Nicotine, Me, and Pipes

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elvishrunes

Can't Leave
Jun 19, 2017
387
752
I haven’t noticed a huge difference either in the so called strong blends, but I do enjoy a nic kick... It’s sorta like caffeine but better, without the jitters. I don’t inhale either, but it goes through your mouth pores anyway.

I got some Peterson Deluxe mixture that was maybe 60-70% Cavendish, light as air, too light, don’t recommend. But I mixed it with a Virginia/Burley and it was fine after that.
 

olkofri

Lifer
Sep 9, 2017
8,175
15,014
The Arm of Orion
It’s sorta like caffeine
Its effects are essentially the same as those of caffeine, sans the diuretic one.

About the only times I get a noticeable effect from the pipe is when I've had more than one cup of coffee.

My first cigar, I paired it with a cup of coffee, because I was too cheap to get a glass of brandy instead. Have I ever gotten sick and regretted not spending those few extra Euro. ?? I almost puked that one time, and I threw the cigar out roughly halfway.
 

elvishrunes

Can't Leave
Jun 19, 2017
387
752
I really like Lakatia and understand it has less than 1% nicotine. Is this accurate?
Correct, it’s very low anyhow, one of the lowest. I actually used to think it was one of the strongest, I guess strong tasting!

But most lat blends are less than 50% lat, so the other stuff can make up for it in nic, while you enjoy the smoky taste and smell.
 
Mar 2, 2021
3,473
14,253
Alabama USA
Correct, it’s very low anyhow, one of the lowest. I actually used to think it was one of the strongest, I guess strong tasting!

But most lat blends are less than 50% lat, so the other stuff can make up for it in nic, while you enjoy the smoky taste and smell.
I’ve got two blends from the local pipe shop. The higher Lakatia content is my new favorite.

For me, I like the taste of Lakatia.
 

lochinvar

Lifer
Oct 22, 2013
1,687
1,640
I rarely register it. The only time I really remember being hit was early one morning when I was working a pay parking lot, and cracked a tin of tobacco I had never tried before....good old 1792 from Gawith. Of course, not knowing much about it, I filled up a group 5-6ish pipe and got about halfway through before my head was getting light and my stomach was flipping. Fun times.
 

anotherbob

Lifer
Mar 30, 2019
16,847
31,595
46
In the semi-rural NorthEastern USA
I certainly feel the nicotine I just don't feel a significant difference in blends labeled weak or strong. I get the same buzz. And just an fyi nicotine is a highly psychoactive drug and you're getting the effects most likely but it's not blatant. It causes as much change in the brain or even more then something like herion or cocaine, but the effects are not as overt and aren't the kind of things that change a persons personality. So yeah I think people who say that they don't feel an effect aren't lying but that doesn't mean they are not effected.
 

anotherbob

Lifer
Mar 30, 2019
16,847
31,595
46
In the semi-rural NorthEastern USA
Dark Flake or 1792 on an empty stomach makes my forehead sweat and hits the brown note doodoo button.
Maybe it's the tonquin?
Picayune had me doing the backstroke across the floor.
if I smoke almost anything on an empty stomach I feel sick. I thought it was a nicotine thing, however supposedly stronger blends seem to calm my stomach when it's empty. So not really sure what's going on with that. Though that was what got me thinking about strength of nicotine. While smoking semois in a larger bowled pipe.
 

danimalia

Lifer
Sep 2, 2015
4,485
27,224
42
San Francisco Bay Area, USA
I’ve got two blends from the local pipe shop. The higher Lakatia content is my new favorite.

For me, I like the taste of Lakatia.
Its lower nicotine content can be a plus or a minus, depending on the smoker or situation. For example, I need more nicotine in my first bowl of the day, so unfortunately, I can't t turn to many Latakia blends, even though I think they'd be great in terms of flavor with a morning coffee. But I do smoke them quite often as a nightcap, and they're wonderful for that, too!
 

burleybreath

Lifer
Aug 29, 2019
1,093
3,873
Finger Lakes area, New York, USA
Definitely a nicotine sensitivity here, though mine doesn't parallel that of others exactly. Not too enamored of an overdose. Five Brothers straight is out. Some Cornell & Diehl is out for me (Big 'n Burley is one, I think). I can sense nicotine even in 1Q or similar, once I reach the bottom of the bowl where everything strengthens up.

Quit cigs in my early twenties. Took a year before the cravings for inhalation went away, even though I continued with pipes and cigars by deliberate choice, so that helped. Then I got hooked on Copenhagen, which was a royal bitch to quit. Made quitting cigarettes seem like child's play. I still get cravings for that stuff. It gave me a buzz that I could just tolerate--unlike, say, cigar leaf wadded up and stuffed in cheek, which literally knocked me on my ass once. Fortunately, I was standing next to a bed and went reeling down, like a fly hit with spray. No exaggeration.

Nicotine is an interesting drug, I once heard a doctor on radio say. It can be both a stimulant and a depressant. I interpret that as being both a brain prod and a relaxant at the same time. That seems cool to me. I like it.
 
I don’t notice oxygen. I’m not even sure it exists. I think that what people call the lack of oxygen is just really the inability to exercise their lung powered cooling systems. puffy

This is the problem with self-diagnosis. I can’t really tell much between low nicotine and medium nicotine blends, but I rarely smoke low nic blends. Unless I get that overdose feeling in the gut and my hands, nicotine just doesn’t exist. But, lack of nicotine, I can feel. Not like when I smoked cigarettes, but it’s there like a “state.”

I remember when I first smoked a cigarette at age 14. I felt sickish, but I couldn’t figure out what the attraction was to the drug. A few packs latter, I better understood the lack of nocotine better than its actual effects.

I understand you guys who say that you don’t smoke for the drug. I get it. But, I always ask myself, why not just smoke something without nicotine? Why not just choose to pack your pipes with incense or lobelia? Lobelia has a history of being smoked for health and healing.
...for historical reasons, tradition? Why did the tradition of smoking pipes evolve around tobacco in the first place? Do we just blindly do what we’ve seen done? No questions?

So many reports by Cokumbus and early European explorers wrote about the altered consciousness of tobacco. What was that about? Is it just to taste what used to be a powerful drug, before europeans cultivated it into the weak limp-wristed thing in tins now? The evolved flavor of its forefather rusticas that was ingested to make people altered?

Self diagnosis of the nicotine is all we have in pipes. They don’t test blends for a milligram dosage like cigarettes. And the same damn blend and brand can differ pending where and what is sourced to go into it. One week a tin of a flake or blend can bee a knee buckler, the next time we buy it, it might just be an all day smoker.


What draws us to tobacco?
Why tobacco? Why not smoke hickory or rosemarry or sage or any of the aromatics that smell great when incinerated?
Is there something deceptive about this drug that makes it easy to lie or deceive ourselves about its effects?

Stuff I think about.
And, how other people conceive their smoking nicotine baffles me more and further confuses the issue for me, because it doesn’t make any rational sense to me.
 
Mar 2, 2021
3,473
14,253
Alabama USA
I don’t notice oxygen. I’m not even sure it exists. I think that what people call the lack of oxygen is just really the inability to exercise their lung powered cooling systems. puffy

This is the problem with self-diagnosis. I can’t really tell much between low nicotine and medium nicotine blends, but I rarely smoke low nic blends. Unless I get that overdose feeling in the gut and my hands, nicotine just doesn’t exist. But, lack of nicotine, I can feel. Not like when I smoked cigarettes, but it’s there like a “state.”

I remember when I first smoked a cigarette at age 14. I felt sickish, but I couldn’t figure out what the attraction was to the drug. A few packs latter, I better understood the lack of nocotine better than its actual effects.

I understand you guys who say that you don’t smoke for the drug. I get it. But, I always ask myself, why not just smoke something without nicotine? Why not just choose to pack your pipes with incense or lobelia? Lobelia has a history of being smoked for health and healing.
...for historical reasons, tradition? Why did the tradition of smoking pipes evolve around tobacco in the first place? Do we just blindly do what we’ve seen done? No questions?

So many reports by Cokumbus and early European explorers wrote about the altered consciousness of tobacco. What was that about? Is it just to taste what used to be a powerful drug, before europeans cultivated it into the weak limp-wristed thing in tins now? The evolved flavor of its forefather rusticas that was ingested to make people altered?

Self diagnosis of the nicotine is all we have in pipes. They don’t test blends for a milligram dosage like cigarettes. And the same damn blend and brand can differ pending where and what is sourced to go into it. One week a tin of a flake or blend can bee a knee buckler, the next time we buy it, it might just be an all day smoker.


What draws us to tobacco?
Why tobacco? Why not smoke hickory or rosemarry or sage or any of the aromatics that smell great when incinerated?
Is there something deceptive about this drug that makes it easy to lie or deceive ourselves about its effects?

Stuff I think about.
And, how other people conceive their smoking nicotine baffles me more and further confuses the issue for me, because it doesn’t make any rational sense to me.
If anyone knows of something to smoke something that tastes like Lakatia and is not tobacco, let me know.
 
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