The Days After We Deleted Nicotine
At midnight the Benevolent, who shall not be named, snaps its fingers and every bar-coded nicotine atom winks out. No cartons in warehouses, no vapes in glove compartments, no pouches in desk drawers. The cravings don’t vanish; they wake up angry. By morning, cities run a half-step off: coffee lines double, the stand-up starts late, the bus driver’s voice has an edge he can’t file down. You can hear pressure in the world’s throat.
Week one is triage by substitution. Office fridges turn into neon aquariums of energy drinks. Baristas pull triple shots with the eyes of ER nurses at 4 a.m. People who ran on two quiet milligrams start grazing—more sugar, more scrolling, more bite. The mouth wants work, so gum and mints vanish; sunflower seeds and anything loud enough to drown a thought sell out. Sleep isn’t sleep; it’s a jittery armistice. The craving isn’t drama, it’s bureaucracy—hundreds of tiny forms the body used to file automatically now stacking on the desk.
Then the market remembers its lines. Prohibition writes the same spec every time: smaller, stronger, easier to hide. Supply pivots to compressed stimulants and improvised calmatives—the sorts of things that live in a jacket hem and smell like nothing at all. Some are legal-but-unwise (mega-caffeine powders, “focus kits”), some are borrowed prescriptions, some are new letters in an alphabet you don’t want to learn. Variance—the real killer—spikes. Yesterday’s dose is not today’s, because there is no “yesterday,” only batches with a vibe.
Work feels it first. Long-haul trucking, night-shift logistics, ICU float teams—the nicotine scaffolding that propped up vigilance and mood is gone. Accident curves tick upward at stupid hours. Warehouses hang NO STIMULANTS signs and quietly stretch breaks because fatigue writes policy now. HR rolls out resilience webinars that can’t change circadian math. Managers clock the fray: a pick-rate off by 3%, a short fuse at the help desk, a surgeon’s hand just that much less still at 3 a.m.
