Personally, I don’t find snuff to be that addicting. Most days, I have one to three decent sized pinches; other days, a bit more. I frequently go days without it with no ill effects. I find other forms of tobacco to be highly addictive for me, though. Or at least “habit forming,” in that I do have the will to stop using them, and the cravings go away after a few days. For snuff, the craving is mental, not physical: I just like it. I’d say that regular, higher doses of nicotine would be much more addictive than a few pinches of snuff here and there. Still, if you find yourself becoming addicted, it’s best to stop and put it away for a few days. It would be far easier to stop the addiction now than later, and you get more enjoyment out of something if you don’t have to use it to feed an addiction.
I used to be definitely highly addicted to snuff. I was a social smoker for a period that was approximately 2 years long 2001-2003. Partook in pipes, cigars mostly with a few cigarettes here and there, at most once a week, often less etc. After 2003 I had a handful of cigarettes (like about 20), my last being in 2008. They just made me too wheezy, and the nicotine feeling didn’t last very long at all. I wondered how a single person could want to keep smoking or how it could be addictive. Enter Snuff last year. The habit progressed FAST. I used mostly high nic snuff in huge quantities: we are talking pea sized portion of Dholakia white in each nostril PLUS a mound of Three Thistles strong snorted PLUS 2 or more pinches of NTSU each nostril each time. Sometimes I’d throw in a Fubar or a McChrystals or an Ozona for flavor. I would do this 3-4x a day plus eventually needing smaller (but still huge according to most people’s accounts) doses of toasts or scotches throughout the day. It wasn’t long before I got severe withdrawals! What opened my eyes was around Christmas week 2009, I had chain snuffed all week. It had gotten to the point where I was immune and just chasing the nic dragon. When I woke up late Christmas morning, guests came and I got distracted, didn’t have the chance to go and get my morning fix. At first I thought it was mostly psychological. I thought I could beat it by ignoring it… no sir! I became so sick: shakes, nausea, cold sweats. I was gripped by severe, and I mean SEVERE malaise with anxiety, feeling like doom was forever going to ruin my life and I would be lucky if I died quickly and didn’t live. My muscles were so weak, I remember trying to cut Salami and dropping the knife several times. It felt like the worst flu of my life times three with the most helpless anxiety I ever suffered, and I am not an anxious person. I thought I could stave it off, it kept getting worse. People were starting to notice my ashen complexion and asked me if I was OK. I excused myself to the shower to “freshen up”. I took my morning shower as usual, and did the largest snuff of my life to last me the day, the snuff to end all snuffs, my attempt at intentional nicotine overdose. It got me through until the late afternoon… At that point I had enough. I slowly tapered myself using just Dholakia White as needed for withdrawals, enjoying my others only on weekends. I thought I could limit myself, but in order to get the rush you have to endure such prolonged withdrawals as to not be worth it. And I can’t just take a small pinch of Ozona for a day or to so I can go back to my nic overloads. So I decided to taper, prolonged my snuffing as long as I could without losing my mind. My family noticed how irritable I had gotten, but I wanted to be free. Slowly the nic fits got less severe and I could go longer and longer… 3 snuffs a day…2 snuffs a day… 1 snuff a day. Then I stopped. Next day I felt a bad one come on around dinner time and then, within an hour, it subsided, and I was free. It was the last nic fit I ever felt or will allow myself to be in the position to ever feel, 4th of March 2010. After 2 months of that hell, I made it to snuff free. I still have a large collection of high nic snuffs in which I partake maybe 1-2x a month. Other than that, I have not snuffed regularly in almost over 7 months. I even left the country over the summer, didn’t bring any snuff because I knew I would be on vacation and have enough spare time to do 2 cans of NTSU each day and get super addicted again. I felt like I wanted some here and there, but didn’t regret not bringing it. The thing for me is this: snuff could be bad for you, we just don’t know or have enough evidence to be sure. And while the nic rush is incredible for pleasure, relaxation, energy, work and focus if you use enough of the right snuffs, you become tolerant too fast, and it is replaced by pain out of proportion to the pleasure you initially got from it. I still enjoy snuff sometimes and read this forum for “therapy”, but despite thinking of and wanting to partake in snuff basically every day I would never want to end up where I was. I know if I allowed myself to snuff more than once a month as a special treat, I would literally be like those youtube kids snorting an entire 4.65oz box of Bruton’s all at once once an hour every hour every day… and I don’t want to be like that because of the short term and uncertain long term consequences. Please notice I am not addictive in other ways, have not tried any drugs, and am not a heavy drinker etc. But snuff, I have an addiction problem to it long after the withdrawals stopped… it is to pathologic, epic levels that I dare not repeat. If ever a case study for over the counter (as opposed to pure leaf) tobacco overdose were to exist, if left unchecked, I would probably succumb. Enough said, thanks for reading!
@nicola037 What you write, is terrifying me. However, the symptoms, you describe, definitely are in line with a depressive symptomatology, you even thought of ending your life, if I get that right. The matter, if one get addicted easily or not, very much depends on ones personality. I consider myself to be very vulnerable at that point, and I´ve also been concerned because of my amounts of snuff I have in one day increasing so rapidly. But the amounts you describe - man, I´m far away from that. Right now I feel to have reached some form of “steady state”, even decreasing a little. I take snuff every half an hour or so, a pea to each nostril. Sometimes it´s less often, perhaps once an hour. I take your story as a warning, not to overdo it. However, as I am already addicted, I guess, I am under no circumstances willing to quit. I think, what in a certain way “protects” me, is that I am easily bothered by my nose getting stuffed up, if I take snuff too often. Also the permanent feeling of debris in my nose sometimes annoys me. Well, however, I have to be cautious - I guess. I consider snuff not to be completely harmless, I consider it to be a drug still. By the way. I am a very heavy Coffee - Drinker. I once tried to stop drinking any drinks containing caffeine. I did not manage it. I did manage to stop smoking 10 years ago but coffee - no chance. I felt like hell, I was depressed, had severe headaches, was practically unable to move. “Tired” is not at all the right word for it. Even caffeine is a drug. One more thing: Do you know the book: “Is attachment an addictive disorder?” I haven´t read it, but I know for the author to come to the conclusion that it is indeed one. And I have seen people die because of the loss of somebody. So, in the end, addiction is very common amongst men in every day life. The question ist just: Which one do you chose, and which one can you perhaps easily avoid. Thanks for your story, it really made me think…
I agree with Bharata. That’s an excellent case for moderation and avoiding abusive behavior, especially with nicotine. I’ll certainly keep it in mind in order to keep my intake reasonable.
For the record, I was not thinking of killing myself. Rather, to describe the feeling, imagine that you were about to die, sick enough to die, from a cause that allowed you to remain conscious and alert enough to know it. That would be one of the worst feelings in the world, and it was definitely how I felt that day. My life has had its ups and downs emotionally and mentally (more ups than downs thankfully), as has my health (again, more ups than downs). However, I have to say that while I have experienced a fairly wide range of experiences, I can say with full certainty that very moment was probably the very worst of my life, by a longshot. Mind you, it was only christmas week that I was really chainsnuffing like crazy, and my usual consumption would be 2-4 huge sessions each day with more on the weekends), with smaller (but still significant) doses throughout the day of a scotch/toast/dholakia white. However, the 3 days before Christmas I had blown through 2 NTSU black’s along with a 4g of DWhite, a 4g of DBlack, and plenty of other goodies including half a smash tub or Rooster, some FUBAR. Too much. I am not an addictive person. I barely drink coffee. I have alcohol every day… about 1-2 glasses of wine at most. But this, I was not prepared for this. I think I could get back into snuffing knowing the lesson because I was able to taper from that horrendous state with self control, but seriously, to me it’s not worth it. With nicotine, the more you do, the more you have to do, and sadly the less you feel. When you want to get the buzz back, you have to scale back in such a way that is not necessarily that painful, but so negatively affects my humor that it can damage my job, my loved ones, and ultimately my sanity. I am not certain that snuff is harmless, I think this is just a convenient rationalization based on lack of evidence or junk science tobacco research more than any real knowledge. I am not saying smoking is as bad, worse than cigarettes or anything in between. I think the honest answer is “humanity currently doesn’t know”. But I do know it has a lot of carcinogens, especially the high nic snuffs I like (it has to, many are nicotine derived from curing!), and that nicotine itself accelerates vascular disease, something to which I am already vulnerable. If snuff were harmless I would never not have a nose (and mouth and ears and eyes and stomach) full. But I don’t think anyone can be so sure, and unlike so many of the dangers in life, it is an additional possible risk (therefore uncertainty) that is very easy to avoid by just not doing it. What other people do is their business, I make no recommendations. I am just sharing my story so that others can read and decide for themselves. While still interested in the topic, and browsing this forum to get my kicks so I don’t reach for the tin, I have pretty much decided toat for ME it is not worth this uncertainty. if I want nice smells, my wife is an awesome cook and I have a delightful wine collection (albeit more expensive than snuff). These I do enjoy and smell more after I stopped. Lastly IMHO the buzz, while sensational, gets immune too fast and isn’t worth it.
This all sounds a bit kooky to me. I’ve been through nicotine withdrawl many times in life and the sypmtoms were nothing on the scale of what you describe.
Snuff is the safest thing I’ve ever done. As I told my wife after I wrestled with quitting cigs after 20 + years…I will NOT quit snuff! I’ve finally been able to stop this smoking after all these years and strange ideas of HOW to quit. The highs and lows between being satisfied with a cigarette and craving the next one were much more severe with me than anything I’ve experienced with snuff. Snuff is very evenkeeled for me. No more sore throats… no more smell… no more cig burns, second hand smoke… and strangely enough, out of 6 people in my house, the one who snuffs religiously has not had so much as a cold in the past year. Someone please explain the downside of snuff to me!
You can do anything to excess. This site is not about debating snuffs safety, Its a fan site. The grown ups here use snuff because they like it and come here to talk about their hobby.
The biggest downside of snuff is kurtosis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurtosis Since we don’t really know how safe snuff is (trust me, very well versed in science, most of the articles are junk, inaccurate, cooked up, or biased), there is high uncertainty. On one end is you happily snuff ever after without anything bad ever happening. On the other are tobacco related illnesses worse than cigarettes. You can make all the tobacco related rationalizations you ever want, science does not know if snuff is safe or not, nor if it is safer than smoking. We just don’t know. I’ve seen too many people suffer horridly from tobacco related illnesses to do this any more. I fell into it because I was dumb, because I was burned out, exhausted. I was falling behind on work, not sleeping, short with my family. I remember some of the stimulating effects nicotine had as a younger man (but only briefly), so I personally did snuff only for the nicotine. I needed something to help me finish my work late at night and keep me from nodding off from fatigue because I was so busy; it wore off quickly, I needed more and more, and the result was awful. That has passed, and I have realized that the short term tonic effects are not worth it. Before I was totally detoxed, but at a much lower tolerance level, I even considered low dose snuffing and I did it for a few weeks, but it wasn’t the same, the thrill just wasn’t there. Not much nic buzz, wierd scents in my nostrils that were entertaining, but not as good as the really nice scents I have come to love. OK, so fine, some people like the scent of snuffs XYZ, is it worth taking the risk? If snuff was nicotine free, I don’t think anyone would be making rationalizations around this. Having quit, I personally feel much better. I am not coughing, sneezing, have a nasal voice, cranky half the time, need a drug just to get through the day or worry about cancer or heart disease happening earlier than it might. I don’t see why anyone would want to use tobacco moderately, or heavily, or at all in any form. Moderately you don’t get much out of it. Don’t tell me snuff smells good! There are so many scents that you can enjoy that don’t destroy your olfaction or give you such uncertainty of risk. Just try stopping to snuff for a few months and see how much more and better everything smells! Candles, incense, food, wine, your significant other’s genitals… anything! This is a website for snuff, yes. I think that it is too engrossed in the rationalizations and I also think the merchants themselves are very vague and misleading about their presentation as a “healthier alternative to smoking”. I tell my pesonal story not only for the downsides, but to alert people that the downsides are not known, and you are basically gambling when you use any tobacco form. And as much as you think you don’t want to stop now because “I am happier with snuff”, wait until they irradiate your skull, throat, neck, abdomen, whatever and nearly kill you with chemotherapy. And then you spend 2 years slowly wasting away in and out of a cancer ward… or cardiac ward, or taking expensive meds, or kidney failure etc. Is it worth it when so much of life is so wonderful, offers so many good scents, offers so much satisfaction that doesn’t have anything to do with self medication? Trust me, anyone who says it is worth it has never seen what I have, has never seen a cancer ward, dialysis unit, seen someone slowly die of heart disease etc etc etc. After having tried snuff for a while I can honestly say it was not a good decision and I am man enough to own up to that and admit my fault. I own up to it and take responsibility. But I feel the need to assist others because the information out there is nonexistent, or total crap. I am happy to say this because there is so much dis- or lack of information out there on nasal snuff. It is just one perspective, but to have a forum on a topic with only positive and no room for the negative is just plain ignorant. It’s one thing to be a troll, another to offer differing but valid points of view so the general public looking up the topic can make up their own minds. How friggin’ decent would an internet forum be if everyone agreed and said the same thing? Consider that maybe if I had read a like minded individual 18 months ago posting this kind of stuff, I never would have done it… but then I would have missed out on the learning that I did. So in a sense even this negative experience made me a better person, not only to know myself better, but to know the dark side of something to avoid it and advise my children to avoid it. Just my 2 cents for the public. I respect anyone who thinks tobacco addiction is worth it, but based on personal experience mixed with expert knowledge of the subject matter I feel that decision to use tobacco is made on lack of information or flawed disinformation that teases the rationalizing part of your brain, including for snuff. You just don’t know. And someone deserves to know this beyond the “yah it’s safe, yah it’s great”. Good luck and best wishes!
@nicola037 Now, after seeing all of the horrors in the cancer ward, those dying of heart disease, and so on, show us those who are in that situation because of snuff. Especially a responsible use of it. I know you have strong feelings regarding this matter, but I can’t help but feel that your view is distorted based on your past abuse of it.
You’re in the wrong place for this type of debate. As I said - this is a fan site. Apart from the fact that most people won’t read a thread as long as yours, the people here are here because we share a hobby we enjoy - if anyone wants to research the issues there is a big WWW out there. It may be harmful, who truly knows? We are all adults and have decided to use snuff for whatever reason; we really don’t need your help in this becasue its a F-A-N site! Good luck and all the best to you too.
nicola037 is starting to sound like the guy who works for the chewing gum company at the start of Clerks.
hell, I think more damage was done to me by reading the definition of “kurtosis”… my head hurts, my vision is blurred and I now have the desire for a single malt scotch and a pinch of Bruton to clear it up.
nikola037 has valid reasons for quitting snuff. I applaud his decision. I probably would quit as well if I were given to that kind of self abuse. Snuff is not water, though even enough of that can certainly kill you. It deserves to be respected and used responsibly. If one’s unrelenting and seemingly uncontrollable consumption is causing such misery, quitting is certainly the only to deal with it. I count myself as fortunate in that I can snuff a few times a day and enjoy it without craving more. I can skip a day or two and suffer no ill effects. Oh now and then I have a heavy session, but I am not powerless but to do so every day. And snuffster has it right, this is a fan site. I certainly don’t think it makes many friends for nikola037 to be posting his message here, but he has the right to express himself and to accept with good grace the derision that kind of message will surely generate here. Nikola037, I take what you say at face value and I know you are trying to warn us of dangers. Thank you! If you find your resolve weakening, feel free to pm me and I will give you an address where you can send your stash of snuffs for safe disposal.
yeah we don’t know if snuff is safe. True we do know that if there is any danger it is minmal. Why because of science o.k… Because of looking at averages of disease between life time users and non-tobacco users. With oral tobacco even the dangers are minmal. There is clearly no evidence of any significant increase in cancer of any sort with nasal snuff users. Remember nasal snuff isn’t new and that even though not popular it still in some countries has significant users base which does not have an elevated level of cancer compared to non tobacco users. Smokers have heart disease not from nicotine but from absorbing incredible amounts of tars which do enter the blood stream and from inhaling large amounts of carbon monoxide which does cause hardening of the arteries which leads to heart disease. Lumping all tobacco with smoking is scientificaly insane and inaccurate.
and with all things always ask who do you work for.
Oh, I thought Kurtosis was going to be a graphic site with pictures of a feller’s nose drooping off from excessive snuff use… Just a wheat penny and some Greek on there. I took Latin as a boy for 5 years and most our stories revolved around “Puella et agricola ambulant in the silvam” .( The girl and the farmer walked in the forest.) I believe sentences like this gave me my wild imagination and thirst for declining…but I’m getting off subject \I can see your concern, Nicola, but I’ve been bedside with a couple loved ones who died a slow death from cancer. Not pretty, but they were 100% sure it was caused by smoking, from the evidence. For me, this helped me quit smoking. There will always be a probability of anything . Enjoy our short lives here.
“You’re in the wrong place for this type of debate.” I’d have to disagree with that. This is probably the premier newsgroup for nasal snuff-takers. Where else would a discussion of the possible dangers of snuff take place ? The claim that the newsgroup must be only a “fan site” seems a little head-in-the-sand. Having said that, I’d also have to disagree with nicola037’s assertion that “science does not know if snuff is safe or not, nor if it is safer than smoking. We just don’t know.” I think we do know with some certainty that it’s safer than smoking due to the nature of the various carcinogenic toxins released when tobacco (or indeed many other things) is combusted. Give snuff up if you like but you’re wrong to imply that it may be equally as dangerous as other forms of tobacco use.
People can debate however they want, part of my debate was expressing the fact that this is a fan site. Fan sites by their very nature concentrate on the shared enjoyment of a hobby. Sure you can express the dangers of whatever the subject is but that will tend towards being a minor discussion. Maybe the analogy of ‘we’re having a party don’t tell us booze is bad for us’ is clearer. Not head in the sand at all. I would never close a thread like this - as long as it doesn’t turn into abuse etc - but would you go on a Beatles fan site and debate how much better the Stone’s were? You could but it would just be a tad pointless.
@NICOLA 037, what are you trying to say? Blaming snuff for what YOU did?