Nicotine and Dipping Facts

For those of you that might still be reminiscing about how “good” it was to dip or how “fun” it was take a look at a few facts I pulled off some different web sites today.  The good news is we are all quit so this does not apply to us any longer.  Newbies, if you have not quit yet maybe this will kick you in the ass and get you motivated to quit.

Nicotine and Dipping Facts

Nicotine was first isolated from the tobacco plant in 1828 by German chemists Posselt and Reimann, who considered it a poison

It functions as an anti herbivore chemical with particular specificity to insects; therefore nicotine was widely used as an insecticide in the past

There are growing concerns that long-term nicotine use may actually be eating away and destroying the brain.

Recent studies suggest that it is irrelevant if nicotine is administrated by cigarettes, chewing gum, or oral tobacco products.  The effects on the body are the same.

Nicotine is a super toxin. Drop for drop it is deadlier than diamondback rattlesnake venom, more lethal than strychnine and three times deadlier than arsenic

A natural insecticide, it has no business inside the human mouth, bloodstream or brain.

According to the American Heart Association, the “nicotine addiction has historically been one of the hardest addictions to break.”

Chemical dependency upon nicotine is every bit as real, deep and permanent as alcoholism, crystal meth, or heroin addiction.

As with other drugs of addiction, an external chemical has taken the smokeless tobacco user’s brain dopamine reward pathways hostage, quickly burying almost all memory of what life without nicotine was like.

Dipping 8 to 10 times a day can bring as much nicotine into the body as smoking 30-40 cigarettes

Chewing tobacco contains 28 carcinogens, including tobacco-specific nitrosamines. Other cancer-causing substances include formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, crotonaldeyde, hydrazine, arsenic, nickel, cadmium, benzopyrene and polonium (which gives off radiation).

Dependency researchers tell us that nicotine may be the most perfectly designed drug of addiction.  It not only causes the release of dopamine but shuts off flow of the chemical assigned to clean-up dopamine once released (MAO B, also known as the killjoy enzyme). This allows adjoining brain cells to remain under the influence of dopamine longer.

Encountering a trigger cannot trigger relapse unless you take a dip. But take heart. Most triggers are reconditioned and extinguished by a single encounter during which the subconscious mind fails to receive the expected result – nicotine.

None of this shit sounds very good to me except the last part about kicking Nicotines ass and re-wiring my brain.  Good thing I am QUIT !!

NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan community member Greg5280