• daannii@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Even if nicotine has medicinal value, recreational doses (high) mixed with many other chemicals with the aim of causing addiction is way more detrimental than helpful.

    There is health research showing indication of cancer increases. Though vaping is relatively new and it may take another 20 years to learn the full scope of the harm.

    At present there are much safer alternatives for all of the issues you listed.

    It’s also important to note that treating withdrawal symptoms like anxiety and ADHD-like symptoms is not treating those conditions.

    It causes them through withdrawal effects and then relieves them. It’s part of the mechanism of addiction.

    After a while people believe the drug fixes a bunch of their problems when the drug caused the problems or exasperated them to the level they currently are at.

    This same phenomenon is noted with marijuana use.

    Long term use increases anxiety. Though many daily users report that it helps anxiety. The truth is it makes anxiety worse over time , which in turn increases the person’s dependence on using the drug to handle their increasingly dysfunctional levels of anxiety that they did not have before they started using.

    You may not be surprised to learn that even prescription drugs like Xanax has the exact same effect and course of action on people.

    Long term use increases anxiety and subsequently makes individuals even more dependent on the drug.

    There are no shortcuts or easy fixes when it comes to drugs. They all build tolerance. Which creates withdrawal. Which is literally an opposition in the body to combat the drug and return it to the previous state. All drugs inevitably make whatever problem they treat, worse.

    But we still use them because their benefit out weighs the cost in most situations. Especially for people struggling with daily functioning.

    People with medical conditions.

    But as a general rule, it should not be used to treat mild problems as it will make them worse.

    • SalmiakDragon@feddit.nu
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      10 hours ago

      Interesting. I assume you mean drugs as in psychoactive substances and not medication in general, right? I’d like to read up on this, do you have any sources? Particularily for these two bits:

      Long term use increases anxiety and subsequently makes individuals even more dependent on the drug.

      All drugs inevitably make whatever problem they treat, worse.

      • daannii@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        All drugs work this way. Medicinal and psychoactive. Even poisons/toxins.

        Any chemical that changes the body’s base functioning.

        Some drugs build tolerance and subsequently dependence, faster than others.

        Especially drugs that provide euphoric and energy effects (increases and decreases). What some people call narcotics. Even though that isn’t really a drug effect category , only a legal one.

        Even taking a drug to reduce cholesterol will technically cause it to increase overtime.

        It’s why people have to get their medication doses adjusted all the time. It’s why stopping prescription drugs cold turkey for things like blood pressure or diabetes can have very serious risk. (Depending on the dose and how long the person had been taking it.)

        But again. Not all drugs build tolerance at the same speed.

        And prescription drug dosage is designed to reduce tolerance while still delivering health effects.

        (Well, most are. Many opioid companies appear to have intentionally and knowingly made high dose drugs with euphoric effects to increase dependence. There are opioid drug formulas that don’t have as strong euphoria effects but they chose to sell the ones that do, knowing full well it increases dependence). -thats another conversation

        That’s not the case with recreational use. As people tend to use high doses that also increase the speed of tolerance building.

        The modern thc business of gummies, vapes, candy, and such follow the tobacco industry leads and have massive quantities of THC in their products. This is intentional. To get people addicted by fast tracking body tolerance.

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

        Withdrawal and tolerance are both a product of the same mechanism in the body.

        All types of drug chemicals cause this mechanism in the body. It’s part of how body homeostasis works. There is no drug that is exempt from it.