In 2005, cathinone was outlawed in Israel

Since a central element of the idea of distributing cathinone was the fact that the material was legal and I didn't want to be on the wrong side of the law, I looked for an alternative. I ended up looking for new derivatives of cathinone that are not listed in the statute, but before that I looked for other more readily available solutions and the first idea I tested was a very common psychoactive molecule that we are all familiar with - nicotine.

Nicotine that we know as "the active ingredient in tobacco" (and can also be found in other plants, such as eggplant) is an alkaloid with stimulating properties, and since Sir Walter Riley returned from his adventures in the New World at the end of the 16th century and brought the cigarette to the West, nicotine has been one of the most common psychoactive substances in the world.

Since billions consume nicotine through smoking, I had an idea: "Why don't we bypass the damage associated with smoking and snort nicotine in its pure form ?” Sniffing tobacco, also known as snuff, has been a traditional method of consumption in many cultures dating back to the 1400’s, and the large concentration of nerves in the nasal mucosa would allow nicotine to make its way directly to the brain. I suspected that this would provide a safer and possibly more potent experience, but there was only one way to know for sure.

After reading on a cigarette box that one cigarette contains 3 to 5 mg of nicotine, I blew my nose and decided to purchase pure nicotine in powdered form to test the idea myself. I started with 5 mg, respecting the huge warning poster that came packaged with the tiny bottle. Nothing happened. I went up to 10, 15, 25, then 40 mg and still nothing. Determined to test my hypothesis fully, I kept working my way up until at about 80 mg, I started to feel something more or less the same as what you get when you smoke a regular cigarette. And so, I went up a little more – it didn't get any better. As far as I was concerned, the experiment had failed, although I wasn’t sure why

It wasn't until many years later, when I sat in a pub in London with Prof. David Nutt and told him about my little experiment, that he explained to me what had occurred that afternoon. It turns out that tobacco contains a relatively unknown MAOI called Harman. The thing about Harman is that it exists only due to the high temperatures that occur during the burning of tobacco. Without Harman, the nicotine inhaled during smoking is not amplified.*

When inhaling nicotine in vapes, Harman is not present, making it arguably the world's most profitable pseudo-placebo product (perhaps excepting homeopathy).+

Don't get me wrong - I'm not against placebo as a treatment… I mean, “if it works, it works.” Right? When you take a substance that is supposed to improve your mood, does it really matter that it works by some biological mechanism or by some psychological mechanism?

In the end, both ways you're happy. And isn’t that really all that matters?