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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   2825 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 19, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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Any nicotine gum users in here? I tried some 4mg gum this past weekend for the first time (it was the first nicotine product I had ever tried), taking 1/day Saturday-Monday. On Saturday the effect was so strong I just wanted to take a nap for three hours, but after that I had a very productive afternoon. Sunday/Monday it was much more manageable and I got a lot of work done. Helped me move quickly from subtask to subtask without thinking of all the more fun things I could be doing with my time. Tuesday and today I abstained and had no withdrawal effects. I suspect this could be a very useful supplement provided I avoid addiction, my main concerns are things I've heard about how it harms tendon repair, but maybe once or twice a week while working on learning a new skill could be beneficial? Any advice/thoughts/anecdotes appreciated.

Nicotine enhances learning pre-task, and iirc weakly post-task, which contrasts with coffee ingestion which only enhances learning post-task. Personally I would try to only use nicotine within a learning context for maximum benefit, and this can be interpreted broadly. Practicing being mindful and relaxed, or gracious, can be construed as a kind of learning; learning is not just verbal cue-response retrieval.

What they used to do with nicotine is snort it or place some on the gum, and researching this I found no correlation between this intake and cancer. Lozenges and gum are absorbed slower, which may not be advantageous to targeted use in learning. Personally I would use a vape or try to find snorting tobacco.

learning pre-task

I can't find a good explanation of pre and pre-past learning anywhere, and wanted to confirm my intuitions here. Does this mean "if you take nicotine pre-task you'll have enhanced learning, and if you take it post-task you'll still get some small benefits to remembering what you did?"

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