This afternoon I'm finally facing my fears and revisiting the only blend to ever put me in bed for the better part of a day the one time I previously smoked it: Samuel Gawith's 1792 Flake.
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This blend is a real odd one. I'm a regular enjoyer of Gawith Hoggarth's dark fired blends as well as Peterson Nightcap, Royal Yacht, and Irish Flake—so I'm no stranger to a good bit of nicotine—but 1792 Flake seems to just whack me like nothing else. The first time I tried it I smoked it for 25 minutes and was green around the gills and out of commission for a day, so this time I stopped and put the pipe down after 10 minutes.
After that 10 minutes of sipping on the 1792 I've got a bit of a headache and had a touch of the spins for a minute, but weirdly I don't feel like I've had too much nicotine at all. I'm actually craving a cigarette, whereas I usually feel very satisfied in that regard after smoking a strong pipe blend even for 10 minutes.
I'm kind of wondering if I might just have some sort of intolerance to the tonquin bean topping, since to the best of my knowledge I've never had tonquin outside of this blend, and there definitely seems to be something about 1792 that gives me a nasty headache and unsettles my stomach; and I'm not entirely convinced it's the nicotine.