I personally noticed a steep drop off in efficacy once I built up tolerance each of the handful of times I’ve tried and then given up using nicotine as a medicine. It’s low reward and high risk (full blown addiction).
Interesting about your parents smoking. Mine did also, chain smoked with me in the car basically hot boxing and all their friends did too.
How did you use nicotine? The addiction/tolerance potential is proportional to how quickly it gets in your brain. Smoked/inhaled nicotine takes 7 seconds, a patch takes about 4 hours to reach peak blood concentration.
Also I do not recommend tobacco, which is much more than nicotine.
Interesting about your parents smoking. Mine did also, chain smoked with me in the car basically hot boxing and all their friends did too.