(September 4, 2015 at 3:51 am)Parkers Tan Wrote: I think his point about ratpark is to the point. Not so much for cigarettes, as you're talking about here, but for the more mind-altering dependencies, a sort of sensory deprivation might well encourage drug-use that is more psychologically "entertaining", if you'll pardon the term. I think he's saying, at that point, that boredom helps to breed addiction, to those drugs which are more psychoactive. For instance, marijuana doesn't induce the "classic" symptoms of addiction, such as tolerance and withdrawal, but there's a body of thought that regards it as "psychologically" addictive. Perhaps at that point the addiction isn't to the drug itself, but to a different brainspace?
There definitely seems to be some sort of different mechanism going on with nicotine. I have no idea what that is, but the behavior associated with nicotine doesn't match the drugs that cause intoxication. Perhaps it has something to do with nicotine being a highly potent poison that is deadly in extremely small doses.
As for marijuana being psychologically addictive, I think that idea is catching on more and more. I can attest to the fact personally that it is psychologically addicting. I think the drugs that are highly physically addictive tend to release a lot of dopamine, so perhaps marijuana just doesn't release much of that. You will definitely jones hard, though, if you're used to having weed a lot and run out.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
