My Story of Addiction

How it all started

I genuinely love the field of psychology, and I’ve done my fair share of crazy bits to support this field further. One such event is subjecting myself to certain substances for a specific period and then completely stopping intake to remove the addiction. Afterward, I would record my withdrawal symptoms. Now the main goal of this was to see what withdrawal symptoms a person might get, and how to ignite the motivation to leave a certain substance abuse situation.

Getting Addicted

The drug in question was Nicotine (Vape), and I chose this to get addicted to a substance, without the other Carcinogens and Tar involved. While it was dangerous on its own, I still had to do it because my simple theory was, ‘Everyone researches on others, I want to research it on myself to get first-hand experience and then eventually help people with the same problem.’

I started this experiment in July and gave myself 6 months of unfiltered smoking, to get addicted. In addition, I also recorded my journey from time to time about how I felt after doing it and what eventually happened. While some people would call me insane, it’s just my genuine love of Psychology that led me to do this. Moreover, I told very few people to keep this status hidden and prevent anyone from becoming an obstacle.

The first month was the biggest high I received. The buzz when you smoke Nicotine makes you feel lightheaded and you almost forget all of your troubles. However, due to being new at this, I coughed a lot at even the slightest inhale and it eventually got discomforting because of coughing so much. Despite this, I kept going towards the goal and continued my research, one inhale at a time.

The second and third months were mediocre, as I had gotten used to the taste, as well as the smoke so coughing was rare unless I inhaled a lot. In addition, the buzz wasn’t the same so I craved more nicotine and as a result, smoked more. However, things changed in the fourth month when I switched to a higher nicotine concentration (3% to 5%), and that’s when things started to unravel. This higher value was the real thing, as the hit was strong, the craving was more and I started to enjoy the process. Eventually, the fifth and sixth months passed with this, and the first half of my research was complete.

Getting Back on Track

I set a goal of leaving everything exactly after six months and then recording the journey of my fight with addiction. The first few days went by without any issues, but soon the craving came back. I wanted to get back to smoking, to get the same buzz, to get that light-headed feeling. But I knew I couldn’t. Eventually, things got so bad that I got extremely irritated, sick from the stress, and had outbursts at people. However, this wasn’t going to change my goal as I was stuck to it and took one day at a time. Eventually, a few months passed since then, and the craving lowered. However, this journey is of a lifetime as I know that I can get addicted again if I’m not careful.