Hello everyone. I recently stopped smoking and was smoking around a half a pack a day. I went to snuff to help ease the withdraw but they are still coming on hard no matter how much I do. Is this usually normal? Thanks
What snuff are you using? I think snuff is an effective means of getting a nicotine fix, but addiction is a complex thing. Are you sure it’s not just a matter of missing having the cigarette in your hand? Playing with matches? Do the cravings come on when you always used to smoke a cigarette with a drink or morning cup of coffee? Do you just miss the smell of burning tobacco? You could always try a vaping thing or (my preference) an occasional pipe. A pipe is a wonderful way of smoking tobacco, it tends to be much more about enjoying it than about satisfying a compulsion. Also, persist, if you’re committed to giving up. It may just be a matter of adjustment. When I was trying to kick an addiction cold, I’d get cravings even months, years, after my last cigarette. It was probably difficult for just a few weeks with snuff, but it sure made a difference and I don’t even think about wanting a cigarette anymore.
What i did to quit smoking was i started using snuff and after about four months of smoking and snuffing i found snuffing more pleasurable, and i gradually smoked less and less until i naturally stopped smoking. Take on snuffing as an extra habit and get lots of different types, especially a strong one. Anything we force wont last. Good luck
That’s easy mate— pack more in.
It takes like three or four weeks to get used to the new source of nicotine. You don’t even absorb nicotine very effectively until you get some experience, or at least that’s what one study found (novice users absorbed much less). Your brain will adjust though, just hang in there. Also you can always use more snuff, when I first quit I would sometimes take snuff until I felt nauseous which would certainly kill my craving for a smoke if only by being totally saturated with nicotine.
I agree, shovel enough it till you feel it. The nicotine rush will come and you will have to sit down and go OK, I’m getting nicotine…I must be craving the habitual act of smoking. Hand to mouth, throat hit type thing… Get yourself a decent e smoke to handle that if it is to strong of a craving. Don’t give up! Smoked a pack a day for over 10 years…its been a year for me now
Smoking’s most addictive quality is the habit itself-- my Dad said this a long, long time, and he is true and correct… Sure, nicotine is addictive-- won’t argue that – but the fact is that if it were ALL nicotine the culprit then quitting en lieu of snuff, dip would be quite easily done. You just have to quit-- QUIT-- end of. and get it out your head…
Yes, this is true. In my experience as a biomedical science major, I can say without a doubt that nicotine itself is probably the least influential factor in the addiction to cigarettes. It is a factor, but probably the least impacting factor. The addiction to cigarettes is, I believe, upwards of 80% (or more) psychological. The vast majority of people who are addicted to smoking are actually addicted to the activity of smoking, and it stands to reason that of all of the methods of tobacco usage, smoking cigarettes is the highest in addictive potential. The various forms of smokeless tobacco, though they can also too be addictive, do not carry with them the immense addictive qualities that cigarettes do. If the culprit was nicotine and only nicotine, then NRT (nicotine replacement therapy) in the form of patches, gums, etc. would not have the extremely low success rate that they do (around 16% success rate, I believe). There is partly a biological component to cigarette addiction, but it is mostly psychological. Classical conditioning and operant conditioning are the two components of psychology that are involved and implicated in cigarette addiction, and one of the reasons why it is worse with cigarettes than other forms of tobacco is because the onset of nicotine’s effects with smoking is far quicker than others. Next to intravenous injection, inhalation is the fastest drug delivery method. It takes about 7 - 10 seconds for nicotine to hit the brain and start binding to their target receptors. For snus, dip, chew, etc. it takes about 5 - 10 minutes (sometimes more). For snuff, I believe it is around the 2 - 5 minute mark. Either way, the sooner the desired effects hit after you partake in the activity responsible for it, the stronger the psychological link between the two is made (this is a form of classical conditioning). When you then pair that stimulus with other activities (having a smoke ritualistically at certain times of the day, having a smoke with coffee, having a smoke after a meal, having a smoke with buddies, etc.), that stimulus is linked with those activities, which is again classical conditioning and is very hard to break. There are also other ritualistic habits/activities associated with smoking that do not exist with other forms of tobacco use (the hand-to-mouth oral fixation, the lighting up a cigarette with your lighter, the huddling in groups with your smoking buddies, etc.). You need to actively resist those urges to light up a smoke that have been conditioned over the time you were a smoker, however long that may have been. Eventually you will adjust psychologically, but it takes some time. The media and the anti-tobacco movement have drummed into everyone’s heads that nicotine is the sole reason for cigarette addiction, and it is NOT. Nicotine is no more addictive than caffeine, and I know plenty of people who are addicted to their coffee drinking habit just as a smoker is addicted to their smoking habit - both caffeine AND nicotine are addictive. Addiction overall is very complex and involves more than just a single solitary organic chemical compound, and psychology has much more to do with it than the biochemical basis.
Those Caffeine withdrawals are horrible. I think it’s possible Caffeine is more addicting then Nicotine.
@Igglet, I absolutely agree with you. I find it so ironic how caffeine has become so socially acceptable, even more so than alcohol that nobody realizes it is a drug. I have always told people that caffeine is a VERY serious drug, and I do find it to be worse than many other illicit drugs. Don’t kid yourself just because caffeine has reached status-quo acceptability in our society. It is probably the ONLY drug that I have used that after coming off consistent use, it made me feel like utter garbage during the recovery/withdrawal period. I have used amphetamines chronically (Adderall prescribed for my ADD) and I never had problems while on or coming off that, and didn’t make me feel like chronic caffeine use did. Ephedrine doesn’t even do to me what caffeine does. I don’t get ‘withdrawal’ from nicotine either. I refuse to take caffeine more than once in a very rare while, and I will stay away from it when I can. After chronic use of caffeine, I am always hit with unbearable fatigue and lethargy, and just feel like utter crap for a good 3 or 4 days. I don’t get that with ANYTHING else. I’m baffled as to how caffeine is so acceptable as a socially acceptable status-quo drug (along with alcohol), but other drugs that have been branded illicit and controlled substances that are nowhere near as bad are shunned in our society. I’m going a bit off topic now, so i’ll stop there.
I’ve never had any caffeine withdrawals…I’ve never stopped drinking coffee long enough
Use more snuff! For me at least any craving I got after doing lots of snuff was purely mental. Stock with it. It’s totally worth the efforts. I smoked cigerettes for over 20 years and quit on super bowl sunday using lots of snuff it was easy for me but I also really wanted to quit
Thank you for all of the replies, I really appreciate it. I think last night was the climax of the withdraw. I’ve been using the Silver Dollar snuff as it is the only brand my local shop carries. The first two I tried which were blueberry and spearmint hardly have an effect on me but I bought a tin of the Scotch which is a very smoky flavor. But it also packs quite the punch with the nicotine. Why does the nicotine differ based on the flavor?
it differs based on the type of snuff, the tobacco used, and the alkalinity of the snuff (i believe).
Yeah snuff nicotine levels will be different from brand to brand and even within the same brands nicotine will vary. If you find one you like the smell of but dont get that nic hit you’re looking for just do more of it until you get the nic you are looking for
If you wanna try an online order, then consider Toque Quit or SP Extra, Dholakia White or Sparrow, or Viking Dark. All popular snuffs in the high nic range.
As others have said, do enough snuff til you’re almost spinning and cannot even think about a cigarette. Do that for a week or two and that should start to break your cigarette habit. I’ve recently quit smoking and it was easier than I thought it would be, using that method. It also helps a lot if you find a kind you really enjoy and can do all the time. My current favorites are Viking Brown and F&T HDT (which I’m out of both and my current mrsnuff order still hasn’t come in after two whole weeks grrrr). They both have a pretty strong nic hit. I believe it was Terence McKenna who said that the reason caffeine is so acceptable is because it’s the perfect drug to keep office slaves awake and productive throughout the day. I agree with this. And don’t get me started on the whole war on drugs. I’ll just say that the illegal drugs are illegal cuz the government (I’m in the US) gets way more money that way. Then there’s the whole prison system racket. They don’t care about our health, period. If they did, cigarettes would be illegal and plenty of currently illegal drugs would be sold in stores. And if they cared at all about freedom, they would let us make our own choices and not be our hand-holding nanny.
For snuff, I believe it is around the 2 - 5 minute mark.
For me, I feel the nic rush almost instantly after snuffing. Then my eyes get bloodshot and I start to tear up if I use a strong enough snuff. Ahh, good stuff. 
But anyway, cigarettes don’t even compare anymore and I don’t miss the habit of smoking. You can do it!
@Psybin, Totally agree with you there on your comment on the war on drugs. A study was conducted in Europe that investigated ALL drugs in the UK, followed by the same study that investigated ALL drug use throughout Europe and demonstrated their harms to individuals and harm to society. The biggest killer to both? Alcohol, which is perfectly 100% legal, and furthermore is socially acceptable. Meanwhile all other illicit/illegal drugs demonstrated harms to both the individual and society as being infinitely miniscule compared with alcohol. The study demonstrated proof that no drug laws legislated by ANY country have anything at all to do with protection from harm from these substances. The war on drugs has created a monster of an industrial complex that won’t be easy to dismantle. Both sides of the drug war (law enforcement and the cartels/gangs/mafia) both want to keep drugs illegal because they make their living off it, so go figure how corrupt a situation like that is. Then of course, we have the prison industrial complex that thrives off of the millions of nonviolent drug offenders, and then you have the pharmaceutical companies hand in all of this, then you have big tobacco (big cigarettes specifically), etc… it’s a really nasty situation. Drug prohibition is probably the biggest lie fed to the world and society of the 20th and 21st century. If you are interested in taking a look at the results of the study I mentioned previously, please watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDo09IBVHZw, it really demonstrates the reality of the whole situation. I believe the drug laws and drug prohibition is the biggest censorship, destruction, and stifling of scientific development and research since the Catholic Church banned telescopes during the 14th century because they didn’t want people seeing what Galileo saw (that the earth revolved around the sun instead of the concept that the earth was the center of the universe, etc.).
Also @GrayMynx check other smoking threads at snuffhouse.org.
Another thing I found helpful, don’t wait for the cravings to build, snuff takes a little longer to satisfy the Nicotine craving, so try to anticipate. For a while, snuff a lot, snuff often after a while you’ll be able to cut back slightly and know when you need it.