Addiction
Today Dave reveals that he faces serious health risks unless he quits smoking. It is often said that nicotine is more addictive than heroin. In the strictest sense, of physical dependence, this is an exaggeration. But the psychological dependencies make the difference. Any addict who does any drug repeatedly will learn to crave when presented with the paraphenalia unique to that drug, in the same way that Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate when they heard the sound of a bell. The triggers that have been conditioned into the average recovering heroin addicts brain can be very unpredictable. The style of door on the flop house he used to inhabit, the smell of oxidizing iron mixed with oil after a rain, and so on. Heroin produces such a powerful high that Pavlov doesn’t need to ring his bell too many times to condition the response.
But what the average cigarette lacks in dopaminergic power, smokers make up for with sheer repetition. Someone who follows stimulus with response 400 times a day for 20 years is going to be pretty darn conditioned to respond when the right cues are presented. And in the smoker’s case, the cues are less likely to be in abandoned ghetto housesor involve such things as needles and surgical hose. Smokers cues are simple, everyday things like chewing, lifting a hand to the mouth. Recovering smokers simply cannot avoid cues that trigger their conditioned reponse. Forcing oneself to ignore these cues is a source of terrible frustration.
The real irony with nicotine is that the high it provides is so poor compared to the other dopaminergic drugs. Even heroin and cocaine addicts will tell you that the only reason they keep doing the drug is because it hurts too bad to stop. But in the case of nicotine addicts, this is the only thing that could be true, since nobody gets hooked on smoking cigarettes by the sheer pleasure of the activity (there is none). Mark Pilgrim relates this best in his essay on addiction.
That is a puzzle worth examining. If cigarettes are just about the most addictive drug imaginable (besides maybe crack cocaine and meth), andifcigarettes have no real positive impact on an individual (and well-documented negative effects), why does the government choose to make cigarettes legal and other drugs illegal? Of course, the negative effects of heroin and some other drugs are far worse than the negative effects of cigarette smoking, but it is easy to find examples of drugs with a much better societal cost/benefit ratio that are nevertheless illegal. True, the state governments have villified and litigated against the evil tobacco companies for many years, and one would get the impression that these valiant attorneys general would love to make cigarettes illegal if only they could. So, what exactly is stopping states from making cigarettes illegal? What is it that holds these valiant attorneys general powerless? A quick look at the balance sheet solves the puzzle for us. The states make more profit from each pack of cigarettes than the tobacco companies do. If the only issue were protection of the citizens, we can see that the states would have outlawed cigarettes long ago. But in fact, when the states raise taxes on cigarettes in the name of “encouraging more people to quit smoking”, they are carefully avoiding the very thing that could make everyone quit smoking. Making cigarettes illegal would take a huge cut out of tax revenues, and skimming regressive tax money from addicts fiending for a fix is easy money.
And that is the essence of addiction. Riding a tiger can be very unpleasant if the tiger gets control. All people start out by using drugs, but there are a thousand ways that the user can lose control and become used by the addiction. And being smart doesn’t help much. In fact, the drug’s best ally in wresting control from you is your own subconscious. And forget the silly examples of “rationalization” given in the textbooks. Smart people like Dave are capable of coming up with far better rationalizations that “it’s just one cigarette”. Mildly crafty people are the ones who give up smoking altogether, and spend the rest of their lives chewing 10 packs of nicotine gum per day with nicotine patches on all limbs. The craftier the subconscious, the better it will be at providing you with reasons to maintain the addiction. Really smart people can explain with bulletproof logic how it would be unethical to not take the drug. And maybe the craftiest of all are the ones who can explain how it is ethical to keep the drug legal and sell it to you at vast profits to themselves.