First off, I am a newbie to this site and this is my first post. I would thank you in advance for your patience with me for what has turned out to be a tremendously long winded and rambling post. However, I just wanted to get my thoughts down in writing it in order to hopefully get some clarity of mind.
I am in somewhat odd place. I very much love pipes. There is something about the craftsmanship of a fine pipe that I find very attractive. I am drawn to collecting them. I also love the smell of unburned and burned pipe tobacco. However, the taste of burning tobacco is something that I struggle with. It just tastes like burnt “stuff” in my mouth, and the aftertaste just seems to linger and linger. I also don’t like the smell on my clothes etc. This has been the case with cigars, and thus far it is true with pipe tobacco. To be fair I am an extremely light smoker. We are talking about a cigar or two a year at special occasions if that. With pipe smoking it would be once or twice a month at most. From what I have read, it seems to take patience and time to learn how to enjoy the flavor of pipe tobacco. Both from the perspective of learning how to pack and smoke a pipe, as well as developing a palate for the actual flavors.
This brings me to my dilemma: I am a very health conscious person, and research anything that I do to the ends of the earth and so have some concerns. However, before I list them out, I would like to say that I believe that smoking involves making an educated decision. For me this means looking at the risks and balancing them against the rewards. For example (and on the extreme), if your are someone who has no family history of cancer and whose parents and grandparents smoked cigarettes all their lives and lived till 100, and you get tremendous pleasure out of smoking a pipe, then the risk reward probably leans towards going ahead and smoking. Conversely, if you have a strong history of cancer in your family and you get minimal pleasure out of smoking a pipe, then it might be a better decision not to do so. At the end of the day it is a completely personal decision that each person has to make. Basically individual choice and individual responsibility.
With the above in mind, I will list out my concerns. Most of you probably already know this stuff. Others may not, and may find it useful. Again, I am in no way trying to sway people one way or the other. As I said, and will say again: I believe 100% in individual choice and individual responsibility. To me that means getting the data and applying it to ones circumstance and making an educated decision:
1) While pipe tobacco doesn’t have any of the utter rubbish that is cigarette “tobacco”, it is treated with pesticides in the field. Some of these pesticides are quite evil, and we don’t seem to understand how they behave under combustion
2) We really don’t know what is in the tin of tobacco. I will say this: I absolutely wish that pipe tobacco would come with a list of ingredients including the amount of nicotine in the product. This goes to having the most complete data in order to make a decision. As an aside, I wonder if there could be a market for organic pipe tobacco that hasn’t been treated with pesticides etc.
3) Certain tobaccos have flavorings added. These have been defined as safe for eating, but there is no data about how they behave when combusted. I think the good news here is that one can avoid tobaccos with casings/toppings
4) Certain tobaccos have PG added. While we know this is safe as a food additive, we have no idea what it does when it is combusted and how the byproducts may be absorbed. This one is a little trickier since one cannot definitively know if PG has been added to tobacco
5) Unless you believe that there is a massive global conspiracy (which in my opinion doesn’t pass Occam’s razor), certain combustibles in pipe smoke are carcinogenic and the data supports the fact that they can and have caused cancers as well as contributed to heart disease. Will they do so in a specific person? That’s the golden question, and where we each have to make that risk/reward decision. Having said that, it seems to me that for a light pipe smoker this risk may be nominal; unfortunately, there just isn’t any data that spells out the risk for a truly occasional user e.g. once a week or a couple times a month. Part of it is my ignorance about how the carcinogens exactly damage DNA i.e. does it truly require many years of smoking, or can smoking just once cause that magic damage that will cause a cell to become cancerous?
6) Nicotine is highly addictive - more so than many recreational drugs. How much nicotine is absorbed by a pipe smoker? Is it enough to become easily addicted. i’m sure much of this depends on how much of an addictive personality one has. On the other hand biology is biology and nicotine is particularly aggressive in the way it rewires the brain e.g. by creating nicotine receptors. I do get a little concerned when I read threads about addiction, and folks say I do it because it makes me feel relaxed, but I can stop anytime. Doesn’t feeding an addiction exactly make one feel relaxed and at ease, or am I reading too much into the comments?
So the above are some of my concerns. Others may add to them, and some may disagree with them, but they are what rattle around in my head.
Now a little about me. I am 50 years old and so far in great health. Except for a brief experiment with cigarettes at fifteen that lasted several months, I have not been a smoker. I watch my diet, exercise religiously, and if I am honest I’m a little bit of a hypochondriac. Part of that is due to my family history. My father had heart disease and I watched him have a massive heart attack in front of me in his early fifties. He also contracted prostate cancer in his mid-fifties that ultimately killed him at 74. He briefly and rarely smoked a pipe for a few months in his forties, and he almost never drank alcohol. He did have a rather poor diet until his mid-forties. My father had five brothers: one brother smoked cigarettes for 30+ years, ate like crap, and had heart disease (but is still alive after a quadruple bypass); one of them smoked all his life, ate like crap, drank like a fish and ended up with emphysema in his late 70s dying in his late 80s. Another one smoked all his life, had schizophrenia and died in his 60s from a heart attack. One brother contracted cancer after a leg amputation, but it was believe that was due to some strange x-ray therapy that they tried on him (this is back in early 1950s). And the final brother smoked all his life, drank like a fish, had a horrific diet and died just shy of 90.
My mother was in great health until her early 70’s when she contracted pancreatic cancer which killed her in six brief months, and almost a year to the day after my dad died. On my mother’s side my grandmother lived till her mid-eighties, and my mother’s two siblings lived into their eighties. One of her siblings smoked all of her life. In my mother’s case, I think it was the stress of taking care of my father, having to work while doing so, and perhaps the fact that they lived Houston which unfortunately has terrible air quality - then again maybe it was something completely different; who knows really.
So where does that leave me? I could just continue collecting pipes, and opening up tins of tobacco and letting the aroma fill my man cave. Dorky, but basically zero risk. Or I could roll the dice and take a bit of risk, take the time up front to learn how to properly smoke and taste a pipe, then get into the smoking routine I want. Will I worry about cancer with every sore or lump in my mouth, or worry about one appearing? Probably. On the other hand as time goes by and should nothing happen that would likely diminish. Quite honestly, after watching my parents, I think that I have a (irrational?) fear of getting cancer. I understand that not smoking doesn’t mean that I won’t get it, but I fear that doing so will just add to the risk, and I wonder if I do smoke a pipe and do get cancer if I will wonder if it is because of smoking, and beat myself up for it? Or I might get hit by a bus tomorrow!
Methinks methinks too much!
Again thank you everyone for being patient and allowing me to write out my thoughts.
I am in somewhat odd place. I very much love pipes. There is something about the craftsmanship of a fine pipe that I find very attractive. I am drawn to collecting them. I also love the smell of unburned and burned pipe tobacco. However, the taste of burning tobacco is something that I struggle with. It just tastes like burnt “stuff” in my mouth, and the aftertaste just seems to linger and linger. I also don’t like the smell on my clothes etc. This has been the case with cigars, and thus far it is true with pipe tobacco. To be fair I am an extremely light smoker. We are talking about a cigar or two a year at special occasions if that. With pipe smoking it would be once or twice a month at most. From what I have read, it seems to take patience and time to learn how to enjoy the flavor of pipe tobacco. Both from the perspective of learning how to pack and smoke a pipe, as well as developing a palate for the actual flavors.
This brings me to my dilemma: I am a very health conscious person, and research anything that I do to the ends of the earth and so have some concerns. However, before I list them out, I would like to say that I believe that smoking involves making an educated decision. For me this means looking at the risks and balancing them against the rewards. For example (and on the extreme), if your are someone who has no family history of cancer and whose parents and grandparents smoked cigarettes all their lives and lived till 100, and you get tremendous pleasure out of smoking a pipe, then the risk reward probably leans towards going ahead and smoking. Conversely, if you have a strong history of cancer in your family and you get minimal pleasure out of smoking a pipe, then it might be a better decision not to do so. At the end of the day it is a completely personal decision that each person has to make. Basically individual choice and individual responsibility.
With the above in mind, I will list out my concerns. Most of you probably already know this stuff. Others may not, and may find it useful. Again, I am in no way trying to sway people one way or the other. As I said, and will say again: I believe 100% in individual choice and individual responsibility. To me that means getting the data and applying it to ones circumstance and making an educated decision:
1) While pipe tobacco doesn’t have any of the utter rubbish that is cigarette “tobacco”, it is treated with pesticides in the field. Some of these pesticides are quite evil, and we don’t seem to understand how they behave under combustion
2) We really don’t know what is in the tin of tobacco. I will say this: I absolutely wish that pipe tobacco would come with a list of ingredients including the amount of nicotine in the product. This goes to having the most complete data in order to make a decision. As an aside, I wonder if there could be a market for organic pipe tobacco that hasn’t been treated with pesticides etc.
3) Certain tobaccos have flavorings added. These have been defined as safe for eating, but there is no data about how they behave when combusted. I think the good news here is that one can avoid tobaccos with casings/toppings
4) Certain tobaccos have PG added. While we know this is safe as a food additive, we have no idea what it does when it is combusted and how the byproducts may be absorbed. This one is a little trickier since one cannot definitively know if PG has been added to tobacco
5) Unless you believe that there is a massive global conspiracy (which in my opinion doesn’t pass Occam’s razor), certain combustibles in pipe smoke are carcinogenic and the data supports the fact that they can and have caused cancers as well as contributed to heart disease. Will they do so in a specific person? That’s the golden question, and where we each have to make that risk/reward decision. Having said that, it seems to me that for a light pipe smoker this risk may be nominal; unfortunately, there just isn’t any data that spells out the risk for a truly occasional user e.g. once a week or a couple times a month. Part of it is my ignorance about how the carcinogens exactly damage DNA i.e. does it truly require many years of smoking, or can smoking just once cause that magic damage that will cause a cell to become cancerous?
6) Nicotine is highly addictive - more so than many recreational drugs. How much nicotine is absorbed by a pipe smoker? Is it enough to become easily addicted. i’m sure much of this depends on how much of an addictive personality one has. On the other hand biology is biology and nicotine is particularly aggressive in the way it rewires the brain e.g. by creating nicotine receptors. I do get a little concerned when I read threads about addiction, and folks say I do it because it makes me feel relaxed, but I can stop anytime. Doesn’t feeding an addiction exactly make one feel relaxed and at ease, or am I reading too much into the comments?
So the above are some of my concerns. Others may add to them, and some may disagree with them, but they are what rattle around in my head.
Now a little about me. I am 50 years old and so far in great health. Except for a brief experiment with cigarettes at fifteen that lasted several months, I have not been a smoker. I watch my diet, exercise religiously, and if I am honest I’m a little bit of a hypochondriac. Part of that is due to my family history. My father had heart disease and I watched him have a massive heart attack in front of me in his early fifties. He also contracted prostate cancer in his mid-fifties that ultimately killed him at 74. He briefly and rarely smoked a pipe for a few months in his forties, and he almost never drank alcohol. He did have a rather poor diet until his mid-forties. My father had five brothers: one brother smoked cigarettes for 30+ years, ate like crap, and had heart disease (but is still alive after a quadruple bypass); one of them smoked all his life, ate like crap, drank like a fish and ended up with emphysema in his late 70s dying in his late 80s. Another one smoked all his life, had schizophrenia and died in his 60s from a heart attack. One brother contracted cancer after a leg amputation, but it was believe that was due to some strange x-ray therapy that they tried on him (this is back in early 1950s). And the final brother smoked all his life, drank like a fish, had a horrific diet and died just shy of 90.
My mother was in great health until her early 70’s when she contracted pancreatic cancer which killed her in six brief months, and almost a year to the day after my dad died. On my mother’s side my grandmother lived till her mid-eighties, and my mother’s two siblings lived into their eighties. One of her siblings smoked all of her life. In my mother’s case, I think it was the stress of taking care of my father, having to work while doing so, and perhaps the fact that they lived Houston which unfortunately has terrible air quality - then again maybe it was something completely different; who knows really.
So where does that leave me? I could just continue collecting pipes, and opening up tins of tobacco and letting the aroma fill my man cave. Dorky, but basically zero risk. Or I could roll the dice and take a bit of risk, take the time up front to learn how to properly smoke and taste a pipe, then get into the smoking routine I want. Will I worry about cancer with every sore or lump in my mouth, or worry about one appearing? Probably. On the other hand as time goes by and should nothing happen that would likely diminish. Quite honestly, after watching my parents, I think that I have a (irrational?) fear of getting cancer. I understand that not smoking doesn’t mean that I won’t get it, but I fear that doing so will just add to the risk, and I wonder if I do smoke a pipe and do get cancer if I will wonder if it is because of smoking, and beat myself up for it? Or I might get hit by a bus tomorrow!
Methinks methinks too much!
Again thank you everyone for being patient and allowing me to write out my thoughts.
