Comment by gwern
12 years ago
> Its possible I've missed something? I don't have time to read all the papers you cite, but from titles/abstracts they all appear to be talking about the effects of MAOIs.
Well, yes, what exactly else would you expect papers to be about when someone claims that nicotine+MAOIs is different from just nicotine...? Presumably the papers are going to have titles like "Monoamine Oxidase Inhibition Dramatically Increases the Motivation to Self-Administer Nicotine in Rats".
Perhaps I wasn't very clear; in your article, you contrast the apparent non-addictiveness of pure nicotine with, to quote directly, "the addictiveness coming from MAOIs & other compounds present in tobacco." And it is precisely the latter part of the phrase "MAOIs & other compounds" that I was asking about when I said "other compounds."
The implication seemed to be that there were other things beyond MAOIs in tobacco that were (or helped nicotine to be) addictive; is that not the case?
> The implication seemed to be that there were other things beyond MAOIs in tobacco that were (or helped nicotine to be) addictive; is that not the case?
Well, I don't know that it's not the case. There's a lot of stuff in tobacco, it wouldn't surprise me if there were other chemicals besides MAOIs with relevant psychoactive effects. But from the snippet you quote, I see why you might be reading that as a stronger claim than I intended. I'll amend that to '& possibly other compounds' so it's clearer.