This experiment failed, but reporting null results seems more worthwhile after succeeding with a different method.
I am an ex-smoker, so using nicotine seemed like a risky thing to try. However, I was desperate last November. The risk of becoming addicted again seemed better than being tired all the time, or spending money on a personal trainer I’d dislike spending time with. I set out the following rules:
- My boyfriend and I jog twice a week
- He keeps the nicotine gum
- He flips a coin to determine whether I am getting the gum on any given jog
- If so, he cuts the gum in half so I get 1mg, which is ~60% of a weak cigarette
- I find out whether I get nicotine when we are 3 blocks away from home. If I do, I get the gum there and then
- If it is a nicotine jog, it’s going to be a 2 mile jog. If not, it’ll be 1 mile.
I thought the intermittent reinforcement would get me to jog, while still keeping me reasonably happy each run: relieved that the jog was short or happy to have nicotine.
The obvious failure mode was nicotine addiction. When I explained my plan online, some people reported trying something roughly similar. Most of them didn’t go into great detail, but 3.5 of them reported getting addicted, and 7.5 didn’t. 2 people were nonresponders who said they didn’t notice anything and failed to take gum because it didn’t have effects.
- The 0.5 was one person who said they noticed too much craving after 4 months and took a hard break for 6 weeks.
- Some of the 7.5 just didn’t find nicotine that addictive; others had very strict only-for-exercise guidelines.
My experience was surprisingly mediocre. The nicotine took 10 minutes to kick in and made the experience subtly better. On the first nicotine run, I ran 2.1 miles (with a 15 minute mile average) and it was… almost not painful. But “almost not painful” was not enough for me to stick with it even with what seemed like a potent carrot. After a few weeks, I noticed I had quit.