"stress and anxiety release" is strictly bs. Smoking raises your baseline anxiety and stress. Those only continue to increase as the time it takes for you to start withdrawal shrinks as you become more tolerant. A quick google will confirm this or I can do it and provide sources.

I also know this empirically because I was a half a pack a day smoker for a few years and I have never been more anxious, it was what drove me to quit.

You feel relief shortly because you're satisfying the addiction but at the general level you have more stress.

Withdraw shrinks in only when you use tabacco regularly.

It is not the drug that is the problem but how you used / abused it.

Then you get no relief when smoking, it's literally a stimulant.

It is both. A stimulant and a sedative (dumb categories).

TIL and it's actually the fact that causes the seeking behavior which eventually forms the addiction. Epinephrine causes the kick and beta-endorphin the drop. Neat. I went and searched it up because I was curious and you surely are correct. Not sure why they're dumb categories though

> Not sure why they're dumb categories though

How can something stimulate and sedate at the same time? It's legacy nomenclature that has become counterintuitive. Like how electrons are negative and holes are positive.

I mean it effects two separate systems that produce chemicals that cause different effects, one stimulates, and one sedates/depresses. It's not like the nicotine itself is doing both.

Same thing goes for caffeine, alcohol, and many other drugs.

The worst part is the carcinogenic chemical soup they add to cigarettes is to make it more palatable to smoke several times a day. Self-medicating is big business.

Are they really doing this?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarette...

"According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute: "Of the more than 7,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 250 are known to be harmful, including hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, and ammonia. Among the 250 known harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 69 can cause cancer."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarette...

You got the right link, but the quoted excerpt is not responsive to GP's question.

The short answer is, "yes."

> This is the list of 599 additives in tobacco cigarettes submitted to the United States Department of Health and Human Services in April 1994.