility or by getting
(24:45):
paying off another group of researchers or another university to
write a positive paper. You know, they could shell out
millions of dollars to get the results they want for
this product they're trying to make money off of. And
here's where this is really really concerning is that like
vaping is actually and has been found to be more
(25:07):
addictive than traditional cigarettes, and it has people consuming higher
dosages and more nicotine than they would if they had
been smoking, especially for people who were trying to quit smoking.
They've done studies comparing the level of nicotine. I guess
the levels of nicotine they were inhaling slash consuming before
(25:32):
when they were smoking versus now when they're vaping, and
it's higher some individuals. And I know this is a
bit more anecdotal, but I've spoken to people who are
finding it so hard to quit vaping that they have
gone back to traditional cigarettes as a perceived stepping stone
towards quitting nicotine in general vaping mainly like they find
(25:54):
that cigarettes and their use of cigarettes are actually easier
to control because you can't do it in public spaces
as easily. You can't or slash. You don't want to
smoke in your home or in your car or in
front of people, so there's more of a barrier to
constant usage. If you want some evidence that this is
actually happening, or that it's not just observational, there was
(26:18):
one twenty twenty study I found from researchers at the
University of Southern California, which basically analyzed over three thousand
Twitter posts looking at common themes related to quitting Jewel
the vape brand it's kind.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Of gone a little bit out of style now. But
not only were.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Over a quarter of the posts talking about different methods
to quit using jewel, but there was quite a big
proportion of them joking about how they were going to
try picking up smoking cigarettes to do so. I also
saw a recent Reddit thread from someone basically conducting an
experiment on themselves by going back to cigarettes and attempts
(26:54):
to quit vaping to see if it was going to
be successful. They tried all these other things, they couldn't
do it. Even just a quick look over the other
comments that followed that showed that this was not a
unique situation. A lot of people were saying that the
strength and the availability of over the counter vapes, and
the social acceptance and the fact that they taste great
(27:14):
and they don't smell us terrible has made them even
more dependent on nicotine than they ever were before. The
initial promise of vaping that it was a healthier alternative,
that it was going to help people. I think it's
just simply created a new complex addiction pathway. Here's another
element of this that I just considered as well.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
I need to introduce this.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Our brains are really clever at making us believe we
don't have a problem, So now we're also phasing our
own minds, right, Our brains have this really great way
of convincing us that we could quit at any time,
that we're not smoking as much as we think we are,
that you know, we haven't under control, as a way
to keep us hooked because it does make us feel good,
(27:59):
even when rational we know that we're kind of lying
to ourselves. I had this friend who used to smoke
five cigarettes a day, but only five, Like she would
only have five cigarettes a day, and she would always say,
like when I turned twenty five, I'm gonna quit. And
one day we got approached by these like marketing people
on the street doing a survey when we were at UNI,
(28:21):
and they came up to us and they were like,
do do either of you guys smoke?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
We're conducting some research. And she said no.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
She's like, no, I don't and she fully like afterwards,
I asked her, I was like, why did you say no,
Like you do smoke, and she was like, oh, no, no, no,
like I don't smoke because I only smoke five a
day and I only smoked them when I'm out, and
I only smoked them on weekends or like when I'm drinking,
which back then we were in college so we were
drinking all the time, but she was like, no, There
(28:48):
was this cognitive dissonance. I don't smoke. I'm not a smoker,
even though she had literally had one five minutes before.
Cognitive dissonance is a powerful psychological discomfort we feel when
our beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors clash. In the context of nicotine,
the clash is very glaring, and that's a great example
(29:10):
of it right there. The deeply held belief of I
know that smoking and vaping is bad for my health
goes up against the fact that we are continuing to
smoke and vape. This creates an internal tension, kind of
mental unease, where two things can't be true, like those
(29:30):
two things that we know this is bad for us,
we know we care about our health, and yet we
continue to do it. They can't all exist at once
without making us uncomfortable, and so our brain does a
few things to kind of reduce the discomfort and kind
of rationalize our behavior or lie to us. So, for example,
(29:50):
we might minimize the harm its causing and say things like, oh,
it's actually not that bad, like oh, my grandma she
smoked a packaday and she never got care answer like
this is this is a lie some people just doesn't
hurt some people. We might think everyone does it, so
I won't be alone in dealing with the health consequences.
So surely again, like this isn't gonna hurt me, and
(30:14):
if it does, it all hurt other people as well.
We might convince ourselves that we aren't actually smokers. You know,
a smoker is someone who smokes more than five cigarettes
or who smokes, you know, a pack of day, And
if I'm not smoking that much, well then I'm not
a smoker. We might focus on the perceived benefits.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
You know, well, it.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Helps me relax and destress, and stress is more stress
is more dangerous than smoking, so actually I'm doing myself
a favor. We might also place it on external factors,
like well, I'm going through a breakup, or my job
is stressful right now, or everyone around me is smoking,
so I have to. It's not about me that's making
(30:55):
the choice. It's my circumstances, and the biggest one is
the promise of future action. So it's okay to do
this right now because I know I'm going to quit
when I'm twenty five. I know I'm going to quit
after this big exam after this holiday. I know I'm
going to quit, you know what, I feel ready, and
that I could do that at any time, just that
(31:17):
I don't actually have a problem right now. These rationalizations
are basically lies, often unconscious lies, we tell ourselves to
maintain a consistent self image and to again reduce that
internal psychological discomfort. They've become very powerful mental barriers, making
(31:37):
it easier to keep using nicotine, even in the face
of overwhelming evidence that it's going to harm us. Quitting
nicotine is notoriously difficult, precisely because it has and it
is known as a multi layered addiction. It's physical, it's psychological,
it's social, it's behavioral, it's cognitive, it's so it's just
it's cultural. There's so many levels to this. It's not
(32:00):
just breaking one chain, it's breaking many, many intricately woven
ones that want to keep you locked in on this behavior. Again, nicotine,
as it's in a pure form, is not actually bad
for you. There are nicotinic receptors in all of our brains.
It is acting on very positive chemicals in our brain.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
That are helpful.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
It's what it comes in that is so bad for us.
The intense discomfort of withdrawal symptoms as well. That is
a massive barrier, and that is why we continue to
consume what we know is a bad and harmful product,
even when we don't always want to. Your body genuinely
(32:42):
feels unwell. The quickest way to relieve that is more nicotine.
Of course, then it becomes deeply entwined as well with
that emotional regulation we were talking about. For long term
users as well, nicotine can also become deeply embedded in
their personal and social identity. I am a smoke, I
am a vapor. This is part of my look. Letting
(33:04):
go of that identity can feel like losing a part
of yourself. And that's not a silly thing. That's not
a small thing either. And if all your friends and
all your family still uses nicotine, again, the social pressure
direct or indirect, the fear of missing out on shared
rituals can make it incredibly challenging. So how do we
(33:25):
actually start to unlearn what is simply, at its core,
just a bad habit that is held up by a
lot of underlying mechanisms. We've already spoken about, how do
we unlearn the bad habit? So we need to target
all three levels of this addiction, the physical, the psychological.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
And the behavior.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
And it's a conscious act of reprogramming your brain and
your daily life to respond differently to the triggers or
I don't know, I guess yeah, the triggers is the
best word your triggers for you using nicotine initially, breaking
the physical cycle is really crucial. Approaches such as nicotine
(34:06):
replacement therapy using patches, gums, lozenges, and halos, whatever it is,
can really reduce physical withdrawal symptoms, giving you the psychological
space to focus on the more cognitive and behavioral aspects.
This helps your body kind of wean off the physical
dependency and lessen the physical cues that might tell you
(34:29):
that you need to vape or need a cigarette. This
might take you a couple of times, because you know
there are so many other things that are going.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
To be pulling you back.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
That's okay. Every time that you try is still a
win in my mind. Even if you end up going back,
that's still a couple of days that you gave your
lungs a break or that you you know, had a
bit of space just to like analyze what was really
causing this behavior. So, however, many times it takes. Once
(35:01):
you get ahold of the physical triggers, you can then
start to identify and disrupt the behavioral triggers. The first
step to this is, of course, self awareness. I know
it's going to sound so simple, but really pay attention
to when and why you want to use nicotine. What
are your most common psychological triggers. Is it certain specific
(35:21):
times of the day, certain specific emotions like sadness, like dread,
like stress like anxiety? Is it particular places, social situations,
even certain objects like when you're on your phone. Just
take a notice of when you have that overwhelming feeling
(35:42):
of like I need to cigarette right now or I
need to vape right now. You can then try to
temporarily avoid strong triggers, if possible, by just asking yourself
to ignore it for a minute, for a minute, and
then a minute in fifteen seconds and then just go
buy the seconds. I always think of that Kimmi Schmidt.
(36:03):
I think it's Kimy Schmidt quote. That's like, you can
do anything for thirty seconds. You can avoid smoking, you
can avoid vaping for just thirty seconds and then another
thirty seconds. More importantly, though, actively develop and practice healthy
replacement behaviors for those triggers.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
So we talked.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
About the physical replacements. But if you habitually smoke and
vape with your morning coffee or when you're stressed or
whatever it is, try and replace that behavior with something
else so you still have the ritual. So when you
are like having your morning coffee instead of vaping, try
(36:44):
and like just journal, have a pen in your fingers instead.
If you find yourself vaping when you're at Worth because
you're distracted or you're bored, get some gum. Start chewing gum.
Like that's I know it sounds small, but you've got
to like almost confuse your brain and be like, this
is what we used to do, and this feels remarkably similar.
(37:05):
It's almost ninety percent there, but like the ten percent
that's not there, like we can just hopefully ignore that
and hopefully feel like this is close enough. You know,
if you used to take smoke breaks at work when
you got stressed, take a five minute walk around the
block instead. Even pair this like walking around with buying
(37:27):
yourself a snack or buying yourself a treat, so you're
getting that little dopamine boost whilst replacing the thing you're
getting a reward from I also think setting a goal
that you could only do if you are not just
smoking one something you really want to do is really
really amazing. So for example, there are people who like
(37:47):
have kids, and they think, well, I want to be
able to do this with my children, and I won't
be able to do that if I keep smoking. That's
a great motivator. Start training for like some kind of
endurance race, or trying to get fitter, or trying to
do something that you just can't do if you're smoking,
even like.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Long haul flights.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
If you're really addicted, you obviously can't smoke or vape
on a plane, and maybe that's holding you back. What's
something that you know you could only do if this
product was no longer in your life. Since nicotine often
serves as a physical and emotional crutch as well, we
need to cultivate healthier ways to manage stress and boredom
(38:26):
or anger or sadness or.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Whatever it is. You know.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
The thing is is that I can't tell you what
that strategy is going to be for you, because it's
actually just like an entirely personal preference. For some people,
it's exercise. For some people, it's meditation. For some people,
it's like physical like hobbies that involve your hands, like knitting,
like coloring in, like sudoko. It's talking to a friend.
(38:50):
Maybe it's just therapy. The goal here is to replace
an unhealthy coping mechanism, because smoking is a coping mechanism,
with a beneficial one. Because we know, we also know
that our brain likes to rationalize our behaviors, as we
just spoke about, it's also important to try and restructure
these as well, actively challenge those lies and rationalizations and
(39:13):
false beliefs with the truth. You know, For example, we
might tell ourselves that nicotine helps me destress. This could
be restructured to something like nicotine relieves withdrawal, which feels
like destressing, but in fact, I know my overall anxiety
is going to increase long term. You know, we might
(39:34):
be saying to ourselves, Oh, but I'm not really a smoker.
Maybe you could say instead, a smoker is someone who smokes,
and what am I currently doing? I'm smoking. So if
I don't I don't know admire the identity of a smoker.
If I don't see this as who I am, I
(39:55):
have to acknowledge that it is who I am, and
that I'm in like I'm tied up with those things
and those parts of this activity that I don't find admirable.
What does that say about my self?
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Concept?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Just really question the deceptive narratives your brain tells you
and call it out for being sneaky. I think under everything,
a belief and an actual desire and your own ability
to quit is also super important. No one can quit
unless they actually want to, and unless they actually believe
they can. You can give people one hundred thousand tips
(40:30):
and tricks to stop vaping, but unless you want to
do it, which I assume you do considering you're listening
to this episode, you won't. So think about your why.
There is something calling you to want to quit or
to reconsider this relationship. Is it because you want to
live a long and healthy life. Is it because you
want to complete some kind of fitness goal. Is it
(40:50):
because you're starting to realize that this habit is actually
really uncle and that people are judging you. I think
at times when you are doubting your ability and whether
this is the right choice, just returning to this why
really helps anchor you in that personal drive you have
for quitting. On the back of that. I know we've
(41:11):
kind of introduced this in small dosages, but it's so
helpful just to set small achievable goals. For example, like
I said, just going thirty seconds or an hour without
trying this, like one smoke free day, rather than just
going cold turkey. I know a lot of people say
go cold turkey. I still think that like every small thing,
(41:34):
every small positive move in the right direction, every time
you show yourself that you can, even if it's just
for smaller and smaller than larger and larger increments of time,
The more you build self trust, self efficacy, the more
you see that, like, your life is not empty without
this substance. As we said earlier, you know this isn't necessarily.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
A quick fix.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
It might not have you quitting in the moment, but
it is a worthwhile interruption to the addiction cycle. Here's
a crucial, compassionate truth. Relapse is a common part of
the quitting journey for many many people. It is not
a sign of failure. Research and clinical guidelines show that
(42:17):
most smokers make multiple attempts, sometimes upwards of fifteen before
achieving long term abstinence. Seeing it as a setback rather
than a full defeat. Seeing this as part of the
journey that's going to get you to fully quit is
crucial for success. If you relapse, please resist the urge
for self criticism or shame because it only makes it
(42:39):
harder to get back on track. When you're like, well,
I can't believe I did this. You know again that
part of your brain that wants to protect your self
esteem is going to say something like, well, obviously this
is a sign that we're not strong enough, and so
we could we should keep doing this. Obviously this is
a sign that this is part of who we are
and that we need this, so we should keep doing it.
This keeps you stranded in the behavioral loop, in the compulsion.
(43:04):
It's so easy to throw in the towel at times
like this, but don't let one lapse turn into a
full blown relapse. Immediately try and get yourself to recommit
to quitting aust your strategy. This is an important learning,
this important lesson as to what drove you to relapse, Like,
there is a trigger there that was ignored, There was
(43:26):
a compulsion there that was just too hard to overcome.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
What is it? How can you gain mastery.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Over that the next time? And Finally, this is the
biggest tip I have for I think any kind of
quitting of any kind of behavior that you don't like,
tell your friends, tell your family, tell the people you
are around the most that this isn't this is something
you want to do, that this is something that you
are committed to doing, because it gives you accountability. If
(43:55):
you say to your friends, I really want to quit smoking,
I just feel like there's more of a barrier or
a sense of, you know, judgment sometimes if you're not
especially friends who don't smoke or friends who don't vape.
Of course, if you tell your friends who do smoke, like, oh,
I'm gonna quit, you know something, sometimes they don't want
(44:16):
you to quit because it continues to validate that they're
gonna be okay. So just tell people who you who
you know have opinions on this habit, who will encourage
you and help you stay kind of loyal to your goal.
It can be such an important form of extrinsic motivation.
So I think that's all we have time for. I
(44:38):
hope that this episode informed you.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
I hope that you learn something.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
I hope that you understand nicotine as a substance more.
But also the addiction behind it more as well, And
I hope you have compassion and empathy for yourself but
also the other people who are struggling with this. I know,
like nicotine usage is on the rise. That's very scary,
but I don't think that like all hope is lost.
And I know it's like times at the moment sometimes
(45:01):
it feels like a cigarette or whatever it is is
the only hope. But I promise it's not. And I
promise that yeah, one day you'll be able to be like, wow,
I can't believe I smoked back then. Oh yeah, I
used to be a smoker, but you're not anymore. So
that's my wish for you. If you enjoyed this episode,
share it with a friend who you think might need
to hear it. Maybe your friend who is sigarettely smoking
(45:24):
but won't tell anyone, or might like my friend who
said she wasn't a smoker because she smoked only five
cigarettes a day. Whoever it is who needs to hear,
share a link with them. Make sure that you were
following along wherever you are listening, and give a five
star review if you feel cold to do so. And hey,
if you're still here watching our emoji.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
B leave.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
I don't want to make it like a cigarette emoji
because that's too basic. Leave a little puff of smoke
emoji down below so I know that you made it
this far. Thanks for listening to the end. That's so
nice of you. I appreciate that so much. But until
next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
You've got this. We will talk very very soon.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Mh.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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