That doesn't sound true.

Try it then. As someone who smoked and quit and have had friends who smoked and quit who also had heroin habits, they corroborate the difficulty. It’s a different type of struggle but the struggle is strong just the same.

I feel like I shouldn't have to try heroin to understand this. A solid paper on the topic would suffice.

No it wouldn’t unless you can consistently reproduce any found results among differing populations and I have serious doubts such a paper, with said follow ups, exists.

OK, then I'm going to go with "doesn't sound true"...

There needs to be a term for this mindset where people won't entertain a thought or idea unless there's a study proving that thought is correct in all cases. I can guarantee the person you responded to is a weightlifter.

That's not the case here at all. I believe lots of things without studies. Something like "heroin and cigarettes are equally addictive" doesn't sound right to me - that's why I need evidence to the contrary. It's a somewhat extraordinary claim, therefor I require some evidence.

A simple Google search returns hundreds if not thousands of results.

Here’s one for you https://academic.oup.com/ntr/article/20/9/1038/4096884

That paper does not look like it actually measures addiction, and I don't want to sort through hundreds or thousands of results...

But I don't really care. It doesn't sound true but it also doesn't change anything.

I've quit both cigarettes and a middling amphetamines addiction.

Quitting cigarettes was trivial. I decided not to buy a pack that day and then never bought another pack. That's my anecdotal contribution to the discussion.

Less anecdotally:

Opioid withdrawal, in extreme cases, has killed people from persistent vomiting and diarrhea. It has measurable physical symptoms with an understood pathophysiology largely connected to the cAMP-signaling system.

Nicotine withdrawal is far less understood, to the degree it has been classified at all (mostly in studies of mice). It certainly has never killed anyone, you're not going to shit yourself to death. They're not comparable to one another.

lol

Purely anecdotal, but I believe Keith Richards is on record stating that kicking heroin was far easier than kicking nicotine.

There's evidence for this, too -- he quit using heroin decades ago, but only managed to quit smoking a few years back.

So it seems to be true, at least for him.

You’re conflating nicotine with tobacco again.

For me, quitting smoking was easier than quitting coffee addiction. Coffee is everywhere, cheap, and consumption is all but encouraged. If I were to smoke I take on all sorts of baggage. Much of smoking is about being a smoker which is a mindset and community that is hard to leave. Social effects can be much stronger than physical dependence.

> For me, quitting smoking was easier than quitting coffee addiction

Operative phrase here: "for you".

Totally agree. One of the hardest parts of quitting smoking for me was quitting smoke breaks with my smoker friends at work.

That is different from withdrawal being worse. Opiate withdrawal can be rather severe from a physical standpoint. Nicotine withdrawal simply is not.

Yes, but only because nicotine is cheap, easily available, won't cause any real immediate problems or drain your bank account.

As a substance its no where near as addicting as heroin, no one would actually ruin their lives for nicotine in case it was illegal and expensive.

That is not surprising.

a) The downsides to smoking are far longer term and harder to feel daily

b) You're surrounded by smokers, you can literally smell them smoking just by walking down the street

c) Smoking is legal. You can just go buy a pack.

I am unsurprised that quitting smoking is harder for some people, given that. But in terms of withdrawal symptoms, that's where I think heroin is probably worse. But I also don't really know. So far someone linked a Google search and an irrelevant paper.

That's somewhat person dependent. I was a heavy smoker (3-4 packs a day) for several years, but quitting cold turkey was very easy for me. I basically had no cravings unless I was drinking, and those went away after a month.

I realize I'm an outlier.

I also believe it’s the duration of use and not the concentration of use that plays more a role here. Being a heavy smoker for 4 years isn’t the same mentally as someone who smoked normally for 20 years. I think past the 10 year mark and your brain has suffered damage to the point where the addiction becomes life. However, in about 10% of cases, smokers who quit were able to because the effects of nicotine addiction hadn’t taken hold. Much like some people feel nothing from taking cocaine.

IANAE though.

Either way. I was a smoker but not a heroin user and quitting was the hardest thing for me. It took me almost a month to feel normal.

WOW that's amazing how different people's experiences can be.

I smoked one pack spread out 2 or 3 days, for about 3 years (in college). Rarely would do a full pack in a day.

Quitting was pure torture. I stayed up 24 hours walking laps around my campus. Took like four full days for cravings to go away.

Haven't had a cigarette in 10 yrs. Occasionally enjoy a cigar without problems

I was terribly addicted for a decade, smoking and then vaping, and for me, withdrawal was almost intolerable. For about three days, it was a terrible experience. I felt sick, raged with anger, cried, felt unhinged, and even had minor visual disturbances. It can really only only be compared to a bad psychedelic trip. But once I did manage to get through it, that was it. It hasn't much bothered me since. Stopped thinking about smoking about a week after. I can't say I crave it really, and I cannot relate to the long-term experiences where people say it takes months or years to get fully over it. We're all different.

People who quit smoking are actually quitting a synergistic cocktail of drugs - nicotine and a variety of MAO inhibitors found in tobacco smoke. There is good evidence to suggest that these MAOI components dramatically increase the addictiveness of nicotine.

I'm not really sure whether I can or should dispute your basic point, but I will say that pharmaceutically pure nicotine is radically different to tobacco smoke.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01618...

I’ve heard you can actually quit cigaret cold turkey and be fine. Whereas I imagine you could die if you tried that with heroin?