The Wiki Man: So it might really be true – nicotine is good for your brain

It was a few months ago, and I had just arrived in Philadelphia. My friend picked me up at the airport — one of those charming, civilised things people do when they live in a city that’s a sensible size.

As I climbed into the car I furtively pulled an e-cigarette out of my pocket. Furtively, because my friend has never smoked, and is better qualified than most to criticise my nicotine use — what with his having been awarded the highest first in biochemistry in his year at Cambridge and being a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and all. I muttered some apologetic comment: ‘E-cigarettes… nicotine but without the carcinogens or something… about on a par with caffeine… not too bad a drug… .’

‘Are you kidding?’ He replied. ‘It’s better than that. In fact I’m not sure that nicotine shouldn’t be compulsory; it improves cognitive ability, raises IQ, boosts memory function, treats mental illness… rats when given nicotine are much better at navigating mazes… .’ He then explained something about T-cell receptors and synapses.

Eh? I wasn’t expecting that. Now, admittedly, he was talking only about the mental effects of nicotine: it is a vasoconstrictor, and may do harm elsewhere in the body. But this was the first time I had heard a scientist describe what all smokers have long suspected — that for all its flaws, nicotine is one of few drugs which at least does not make its users stupider. Instead it enables ‘a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs’, as Einstein described it. In fact you could make a case that the enlightenment only happened when Western Europe started lighting up.

When I gave up smoking 11 years ago, I missed these mental benefits (and the attendant rituals of smoking) long after the addiction had worn off.