Nicotine/Tobacco Recovery Protocol

"EDIT: "Side notes: Bromantane (tyrosine hydroxylase/dopamine synthesis and GABA upregulation + resets DeltaFosB + HDAC inhibitor + upregulates BDNF, NGF, GDNF), Acetyl-l-Carnitine (D1 dopamine receptor upregulation + indirect HDAC inhibitor via Acetyl donor and cholinergic via same mechanism donating Acetyl group to choline for acetylcholine), Aspirin may be helpful to upregulate tyrosine hydroxylase expression (dopamine synthesis) and reduce systemic inflammation, careful with higher intake of Omega 3s and anything else with potential to thin blood.

Chronic stress and social isolation upregulates DeltaFosB and dynorphin expression directly which drives drug cravings/compulsions, so active stress management via minimizing stressors and factors like sunlight during daytime, darkness during nighttime, GABA support, adrenal support, etc, and community/spending time with friends and family will reset this factor in the whole equation.

When you finally make the jump after your taper or even better, when you start the taper, begin supporting your liver detox pathways. This is covered in past articles if you search liver or detox on the search bar on the top of my Patreon page. Aside from achieving biochemical homeostasis, much of drug withdrawal of all types of drugs is the elimination of numerous accumulated toxins that built up throughout your addiction all at once as your liver becomes no longer inhibited by the CYP enzyme pathways your drug intake either occupies or inhibits altogether. Liver detox will make a major difference in how you feel, but the three major pillars also support liver detox via optimizing redox status and mitochondrial function.

END NOTE: I do genuinely encourage seeking therapy if you are unable to delve into and process your trauma on your own, especially in your sensitive emotional/mental state, although I will say correcting GABA/glutamate imbalance, malnutrition, circadian dysregulation, and inflammation makes this process infinitely more simple without breaking down, lashing out, relapsing, etc. I’ve heard excellent reviews on CBT and EMDR specifically. Psychedelics and ketamine helped me through this process on my own personally, as I had never responded well to one-on-one therapy in the past, but I do understand this will not apply to everyone. Among malnutrition, circadian dysregulation, inflammation, and GABA/glutamate imbalance, one factor we all share is trauma and lack of community/social support that drove us to our addictions in the first place.""

"This same crucial factor will apply to every single one of these substance addiction/dependency protocols. To quote me from 2019, "Addiction recovery really comes down to the willpower and discipline of the individual and the extent that they've suffered during their addiction.  I can give you the car, but you need to be able to turn the keys to the ignition on your own."

To put it simply, to overcome any addiction regardless of the substance, food, sex, gambling, etc. included, one must have suffered enough to decide on their own that there is no other choice but to get sober and off their drug(s) of choice. This applies across the board regardless of who you are. I can make the quitting and recovery process easier for you, but I can't decide to get sober for you. You must decide that for yourself after taking a serious and critical inventory of yourself and your life.

As with all substance addictions or dependencies, the severity of withdrawal will be dependent on three factors: duration of use, dosage, and how you treated your body and mind during your period of chronic/acute use."

One of the most interesting factors about this context is that when combusted and oxidized, nicotine forms nicotinic acid which is then inhaled and circulated throughout the body. This may also apply to vaporization as well, but that is purely conjecture. If I recall correctly, it's about less than 1mg per cigarette, but it is in essence self-medicating a niacin or NAD+ deficiency. In addition to the effect on NAD+ (anti-addiction), HDAC (reprograms mind away from addiction), GABA/serotonin/dopamine (frees up tryptophan away from NAD+ salvage pathway into serotonin pathway, and influences GABA and dopamine when formed into niacinamide in the gut). NAD+ therapy has been shown in studies and anecdotal reports to alleviate a number of cases of drug addiction to various substances, including tobacco and nicotine. NAD+ is formed with sufficient dietary niacin/vitamin B3 intake, supplementation, proper circadian rhythm (tied to light and dark cycles), and gut microbiome health/diversity, all of which drive essentially all drug cravings and exacerbate severity of withdrawal symptoms coincidentally. A handful of herbal medicines such as thymoquinone in black seed oil also recycles NADH back into NAD+. In fact, many quinone molecules influence redox status in such a way.

My first experience with quitting two packs of cigarettes a day was after a 3 gram psilocybin mushroom trip when I was 18-19 years old. I had been chain smoking during the experience, but was intensely disgusted with how I felt, how I was seeing myself behave and appear, and how I was treating my body. I ended up quitting the very next day, but inevitably picked them back up within the following 2-3 years.  Now, psilocybin among other psychedelics do downregulate DeltaFosB expression, however I wasn't addressing the underlying root issue of sunlight deficiency, blue light toxicity, circadian dysregulation, malnutrition, and poor gut health/inflammation.

My second time around was after I really became interested in biochemistry, pharmacology, and nutrition. I began eating better, taking better care of myself, in a period of sobriety otherwise, and I had noted I no longer experienced tobacco cravings after supplementing with nicotinic acid, or niacin, for schizophrenia and psychosis. I did note tobacco was extremely grounding for me with schizophrenia, and I do believe this is a major reason smoking is so prevalent in schizophrenics. It was only until a few years back did I truly understand the connection involved. In fact, the original founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, later expanding into other groups such as Narcotics Anonymous, etc., Bill Wilson, was a major advocate of niacin supplementation after meeting Abram Hoffer (who of course used it for schizophrenia, addiction, etc. in orthomolecular dosages). Bill noted that niacin was a major factor in resolving his chronic alcoholism, which is of course severely depleted with chronic alcohol intake, among numerous other micronutrients.

You could try tapering off tobacco and use gum, lozenges, patches, or vape devices, and I do admit they help many people, but in my experience like with other stimulants, it's easiest to just rip the band-aid off after reestablishing the essential pillars to health and recovery, further outlined below. Ultimately, do whatever works best for you in your own individual context.

Nicotine (dependent on form, i.e. nicotine salts as found in tobacco and Juul devices is more addictive than nicotine freebase, for example, even less so when consumed buccally, sublingually, or transdermally, alone is far less harmful and addictive than tobacco. Nicotine alone is not comparable to tobacco and additives in combustion at high temperature and low pH. The reaction can form totally new psychoactive compounds, some are opioid agonists and potent GABA A agonists. Tobacco contains a wide range of alkaloids and various constituents, additives, and byproducts that make it far more addictive than nicotine in isolation. For example, tobacco contains monoamine oxidase A and B inhibitor beta-carbolines, two of which have only been discovered definitively (Harman and nonharman), though there are likely even more compounds present not yet discovered. MAOI inhibits the breakdown of nicotine and potentiates its effect by 2-5x approximately. Menthol combined with nicotine in inhaled, buccal, sublingual, and/or intranasal form can also have a similar effect in inhibiting the metabolism of nicotine, causing it to stick around in the body for longer periods.

Nicotine alone influences primarily acetylcholine or more specifically nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and dopamine receptors, indirectly influencing beta-endorphin/mu opioid receptors, adrenergic/noradrenergic receptors (sympathetic nervous system activation), . It's effects also vary dependent on dosage where low doses increase neuronal activity as a whole, while high doses decrease neuronal activity.

Like many other drugs, nicotine and tobacco addiction is mediated largely in part of DeltaFosB upregulation and overexpression, secondarily but the cholinergic, dopaminergic, opioidergic activity.

"Nicotine activates the mesolimbic pathway and induces long-term ΔFosB expression (i.e., produces phosphorylated ΔFosB isoforms) in the nucleus accumbens when inhaled or injected frequently or at high doses, but not necessarily when ingested.[100][101][102] Consequently, high daily exposure (possibly excluding oral route) to nicotine can cause ΔFosB overexpression in the nucleus accumbens, resulting in nicotine addiction."

Common withdrawal symptoms are as follows...

• depressed mood/anhedonia,
• stress, anxiety, and irritability,
• difficulty concentrating/brain fog, 
• sleep disturbances/poor sleep,
• cravings,
• more rarely, mild motor dysfunction like tremors or restlessness

Having read all of my previous articles, this is all quite simple to manage with intelligent biochemistry manipulation via diet, supplements, lifestyle, and herbs.

The same importance for other drugs, like the previous Stimulant Recovery Protocol, is crucial for nicotine and tobacco as well. I reviewed these three factors more in depth in the hyperlink in this paragraph, but just to summarize. Nutrient dense whole food-based diet and elimination of inflammatory triggers that create GABA/glutamate and dopamine dysregulation is vital to any recovery process. The same micronutrients depleted by stimulants apply to nicotine as well, considering it is also a stimulant. Regular sunlight exposure at key circadian periods (sunrise, midday, sunset) is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to repairing the entire brain, nervous system, and body and can provide fast results in all withdrawal symptoms if consistent (regular grounding ties in here as well). And remember, UV light also upregulates FOS-C to downregulare DeltaFosB. Sleep and darkness at night ties back into the light and circadian rhythm factor, remember all hormones and neurotransmitters are yolked to circadian clocks throughout the entire body, and NATURAL light and TOTAL darkness is crucial to setting all of them. Both resistance and endurance exercise helps to reset all neurotransmitter receptor systems and likely downregulates DeltaFosB as well. 

Aside from these factors, multiform magnesium saturation (glycinate and oral/topical chloride), l-theanine, inositol (stopped cravings and rumination, improved mood), agmatine (oral/intranasal in saline solution), and niacin in the form of nicotinic acid were the primary supplements I utilized during my last quit from tobacco. All together, they really helped relieve all symptoms of tobacco/nicotine withdrawal. Additional supplements are mentioned in the Stimulant Recovery Protocol linked above, but I do believe these will help the majority of people quit successfully with the three pillars in place already.

Something else I included in my previous quit was I began mixing together a blend of smokable herbs that included happiness tree flower, kanna, ashwagandha tops, mucuna pruriens full cut, and sassafras. It tasted quite excellent on its own and I did enjoy the effects, but I began tapering my tobacco usage by rolling spliffs first with 75/80% tobaccco to 20/25% herb blend, then gradually decreasing the amount of tobacco per spliff. The more of the herb blend I consumed, the more I experinced aversion to tobacco as I would become extremely nauseous with a full cigarette. You will want to leave out kanna if you are on any type of SSRI or MAOI medication. It was all around a great way to reprogram my brain from positive association to smoking tobacco, oral fixation, and the addiction itself. Some other herbs that could possibly be in included would be blue lotus, indian warrior buds, damiana, lobelia (tradtionally used to quit tobacco and somewhat mimics nicotine pharmacology without addiction), and klip dagga, but I tried all of these separate from the initial herb blend.

Mullein, black seed oil, NAC, sun, grounding, endurance and resistance exercise can help to clear out the lungs of mucus and tar buildup.

Cholinergic herbs like Bacopa monnieri, Black seed oil, Blue lotus, Celastrus paniculatus, Gotu kola, Magnolia bark, Mulungu bark (taken at night to upregulate α7 and α4β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and support deep sleep), Polygala tenuifolia, possibly cholinergic nootropics like piracetam, seafood/shellfish for DHA, goat dairy and/or triacetyluridine for uridine, and eggs for phosphatidylcholine, or a CDP-Choline/Alpha-GPC choline supplement. All of these can be quite helpful as well to fill the pharmacological gaps. Most notably, I enjoyed the food sources, along with blue lotus, Celastrus paniculatus, and Polygala tenuifolia.

Reset dopamine and beta-endorphin receptor systems, along with GABA/glutamate balance (outlined here and here).