Friend: “No, I’m not too worried, because I only smoke when I drink, so I won’t get addicted.”
Me: “That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
F: “No really, I’ll only get addicted to nicotine and have cravings when I’m drinking. It’s state-dependent shit. Or something.”
M: “That still doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
F: “I’m 100% sure. I’ll bet you $100.”
M: “Done.”
Can anyone resolve my wager?
I think the concept of state-dependent addiction is physiologically invalid, but if he only smokes when he’s drunk, it’s possible he would never ingest enough nicotine to get addicted in the first place. What always got me is having the half-pack of cigarettes left ofter the next day. That tiny voice says “hey, I paid for those…”
Also, some people are just more prone to nicotine addiction than others. Some people just smoke increasingly large amounts of tobacco and have a titanic effort quitting, if ever, and some people can smoke occasionally and get away with it (these are called ‘chippers’ in industry parlance). I myself have been both… there was a time when I smoked nearly a half pack a day, and I gave that daily habit up in about 2002. In 2008 I think I’ve smoked 2 packs total (always with alcohol involved). So your friend may not be as batty as you think, but if I were him, I shouldn’t tempt fate.
I don’t know about from a biological position, but from a psychological position I don’t think it’ll work. It could tie his desire for cigarettes to drinking, so when he starts he’ll be reminded to have a smoke as well. But it’s not going to decrease the amount he does it normally. It’s not so much state-dependent learning as it is self-conditioning.
Your friend doesn’t understand the difference between psychological dependency and physical dependency. Sadly, nicotine creates both in great heaping helpings while coating your lungs with something that would offend a Bhopal resident.
Briefly, a psychological dependency is a very difficult habit. Chewing gum can be a psychological dependency if you always chew gum after a meal and you get twitchy if you can’t have a stick, because something is wrong with a world without gum. A psychological dependency can extend to your whole lifestyle and kicking it can require rather extreme changes, like moving out of the crackhouse and becoming an investment banker.
A physical dependency is what happens when a drug replaces a natural neurotransmitter, so your brain stops producing that neurotransmitter and relies on what the drug provides. Your whole body is a complex mess of balancing beams, blood, and spit: When a drug pushes down on one end of a balancing beam, your body stops pushing down on that end so the natural weight on the other end is enough to bring the whole beam back into balance. When you stop cold-turkey, the beam shoots up and hits you in the face. It takes a while for your body to rebalance the beam so you end up with a beam hitting you in the face for a while. That’s withdrawl. Both heroin and nicotine provide really cool withdrawl symptoms for people at least a county away from you.
To bring this back to your subject: It’s possible the psychological dependency could be linked to drinking. The physical dependency will not be so obliging.
I’ve been smoking while drinking almost as long as I’ve been drinking, and I rarely get the urge to pick up a smoke while sober. One or two nights is never enough to induce nicotine cravings, and the experience is rather different without a buzz on. Cigarettes are much harsher when you senses are not dulled. Additionally, nicotine alone usually makes people feel a little sick and weak in the knees. When drinking, it’s just a better buzz.
Regardless, addiction is highly dependent on the person involved and he’s playing with fire. Plenty of smokers start out with a complex system of increasingly lax rules to prevent addiction, but end up breaking them anyway.
Certainly nothing to play around with (smoking), but my anectdotal evidence: when I quit drinking, my nicotine habit evaporated. I have zero craving for it. I used to smoke 2 cigarettes per beer. Zero beers meant zero cigs. shrug
Addictions are funny things. They vary wildly from person to person. Anecdotes:
I smoked 1 - 3 packs a day for 10 years. Six years ago I quit cold turkey because I didn’t really like it anymore & it made my wife happy. I don’t think I was ever truly ‘addicted’. The only time I’ve ever felt a craving was while drunk & in the presence of smoke.
Here I am six years later & still mostly smoke-free. But I’ll occasionally have a few if I’m out drinking around other smokers. And on the rare occasion that’s it’s a serious bender (a bachelor party or something) I might end up smoking quite a lot. But I haven’t picked it back up as a habit.
My father, on the other hand, tried quitting unsuccessfully a few times and finally got that crazy “injection-in-the-head” treatment two years ago. He hasn’t picked up the habit again, but he says he could quite easily.
So the answer is “It depends”. The available evidence suggests I’m in a very small minority. I’d like to see more serious research on the subject, but I don’t think it’s politically possible to get a study funded which is based on the premise that smoking may not be universally addictive.
Could you expand on that a bit, EJ? What sort of smoking cessation program involves an injection in the head?
I believe it was something similar to this. The shots were administered behind the ears, and he was also given a couple weeks worth of pills to take.