No Stupid Questions

Nah. I quit for quite a few months and my withdrawals largely passed, I no longer had any nicotine cravings by that point.

Then I started having serious problems with academic performance, insane mood swings, etc.

My stress levels were much higher, I had brain fog constantly and was either restless or super low energy.

I experienced zero benefits to quitting vaping in terms of physical wellbeing also, my lungs felt no different before or after, but I never smoked, but I did almost become obese after quitting due to the lack of hunger suppression.

I didn't connect it to quitting nicotine at first and searched for psychological explanations, but I had no actual reasons to be struggling at the time, eventually I realized it started a few months after I'd quit vaping. When I started using nicotine again via patches, after some time I started feeling like myself again.

Turns out I had undiagnosed ADHD - now professionally diagnosed so I actually was genuinely way better off on nicotine than off of it, it does the same thing as Adderall (Amphetamine) does as well, but more subtle and in a slightly different way, a combination of both has really made me a much better person, far more rational and just generally way calmer, but also way more productive. I now have an MSc and a decently paying IT career, a stable and healthy relationship, healthy weight and I'm always working on self-improving through exercise, learning or minimizing other vices like cutting out all sugary foods, no more snacks, more veg, less alcohol etc etc. I wouldn't have had any of this without good ol' nicotine.

From my discussions with the diagnosing psychiatrist, this is a relatively common thing amongst folks with ADHD.

There are a number of studies that suggest Nicotine's potential usefulness in "neurospicy" people:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5758075/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8741955/

One study suggested that poor cognitive performance overall being a good predictor for relapse among smokers could actually be explained by rhe fact that nicotine being a stimulant has wide ranging helpful effects for cognitive function:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6018192/

ADHD or not I can certainly relate. If I had to put a word to how I felt off nicotine, I'd say I primarily just felt like I was dumb.

Here's also a science direct article that mentions cites a range of studies, including on that of its positive effects on people with Alzheimer's;

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027858462300009X

Drugs are drugs. YMMV. Assuming that chemical X is always bad when this isn't the case isn't useful to a productive discussion. Even if you want to dissuade people from nicotine absolutely - an approach that works far better to actually getting people on board is being honest.

On Reddit, subs like quitvaping and the caffeine quitting one are full of misinformation that is transparently a bunch of people RPing the war on drugs infomercials of the late 80s, not much different from the semen retention pseudoscience folks.

But also don't smoke. Obligatory disclaimer but Inhaling combustion smoke just isn't worth any benefit of anything, not nicotine, not devil's lettuce.

Vaping is far far safer and so far is not known to cause any issues, (unless of course you count the tainted dark market unregulated american weed vapes which will give you popcorn lung), though as always, we can't be sure, so best use something like patches.