Alcohol vs Cigarettes

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2007-03-28 11:59pm

Which is more addictive? This topic came up between me and a friend of mine, each of whom are putting their drug of choice on hold.

Your thoughts?

Singular Intellect · Post by **Singular Intellect** » 2007-03-29 12:36am

Hard to say. It depends on the person I suppose. I've drank like a fish regularily before, and then lost interest in doing it. I felt no side effects or desire to keep doing it.

Never tried smoking, never will.

Spin Echo · Post by **Spin Echo** » 2007-03-29 01:12am

I thought it was pretty well established that nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs there is. I think nicotine is the clear winner here.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-03-29 01:42am

How do you measure addictiveness?

Specialist · Post by **Specialist** » 2007-03-29 01:57am

I would say by the repercussions of taking away the drug. How dependent the body is on the drug that is if you instantly take the drug away what's the severity, if any for the withdraw symptoms.

I would say cigarettes mainly because it's more a social thing and peer pressure for drinking alchol.

Spin Echo · Post by **Spin Echo** » 2007-03-29 02:37am

Darth Wong wrote:How do you measure addictiveness?

Some of its epidemiological, for example how many people are successful in their attempts to quite using a drug. There's also the physiological, how much the dopamine receptors are affected. I imagine Supes could give you a more thorough answer.

Wyrm · Post by **Wyrm** » 2007-03-29 04:01am

Cigarettes. I've drunk a glass of wine (10-20% alcohol) every other night (with dinner) for months and still to find myself with a habit (I've just recently hit one of my "dry spells"). Very little nicotine is actually delivered in the average cig, which means an equal volume of nicotine is probably worth about a month of heavy smoking. Hell, if I quaffed down as much nicotine in one sitting as I do alcohol, I'd be dead... the stuff is used as insecticide, after all.

Let's see... the average cig has about 10 mg of nicotine in it, and ballpark about half of it gets into your body in a smoke. At ten cigs a day (shrug), that's 50 mg of nicotine a day. For a thirty day month, you get about 1.5 g of nicotine over a month. Over maybe a year to get addicted, that makes 18 g of nicotine over a year to addict a light smoker.

A 100 mL glass of unfortified wine contains about 11.5 mL of alcohol, or 9 g (0.789 g/cm³; 1 mL = 1 cm³) every other night for a month, is about 136 g in a month, and that doesn't addict me (and I'm a small dude).

Back of the envelope to be sure, and some of the numbers may be inaccurate, but the fact that it takes so little nicotine overall to addict someone compared to a much larger amount not addicting me does say something... (Even if it's "Wyrm is up a tree."

)

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2007-03-30 01:00am

Every anti-drug speech I've ever heard says the cig is more addictive. Even after someone has had their trachea mutilated to the point where they have to alter the thing so they breathe through a hole in their neck, they'll still smoke through that little hole.

Larz · Post by **Larz** » 2007-03-30 02:10am

Cigarettes hands down are more addictive... I've had patients on lock near attack me because I couldn't take them out on a smoke break. Chronic drunks on the other hand at the most just get pissy when I tell them I have to empty the beers they brought to the hospital... you know, so they can keep the buzz going while they're suppose to be sobering up.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2007-03-30 03:39am

Plenty of people drink like fiends in college and then just taper off or stop altogether once they graduate. But the people who smoked like fiends in college just smoke more and more as time goes on. Cigarettes are definitely more addictive.

The thing with cigarettes is that you can smoke them during the day on a break from work. You can't take a "whiskey break" at work without feeling that you're doing something wrong. So there's a negative reinforcement on drinking because it's a "night life" activity, something to do after you get out of the office and are looking to unwind. Smoking cigarettes is something that smokers do to get themselves through the day.

Nova Andromeda · Post by **Nova Andromeda** » 2007-03-30 05:30am

-Nicotine has been proven to be highly addictive (read: up there with the hardest street drugs) for normal people. Alcohol isn't addictive to most people. There is really no comparison at all here. If you take a normal person and force them to take nicotine for a significant period of time they would have serious problems dropping the habit even if they wanted to. On the other hand, if a person was forced to drink alcohol for the same period of time they would generally have no problem letting it go if they wanted to (read: if it cost too much, if they didn't like the taste, etc).

Rightous Fist Of Heaven · Post by **Rightous Fist Of Heaven** » 2007-04-03 03:12pm

I both drink and smoke irregularly. Never actually noticed a need to use either since it has been too long since the last time I smoked or drank some alcohol. With smoking, at one point for me it became more of a habit. I smoked that cig because I had gotten used to smoking it, but in order to save some cash I quit regular smoking a couple of years back.

Cigarettes though are definitely more addictive than alcohol, atleast from what I can gather from observing friends and relatives who smoke and drink alcohol.