Some thoughts on cigarette addiction

Why do people like smoking so much? I have a theory. It is a well-understood fact that a single pack of cigarettes contains enough nicotine - a deadly poison - to kill three grown men. So how can a person smoke two packs a day and still survive?? Though I am not a scientist, I have some good understanding of science. I believe that much of a cigarette's nicotine content is destroyed, negated and/or neutralized by the burning process. But there are still plenty of intact nicotine molecules remaining in the smoke inhaled. Those molecules savagely attack one's tissues. But your body's immune system quickly comes roaring back to heal or rebuild the damaged cells. This results in a pleasant, calming feeling, serving as a reassurance that you are strong and resilient. It may also help to keep one's immune system, uh, "vibrant". We know for example that muscles, if not utilized/exercised, tend to atrophy over time. With some notable exceptions, most folks would rather sit in an easy chair than run a marathon. But those who lead too sedentary a life may find themselves frail and enfeebled in old age. Not so those who exercise 15 or more minutes per day. Smoking constitutes exercise for one's immune system.

 

Nicotine massages our pleasure receptors in the brain . I miss taking that long pleasurable drag in the morning. The tar and soot wasn't pleasurable though..

Nicotine has shown a tendency to prevent neurological diseases like Alzheimers. Nicotine patches are prescribed by some doctors for Parkinsons.

I still use the patch....stopping smoking put me in a deep depression and frankly , with the patch I feel fine, stopped coughing and I'm healthy.

 

We are all going to die from something. I don't much care if people smoke or not. So many people have trouble finding something in life they enjoy, I say more power to them whether it is a Marlboro or a Moonpie.

 

excessive carbs and seed oils are harming more than cigarettes ever did imo

they consume those for the same reasons, addiction....

 

Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances people use. I'm not sure about detailed mechanisms, but it's not especially "toxic" in itself when smoked. Toxicity is more from actually eating it. The 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer is more related to other substances in the burned tobacco. There is increased risks for other cancers as well from systemic absorption. It's not just burning though, as chewing tobacco can lead to horrible mouth cancers as well.

There's other terrible things too. It exacerbates issues with circulation. Most of the people who needed amputations in my vascular surgery rotation had both diabetes and smoking histories - i.e. the combination of the two seemed especially bad. COPD doesn't look fun at all - needing oxygen tanks to get enough air for basic living, dying early due to not being able to breath well.

Smoking is one of the worst things you can do for your health. I suppose being extremely fat could be worse in extreme cases.

 

I would say sugar has it beat, people will get a foot amputated and still eat too many carbs - diabetes causes more amputations than anything else

Ironically, the longest living person was a moderate smoker of over 100 years of smoking, a title non-smokers still wish to take some day

I think excessive smoking, excessive carbs, excessive sun, excessive Alcohol, etc.. is what is bad

science is sometimes biased

like they used to call fatty liver, alcoholic fatty liver disease, then realized fructose also caused it, as sugar is half fructose and people drank much more of it than alcohol, they eventually had to add a new term, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, but no one knows which caused it if you consume both, but if you do both, it will be blamed on Alcohol, because more doctors are against alcohol then fructose

 

Cigarettes are not tobacco. Most commercial Cigarettes (American Spirit brand being one exception), are a "Tobacco Product" usually containing 25-50% tobacco leaf and the rest is reconstituted sheet tobacco- paper made from tobacco.

It is the reconstituted sheet tobacco that makes the commercial cigarette diverse from other forms of nicotine use. What they do to make the RST is grind up the tobacco, run a solvent through it, collect the residue and screw with the molecules to free the nicotine from its base so that it is more quickly and directly absorbed into the bloodstream. Then the make paper using this liquor and the pulp leftover from making the liquor. This means instead of the slow trickle of long lasting effect found in smoking straight tobacco you get a quick, heavy rush of nicotine all at once but it quickly disapates.

The advantage for the cigarette makers of using RST is obvious. Instead of a slowly absorbing and slowly dissapating buzz you get a quick rush and crash that's very conducive to lighting up one right after the other.

 

Wow! That is a real eye-opener!! Thank you muchly for that reply!

 

I grow it for personal use.

 

I can't wait to find out when my local Smoker Friendly store opens tomorrow if they sell this American Spirit brand! In fact your tale meshes with my recent personal experiences wherein I've experimented with rolling my own cigarettes from snipped-up actual tobacco leaves that they sell (mostly for use in rolling "blunts"). This practice of mine results in a rather harsh but satisfying smoke that I have to put out after a few draws and then can relight later. I smoke far less this way than I would of store-bought cigarettes. Instead of a pack a day I get by on just two of these much thinner/smaller hand-rolled numbers. Again, my earnest thanks for your elucidating post!

 

My brother switched from Marlboros to American Spirit brand and he found he could cut his consumption in half, which is interesting to me because American Spirt uses a Virginia strain that is lower in nicotine content then the burley Marlboros are made from. Of course Phil M. has Marlboro addicts free-basing.

Virginia tobacco is a very mild tasting white stem plant, probably the best tasting smoke of all tobaccos. Too short a season to grow it up here or I would.

If you buy pound bag pipe tobacco, which is usually cigarette cut tobacco labeled "Pipe Tobacco" to evade the cigarette tax, beware of dry ice expanded tobacco or DIET. To see if your bag has RST or DIET in it, put a 1/4 oz. or so into a glass of water over night. If anything is floating at the top of the tea the next day, you have adulterated tobacco product and not tobacco leaf. Real tobacco is denser than water.

 

I said that those hand-rolled smokes are "harsh" but I want to assure that I carefully tear out the leaf proper from between the "veins" so no veins go into the finished product. And this practice of mine has additional beneficial result in that I don't have to actually inhale deeply if at all: I can puff on it like one does smoking a cigar. So my tobacco use is muchly curtailed! Thanks again, Green Man!

 

The stem and veins have most of the nicotine. Snuff, the kind you snort, is made from finely ground stem with high nicotine content. That is how come it only takes a pinch.

You want some seeds? I got burley and a couple strains of rustica. I might have some seedleaf and shirazi if I can dig it out. It's a pain to start but once it's going it grows just like tomatoes. The hard part is getting it to cure- basically you got to compost it.

 

That is mighty kind of you. But I think I'll pass because I'm along in years and not in great health. One single recent game of 8-ball pool left me with sore musculature! So no, I don't want to start gardening and curing. I'll continue to buy "Funnels" brand tobacco leaf and carefully roll smokes from that. [Hey, I know I use far too many exclamation marks in my writing and that's frowned upon -- sorry.]

 

Thank you to everyone who replied to this thread; your answers were real helpful.
Thanks especially to Green Man, who turned me on to uniquely-formulated American Spirit cigarettes. I bought a pack today and I agree with his assessment: it's a much longer-lasting buzz.

 

In the world wars didn't they routinely allow badly wounded soldiers to smoke because it was found to enhance the effectiveness of morphine?

 

I call bs on your third sentence/assertion.

 

They ain't "uniquely formulated". That brand is just mostly real tobacco instead of half tobacco and half paper. Also they are still a cigarette so the tax is ridiculous. The dudes that write the federal laws know about as much about tobacco as they know about guns. They put an ridiculously high tax not just on nicotine manipulated pre-rolled cigarettes, but to appease the makers of cigarettes they raised the tax on loose un rolled cigarette tobacco without nicotine manipulation higher than the tax on rolled cigarettes. The government wants it to cost just as much if not more to roll your own. It's practically a kickback to cigarette makers - and both the government and the cigarette makers don't want you smoking nicotine that hasn't been detached from its base. The government makes money off people smoking just much as the cigarette makers make money off of people smoking, so don't you buy that "it's for the children" bull crap.

It used to be i could buy a pound bag of 100% leaf cigarette tobacco for about $12. Now the same bag costs $60-$75 because of the taxes. Luckily they don't tax pipe tobacco as much, got to keep those older smokers on Social Security happy, so you can buy a bag of 100% leaf pipe tobacco for about $20. But then you got to have tubes or papers unless you actually smoke a pipe, sounds like work....

...and if you got both hands busy rolling cigarettes it's really going to cut into your smoking time.

 

You call bs on this sentence: "It is a well-understood fact that a single pack of cigarettes contains enough nicotine - a deadly poison - to kill three grown men." ??? If yes, I am aghast.

 

I actually appreciate the time required to roll because it sort of assists me in making smoking a nuisance and so I tend to do it less. BTW, if American Spirit is so friggin different than other smokes then there's nothing amiss about about my saying "uniquely-formulated". I appreciate the extra info you supplied in that post concerning rolling tobacco and the cost and pipe tobacco as an alternative. I intend to explore that.

 

You are welcome.

There's just so much misinformation out there. Once some dude was trying to tell me that growing your own tobacco is illegal.

This country's founding was financed by tobacco. Now it's just another source of government revenue seeing as how the Feds are eating at the same table as Philp M. and friends.

 

Yes but I would really really prefer that “something” to be at age 105 whilst having a great time with an attentive gentleman

 

I believe American Spirit brand is an American Indian brand, and they do not have to add carpet glue to the cigarettes and stuff as not regulated by the government

IF it has FSC on it, has the required carpet glue rings to make it, as they call it a "fire safe cigarette"

 

smokers that do not smoke to excess tend to live longer, ironic

the key part is not to excessively smoke - the bigger issue today is metabolic diseases from the modern food we eat