It depends a bit on the drug to be fair. Like you cant "occasionaly" smoke cigarettes, either you are addicted or not. You can occasionaly drink a beer and not become an alcoholic.
The people who become alcoholics almost always have some personal problems / mental health issues as a trigger.
But the world wide drug policy doesnt make any sense, because even a "evil" and highly addictive drug like cocaine is actually less addicting than smoking.
I was an occasional smoker for 20+ years. Could go weeks without a cigarette. Or smoke a few daily when stressed at work. Or smoke an entire pack on a night out.
Recently went through some personal hell and now I'm on 10-15 cigs a day and find it hard to stop. Absolutely because of the recent stress and trauma.
It is without a doubt one of the most pointless drugs in existence.
I think you are a very rare minority then.
Quit smoking is painfull (went through it multiple times). For me it feels so much better since I finally got it.
And since then my behaviour regarding other drugs also got a lot better, because you dont have that "hunger" to take s.th. from smoking.
> It is without a doubt one of the most pointless drugs in existence.
It doesnt even make you high lol.
I don't know about this one. Cigarettes specifically certainly have enough chronic downsides to outweigh their upsides for me, but nicotine in general serves as a pretty good, light dopamine hit, with relatively few acute downsides. You don't intoxicated, it doesn't take long to ingest, and it's available enough to not become life-consuming. It's not a coincidence that it's a very common habit.
I say this as someone who used to use cigarettes, but took up vaping nicotine instead when I realized it didn't make my clothes reek and scratched the same itch. Everybody has habits around dopamine management. Some people snack, some people spend too much time on social media, some people gamble (in casinos or in brokerages). Personally, I'm prone to snacking, and I eventually realized I could either smoke and be attractive, or snack and get fat. It was an easy enough choice.
I don't think there's any factual evidence for this at all. I occasionally smoke cigars (like 1-2 times a year) and I'm not addicted to them. Multiple friends/family members do the same.
"Yes, but often the root issue of addiction is mental health issues (and not only the drug itself)."
Agree, but not everyone who has mental illness issues resorts to drugs for help so there are many other factors to consider.
What is the root of addiction? This is the best book on it.
"Hungry ghosts" is exactly it (as I've learned / come to view the meaning), speaking from personal experience with drives at various times morphing into the ... unhealthy.
Humans have all sorts of axes - behaviorally, environmentally, genetically. It's interesting to look at these, and look at how traits complement and contrast ... how subtle tweaks and changes in parameters can be the difference between, say, a high-performing researcher with a solid career, and a ... someone who falls off the map to greater or lesser degrees [1].
One thing I am quite familiar with, these days, is: the very traits that set people up for "(very) high performance", also set people up for addictions and other issues. AA and other related groups are quite enriched in, in my experience, high performers (as well as very interesting / idiosyncratic / "exceptional" people*) of various types. The tendency to get sucked into things ... to become obsessive, to push boundaries, "openness to experience", etc. easily contribute to someone becoming a "star" and/or a "strung-out junkie".
The Buddhist, AA (rooted in "Oxford Group" / "early Christian" ideas), etc. ideas about "spirit" and a sort of "middle way" and all of that, provide practical guidance (and practices) that can really help balance out the serious negatives that can come out of some traits / mixtures of traits.
I'll look into this book further when I have a moment. Thanks for pointing it out!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash_Jr. - not necessarily the best example, here, but, apt enough and what comes to mind this moment ... representing, to some extent, disparate outcomes in one individual (take that, dualism!)
* Note: none of this should be taken as any kind of "value judgment" - specifically, 'positive' or 'negative' ... these terms can be quite positive or negative, as reflected in almost anyone I've met, as well as myself
>This is the result of drug addiction not the cause.
Not always: lose job, lose house, get offered cheap accommodation, meet some people...seen it happen.
Rent has gone up almost double in the city I live in (a small city you won't think of) and nobody's jobs decided to double their pay, so there's a lot of people who literally can't afford just to have a legal place to sleep.
Where'd you get that? Studies I've seen of homeless addicts show that a simple majority were not addicted when they became homeless. Certainly it's a common cause of homelessness but still only accounts for a minority.
It's DEFINITELY not a minority. They don't just randomly end up on the streets from some random cause and then turn into addicts. That rarely happens, there are too many opportunities in this country to just become completely homeless from bad luck.
The only way to do a study on this would be to ask. They're not tracking people throughout their lives to see if they're suddenly becoming homeless and turning into drug addicts afterwards.
Use some critical thinking please. Just because some media outlet says it's so doesn't make it true.
"The homeless people thing is a failure of our healthcare and housing systems."
This is the result of drug addiction not the cause.
"Many (not all) of those things were results of the criminalization of drugs"
Don't agree, alcohol is perfectly legal and one of highest percentage addictions there is. Opioids are a legal prescription and also out of control.