Vaping is Ruining Your Life: Nicotine’s Manic Control Of Your Brain

Guest Post by Paule Patterson

Nicotine has been with me since middle school in some way. There were periods without it, but those gaps were much longer earlier than they have been lately. In sobriety, I was able to walk out of rehab nicotine-free and maintain that for about seven months. It was the longest I'd been without it. That was a couple of years ago. My AA community was my gateway back into nicotine—it wasn't their fault at all; I'm just blaming them! It's been a struggle since.

In the last couple of years, addiction, mental health, psychology, and neuroscience have all been topics that helped me start to get a handle on "me." One of the things I did for a bit was study different chemicals, like alcohol and nicotine, and the science around them. This also included things like dopamine, serotonin, pharmacology, and the structure of the brain. When nicotine first became the subject of serious study for me, I couldn't say I liked the implications.

Nicotine’s Short Work

Nicotine in cigarettes is one thing, the nicotine in vapes is something entirely different. It's a salt-based nicotine developed for vaping. The "salt-based" part matters here in that it helps the nicotine be less harsh— and that it gets faster into your system. Nicotine is already addictive enough; salt-based nicotine is a faster version. This salt-based nicotine is also now used in pouches, like Zynns. These pouches use salt-based nicotine instead of tobacco to create a nicotine source that’s tucked between your lip and gum.

When we take a nicotine fix, it enters our brain and body in just seconds. When it does, nicotine excites every nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) we have, making those receptors and neurons bigger and making more of those receptors. The result is that you need more to feel the same thing. Nicotine dumps 150% more dopamine into our system, as well as adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine (more on that below). It also spikes the stress hormone cortisol. Dopamine helps us feel good for a moment, bathing us in our current "normal" and helping us feel like we can handle the next 10 minutes.

The addiction sets in. Unlike some other substances, nicotine works on a short cycle. We intake it, we feel it, and in 30 minutes the nicotine is withdrawing and detoxing from our bodies. So, we start to feel the craving for some more. When we repeat this cycle hundreds and thousands of times, it spins up and builds on itself. It sucks everything else in with it.

Nicotine’s Chaotic Cocktail

A bit more about the neurochemicals should show how nicotine addicts us to a state of perpetual stress. Below is just scraping the service. I would recommend checking out Dr. Huberman’s podcast episodes on nicotine - https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/nicotines-effects-on-the-brain-and-body-and-how-to-quit-smoking-or-vaping. He has a few and they should help ruin nicotine for you as they did for me. Enough has been stolen from him in this post that he deserves a reference.

• Adrenaline (Epinephrine): This hormone, produced by the adrenal glands, prepares the body for the "fight or flight" response. It increases heart rate, widens airways, enlarges pupils, and redirects blood to muscles, priming the body to face or flee from threats. Nicotine prompts the adrenal glands to release adrenaline, leading to a surge of energy and alertness, along with increased heart rate and blood pressure.

• Norepinephrine (Noradrenaline): Acting as both a neurotransmitter in the brain and a hormone in the body, norepinephrine is crucial for arousal and alertness. It increases heart rate, releases glucose for energy, and boosts blood flow to muscles, enhancing the body's "fight or flight" response. Nicotine stimulates its release, contributing to increased alertness and readiness for action.

• Cortisol: Nicotine activates this central stress response system. It triggers the hypothalamus to release corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), which leads to increased levels of cortisol, a stress hormone. Cortisol helps regulate the body's stress response, metabolism, immune function, and inflammation.

• Dopamine: Nicotine also stimulates the release of dopamine in the brain's reward pathways, particularly in areas like the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward, motivating behavior and regulating mood. The release of dopamine due to nicotine intake provides feelings of pleasure and reward, contributing significantly to nicotine's addictive properties as the brain begins to associate nicotine with these positive sensations.

Nicotine’s Double-Minded Cost

Dopamine is used for action and motivation - it is meant as a reward for work. It's such a fundamental part of how we think, feel, and act that it's like breathing. Nicotine rewards us for being anxious and freaked out. When we hijack this mechanism, it can lead to devastating consequences, especially the longer it goes on. The unhealthy narratives, our alter egos, internal dialogue, social interactions, relational dynamics, defensives and delusions, and daily habits will be altered and ultimately fueled by nicotine. If you're hitting a vape every 30 minutes, it has been making your mental health worse. You may not like the sound of that, but I needed someone to tell me this between nine months and twenty years ago.

The worst part is that the above is mainly about the dopamine side of things. Nicotine is doing more outside of just messing with our dopamine system - it also pumps us full of adrenaline and other stress-inducing neurochemicals. A manic split-mind state starts to become locked in. Nicotine makes our limbic system, our Fight or Flight HQ, ramp up perpetually. Our limbic system has a job for good things, but it is not meant to be running on jet fuel and steroids 24/7.

Vaping (and other stuff) Is Not Going Away

When we constantly run our brain through the same routine for its nicotine dose, we entrench thought and feeling behaviors. These neuropathways become bigger, stronger, and faster. We will ruminate and stew, overthink and assume, feel preemptive and won’t be able to stop it, and be stuck and trapped without our precious nicotine in reach. As a recovering alcoholic, it got to a point where I just didn’t want another chemical controlling me.

Nicotine today is different. Vaping and pouches are different. Unlike with normal smoking, you can vape indoors. People, myself included, sleep with their vape. You can take a puff while doing the dishes or sitting on the toilet. With such access, of course, nicotine addiction would rise—not in popularity as much as in frequency. People were doing it more often because they could. The short addictive cycle, now with salt-based nicotine, could be abused everywhere.

The Next Generation of Vaping

Vaping devices, especially since COVID, have already been through a few iterations: more flavors, more puffs, cooler screens, and fancy features. It was kind of cool to watch from a business perspective. But the furious business product development was being fueled only by the money coming in from people's addictions spiking. Vaping isn't going away—it's here. I worry about how other substances are already being introduced into vaping and how it will affect our society in the next generations.

Our teens are not getting onto nicotine—they are getting onto salt-based nicotine with a method they can use anywhere and hide. Our society is already affected by the adults unaware of what their vaping and pouches have made them into. Our dopamine-driven society, with its screens, graphics, digital connections, and DoorDash, makes nicotine feel powerful. It fuels all those possibilities in a world like ours. Yet it comes with an awful price.

Vaping is the new normal. Smoking a cigarette is not how people get into nicotine anymore. I don't think it will be anymore either. Sure, some will, and that will be their gateway, just as it was for me and others. However, younger generations will no longer have an old-school cigarette as their path. It will be more convenient and ready for methods like vaping and pouches. This is just starting to be a problem.

Does Someone Need To Tell You?

If you're vaping or using pouches, you might need to hear from someone that your manic anxiety, obsessive control, and frantic distractibility are problems. The ruminations and narratives in your head, maybe completely unnoticed, are running your life, and your nicotine has made them the monsters they are now. If you're struggling with keeping track of your life and staying on top of things...and you're vaping...it's the nicotine.

Yes, there are a bunch of other things in your life that matter and need attention. There are things people do and don't do that aren't great or useful—you probably aren't seeing it right because even that part of your brain needs a crap ton of nicotine to feel 'normal'. Nicotine is not helping you - it’s ruining your life. No, it doesn’t help and you don’t get enough from it to make it worth you. 

It’s Time 

Quitting nicotine is harder in many ways than alcohol. There are tools and free resources. There are ways to do this that will work for you. Google it. Make sure to check out CBT for smoking. Allan Carr has helped a lot of people and his Easy Way to Quit Vaping comes as an audiobook (https://amzn.to/3VhQB9T). You may not quit your first try or sixth but keep trying. Pay attention to it - always less and never more. It takes work and you’ll be a (bigger) jerk for a while. Your body and brain will have to adjust for days, then weeks, and months. Normal will feel abnormal. Like with alcohol, getting off something like nicotine means your entire self has to shift. It takes getting comfort with it and practice. It takes grit and resolve. Don’t give up on quitting.

After more than two decades of nicotine use, it took vaping to show me how bad it could get and sobriety to be able to see it. It's about time this area of me grows up too. Nicotine will be missed but just for a bit. It's already fading into the past chapters of my story, where I was not the person I am now. It can stay there along with a lot of other things.

About the Author

Paule is a former pastor and recovering alcoholic with almost 3 years of sobriety. Now, he is using his experience, digital marketing, and his training to help people build the dreams we’re often too afraid to live out. He’s helped Sierra out a lot. If you could use marketing help, a website, logo & branding, or someone for business ideas and planning, check out Paule at Stigma Marketing.

He blogs on life, faith, addiction, and society at www.DrunkPastor.com.