Vaping and its effect on Mental Health

Walking down Forbes Avenue, you’ll inevitably be met with a variety of smells that permeate the air and creep up your nostrils. Ah, there’s the lingering scent of nachos from Stack’d mixed with fresh sewage and a dash of perfume. But somewhere in this cauldron of smells is a twinge of sweetness. Is it strawberry? No, it can’t be. It’s sweeter than that. What about snickerdoodle? I passed Insomnia cookies 5 minutes ago! Creme Brulee? Perhaps a new bakery or dessert shop has opened up nearby! You look around with hearty optimism, only to be enveloped by a cloud of smoke that seems to have gotten ahold of you. Suddenly, the sweet smell of funnel cake intensifies as if you’ve been transported to Disney World. But there are no signs of cotton candy, churros, or other sugary goodness--instead, the smoke dissipates and you've been duped by the sweet smell of $10 vape juice.

Despite its candy store-like assortment of endless flavors and nostalgic amusement park-esque smells, these substances, seemingly innocent and harmless, have very threatening and damaging effects on mental health. They create the perfect contradiction to entice many of today’s teens and young adults.

Vaping is a general term used to describe “the inhalation of aerosols produced in devices that heat liquid solutions'' (Patten, 2021). It was originally used as a method for people to quit smoking tobacco cigarettes in a less harmful manner. However, the addition of various flavors such as mint, mango, lemon, cotton candy, etc., have opened the vape industry up to young teens and adolescents, many of whom have never smoked before (Bishop, 2014). If you’ve ever seen someone put an elongated computer flash drive in their mouth, you’re witnessing vaping through a device known as a JUUL, which has become one of the most popular e-cigarette brands in the nation. The marketing strategy for JUUL is clever, yet deceptive, as it is able to attract many young consumers with its sleek and unassuming look. You could even buy a JUUL skin to personalize the device and add protection along with flavored “Juul pods'' that enhance the experience by introducing a unique flavor in lieu of the original flavor. Perhaps its most deliberate strategy is one that involves downplaying JUUL’s harmful and addictive effects and instead reinforcing its role as a safer alternative. Safer doesn't imply completely harmless. In fact, a study by Kristen Jones entitled “The Vaping Epidemic in Adolescents” shows that “39% of adolescents did not consider JUULs to be e-cigarettes at all,” and “63% of adolescents did not know that JUUL pods contain nicotine,” (Jones, 2021). This is a particularly concerning statistic, considering JUUL contains 5%, or 59 mg/ml, of nicotine (Jones, 2020). This is comparable to the amount of nicotine in 20 combustible cigarettes!

While the physical effects of vaping have been relatively fleshed out in various studies that report difficulty breathing, headaches, acute lung injury, and even lung cancer, its impact on mental health has been overlooked thus far due to the lack of concrete evidence. Although there are not many substantial studies that discuss the adverse effects of vaping on mental health, the correlation between the two is very much real and alarming.

It’s important to preface that vaping does not directly cause mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, etc. Rather, it is the withdrawal of nicotine that is the catalyst for many mental disorders. Nicotine has long developed its reputation for being the primary addictive chemical in cigarettes and vapes. It is a stimulant that binds to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs)] in the limbic system and helps release dopamine that drives the feelings of pleasure, arousal, euphoria, and the so-called “happy buzz.” These positive feelings are crucial in the path to addiction and are a major contributor to habitual nicotine use patterns. Things start to get dicey when the body responds to the increased systemic nicotine by upregulating nAChRs begin. When vapers, who develop millions more of these, stop vaping, the receptors don’t receive nicotine and the pleasurable sensations are cut off (Yuan, 2015). Curbing the habit is difficult when the increased number of receptors are expecting the rush of nicotine; when that rush is denied to their brain circuits, vapers experience unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, leading to anxiety, depression, irritability, anger, frustration, and other mental health issues. Luckily, the receptors revert back to their normal levels once the habit is stopped, alleviating withdrawal symptoms, but, this process can take about a month or even longer according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (Walia. 2021).

It is important to understand that a lot of people who vape already struggle with mental health issues and use it as a means to cope by temporarily inducing those feel-good chemicals. Vaping is linked to lessening symptoms of mental illness and a means of self-medicating (NIDA, 2021). In fact, according to a 2021 study by the National Institute of Health, smoking and vaping rates are “particularly high among patients with serious mental illness, and as many as 70-85 percent of people with schizophrenia and as many as 50-70 percent of people with bipolar disorder smoke/vape”. Unfortunately, vaping is a trap that many people fall for: due to nicotine’s addiction nature, one can fall into a vicious cycle in which the vaping intended to alleviate pre-existing anxiety or depression inadvertently exacerbates one’s condition by producing a nasty dependence on vaping. Eventually one can get so hooked that any time one is not vaping, feelings of distress, as well as mood imbalances, persist for longer periods of time, and tolerance for the nicotine dwindles.

When it comes to mental health, vaping is a slippery slope worth investigating further. As more data comes out about their correlation, the more we will come to understand this bidirectional process: those with mental health issues gravitate towards vaping, and those who vape tend to exhibit symptoms of serious mental illness. This is an important relationship that is commonly overlooked as young adults and adolescents are lured to these products that masquerade themselves as “safer alternatives” and hide behind harmless appearances and tempting flavors.

References

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nicotine - mayo clinic news network. Mayo Clinic. Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/smokers-brains-change-in-response-to-high-levels-of-nicotine/.

Jones, K., & Salzman, G. A. (2020). The Vaping Epidemic in Adolescents. Missouri

medicine, 117(1), 56–58.

NIDA. 2021, April 12. Do people with mental illness and substance use disorders use

tobacco more often?. Retrieved from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-nicotine-e-cigarettes/do-people-mental-illness-substance-use-disorders-use-tobacco-more-often on 2021, November 29

Patten S. B. (2021). Vaping and Mental Health. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child

and Adolescent Psychiatry = Journal de l'Academie canadienne de psychiatrie de l'enfant et de l'adolescent, 30(1), 3–5.

Smoking and mental health. Mental Health Foundation. (2021, July 20). Retrieved

November 29, 2021, from https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/s/smoking-and-mental-health.

Walia, N. (2021, May 6). Vaping and mental health: What's the connection? Baylor

College of Medicine Blog Network. Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://blogs.bcm.edu/2021/05/06/vaping-and-mental-health-whats-the-connection/.

Yuan, M., Cross, S. J., Loughlin, S. E., & Leslie, F. M. (2015). Nicotine and the adolescent

brain. The Journal of physiology, 593(16), 3397–3412. https://doi.org/10.1113/JP270492