- So these days there's increased use of nicotine pouches, gums, not just smoking, vaping, dipping, and snuffing. And it's certainly a stimulant. And certainly a lot of people, in particular young males, are using it more often. The traditional media is now trying to create this kind of picture of nicotine being part of the kind of wellness and fitness community.

But in my observation, many, many more people outside of that category are using it. So what, in your experience, happens when somebody with ADHD, let's assume they're not medicating in any other way, starts dabbling in nicotine use. And let's assume they're gonna do this in ways that do not cause cancer, because the smoking, dipping, vaping, snuffing part is what causes the cancer.

Let's just talk about the compound nicotine. - Yeah, so there's some well-done research showing nicotine is helpful for improving some of the executive functions, sustained attention, and I'm not sure which of the executive functions, but they help people focus, be sharper, do better. There was actually a major pharmaceutical company who was developing a nicotine receptor product specifically for ADHD and they abandoned that several years ago.

And I haven't been able to find word as to why that was abandoned, whether there was some other side effect. It's worth throwing out there that although nicotine, in many ways, acts like a stimulant, it actually is moderately unique. And I hate people whose unique means one of a kind, so I can't modify it in any way.

Unusual, maybe not the only one, unusual in that it both arouses people and reduces anxiety simultaneously. Not too many, most of our stimulants are, again, banging away at the sympathetic nervous system, and that's banging away on good arousal and bad arousal. So nicotine, again, seems to be both calming and helping alert or focus people.

And as long as they're taking it in a way that's not clearly detrimental to their health, which smoking and vaping and probably chewing are, well, not probably, definitely are. And if it's affordable, because some of these products are pretty pricey, at least the chewing gums or the Nicorette that was used for helping people with smoking cessation.

I have some people who feel that it's been an important and useful part of their regimen. I have some people, small numbers, who prefer it to any other medications. And almost no, again, other than sort of the basic neurophysiology showing that it can have beneficial effects on executive functions, there's no research, at least as of a year or two ago, whenever I dipped my toe, not my anything else into the snuff, looked into it.

There's no, you know, clinical research showing does this help or not help.