To be clear, nicotine IS addictive, but only very mildly so. Sugars are probably more addictive. However, some of the chemicals that tobacco companies put into commercial tobacco are there just to potentiate or intensify the addictive property of nicotine.
I may be a living monument to the anti-covid properties of nicotine. While I do have a genetic resistance to covid, I also smoke AND sometimes smoke homegrown nicotiana rustica, which has on average 3 - 9 times the nicotine concentration of commercial tobacco (which is almost entirely the nicotiana tabacum species).
I did catch covid, twice, but both times it was like an extremely mild, barely-there cold, and never lasted for more than a day and a half.
Tomato leaves are used in some places as a tobacco substitute due to their nicotine content. It's possible to buy snuffs now made entirely of tomato leaves.
Parasites - My Dear Old Dad taught me to feed our horses chewing tobacco long, long ago. We did that to expel and prevent worms in the horses, and our horses never got worms. It didn't take much, just a small pile, less than a normal chew for a human, placed in the palm of the hand and fed to the horses. The molasses in the chewing tobacco made the horses love it. They thought we were giving them candy treats rather than medicine.
The tobacco I grow is nicotiana rustica, also called "sacred tobacco", "shaman tobacco", etc. The Muskogi Indians call it "little tobacco", due to it's diminutive size compared to nicotiana tabacum, or commercial tobacco. Where tabacum grows up to 6 or 7 feet tall with giant leaves, rustica only grows about 2 to 3 feet tall (the tallest plant I've grown was only 42" tall) and has smaller leaves. The largest leaf I've grown was about 9 or 10" wide, and 10 or 11 inches long.The leaves are usually a lot smaller.
Rustica has on average 3 to 9 times the nicotine content of tabacum, with the nicotine content increasing as you go up the plant, towards the flowers. Upper leaves right around the flower heads can have up to 20x the nicotine content of tabacum.
This year, in the past couple of months, I've smoked exclusively the husks from the seed pods themselves, after cleaning the seeds out, without ill effect. I just pack a regular pipe bowl with them, and they smoke the same as leaf does, but with a much higher nicotine content. WARNING: smoking a whole bowl of that material, and of that size, might make your spirit leave your body for a bit and travel around. I limit it to half a bowl now, half a bowl later. Still woozies me up a bit, but not to the point of an astral projection.
My third wife used to call a cigarette a "breathing treatment", and we laughed at her when she did, but I've found that smoking the rustica when my lungs get clogged up clears them out paradoxically. I don't smoke the rustica every day, but when I get clogged up, it clears me out. The same can be said of eating hot peppers - something in them, probably the capsicum, clears my lungs. In the early 1600's, when tobacco was still a novelty in Europe, doctors prescribed it to "purge the body of superfluous humours", which I've found it to do an admirable job at.
Tobacco seeds have been shown to remain viable for 50+ years. I know that I have planted seeds that were 5 years old with a 100% germination rate. They are tiny, with about 3000 seeds to a gram, and each seed head will produce probably around 800 seeds in the rustica species. I now have enough seeds to last the rest of my life, and then some. I only grow a small plot, but every year generally get between 60,000 and 200,000 seeds from what I grow. I plant maybe 100 seeds every spring, and cull those down to about 30 - 40 plants usually, so every year my seed stash just grows and grows, with more seed now than I'll ever be able to use.
I've never had it take more than 2 days for my tobacco seeds to start sprouting.
The flowers of rustica are also different. They are trumpet-shaped, as are the flowers of all tobacco species, but shorter than the flowers of tabacum, and greenish-yellow, where all the tabacum flowers I've see anre genrally pink or white, and 3 to 5 inches long. Ristica flowers are 1 to 1 1/2 inches long. The seed heads are about 1/2 inch or about a centimeter in diameter.
We also have a stash of pure nicotine, USP grade. Some of it is 100 mg/ml, and some of it is 250 mg/ml. Be warned, it's expensive to get it that way. I think we gave $400 USD for around a gallon of it, and that was on a steep sale, about 1/2 off.. However, at concentrations of 250 mg/ml, a gallon should last damned near forever.
The doctor's mention of a treatment for A-fib using tobacco leaves piqued my interest. I have A-fib, and may try that treatment, since I have pretty easy access to raw tobacco leaves. I can tell you that the treatment prescribed, in my case Eliquis and metoprolol, has pretty much wrecked my health while keeping me alive - of what use is staying alive when quality of life is severely reduced via chemical consumption? If that treatment works, it might be a godsend, although I don't know if my health will ever recover from what the pharma industry has done to wreck it, even if the tobacco treatment works.
Rustica is called "sacred tobacco" and "shaman's tobacco" because as a hallucinogen, and in higher doses, it will give you the feeling of leaving your own body, and was used for that purpose by Indian medicine men, to speak to the spirits. You will actually feel as if your spirit is separating from your body and floating into another place. Ask me how I know.
The tobacco I grow is the same as was originally grown by the Indians in Virginia (which I have roots going back to - the Pamunkey tribe specifically) at contact with the Europeans. The tabacum variety only came here later, when John Rolf "imported" (actually smuggled, because export of tobacco seed was punishable by death under the Spanish authorities - they wanted to maintain their monopoly) around 1612. Rolfe had smuggled in a variety called "Orinoco" from the Caribbean, and it caught on amongst tobacco growers due to it's higher yield of leaf. The rest is history.
To respect the plant, and the native traditions surrounding it, I cannot sell it, neither leaf nor seed. It can be "gifted", however, while still respecting the traditions. A pouch of tobacco was a traditional gift to the village healer, tribal elders, and anyone else one desired to gift it to. That gifting also has, in some tribes, more tradition surrounding it. For example, if an elder refuses a gift of tobacco, it means he will not speak to you about the matter that you are seeking advice for.
Tobacco was also "gifted" to spirits. It would be sprinkled on the water for safe passage, and was often left behind to the spirit of a plant when harvesting a plant for use or consumption. small piles of it were occasionally left on rocks or stumps in he forest as gifts to "The Little People" to curry their favor. It was used as a "smudge" to draw positive spirits and block negative spirits, and I knew at least one old Cherokee medicine man who would sprinkle it along the perimeter of a room, next to baseboards, to prevent access to that room by bad spirits. Sort of in the same way that Europeans used to use salt.
I have a long-time friend in North Carolina who is a member of the Lumbee tribe, which tribe was the subject of a fairly recent Executive Order to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to move forward on Federal recognition for the tribe. I've fixed up a package of rustica leaves and seed to send to him as a gift marking Federal recognition of his tribe. They have lost many of their traditions over time, and I think their original "sacred" tobacco is one of those traditions, so it's a way to get it back into the tribe for me.
Old timers here in the mountains used to use tobacco as a poultice to draw out venom from insect stings (a use they probably got from the Indians). They also used diced and mashed raw onions to draw out venom from snake bites. I combined the two - using snuff and onion powder, together with a little salt, all bound up in a lard base to hold them together and on the spot - to treat insect stings and festered puncture wounds, and it has worked tolerably well. I used it to draw out a thorn that had embedded in my foot once, although even at that there was a little cutting involved to finally extract it. It had been in there for about 4 months or so, to the point that gristle had started growing around it as the body's defense mechanism against a foreign body... which is why I think that the cutting was required. The poultice for about 3 days, followed by a little razor blade work and a pair of tweezers (splinter forceps) was all it took. Had I used the poultice earlier, the cutting and tweezers might not have been necessary.
Tobacco has a lot of medicinal uses, many of which will probably still have to be discovered, or re-discovered.
.
I may be a living monument to the anti-covid properties of nicotine. While I do have a genetic resistance to covid, I also smoke AND sometimes smoke homegrown nicotiana rustica, which has on average 3 - 9 times the nicotine concentration of commercial tobacco (which is almost entirely the nicotiana tabacum species).
I did catch covid, twice, but both times it was like an extremely mild, barely-there cold, and never lasted for more than a day and a half.
Tomato leaves are used in some places as a tobacco substitute due to their nicotine content. It's possible to buy snuffs now made entirely of tomato leaves.
Parasites - My Dear Old Dad taught me to feed our horses chewing tobacco long, long ago. We did that to expel and prevent worms in the horses, and our horses never got worms. It didn't take much, just a small pile, less than a normal chew for a human, placed in the palm of the hand and fed to the horses. The molasses in the chewing tobacco made the horses love it. They thought we were giving them candy treats rather than medicine.
The tobacco I grow is nicotiana rustica, also called "sacred tobacco", "shaman tobacco", etc. The Muskogi Indians call it "little tobacco", due to it's diminutive size compared to nicotiana tabacum, or commercial tobacco. Where tabacum grows up to 6 or 7 feet tall with giant leaves, rustica only grows about 2 to 3 feet tall (the tallest plant I've grown was only 42" tall) and has smaller leaves. The largest leaf I've grown was about 9 or 10" wide, and 10 or 11 inches long.The leaves are usually a lot smaller.
Rustica has on average 3 to 9 times the nicotine content of tabacum, with the nicotine content increasing as you go up the plant, towards the flowers. Upper leaves right around the flower heads can have up to 20x the nicotine content of tabacum.
This year, in the past couple of months, I've smoked exclusively the husks from the seed pods themselves, after cleaning the seeds out, without ill effect. I just pack a regular pipe bowl with them, and they smoke the same as leaf does, but with a much higher nicotine content. WARNING: smoking a whole bowl of that material, and of that size, might make your spirit leave your body for a bit and travel around. I limit it to half a bowl now, half a bowl later. Still woozies me up a bit, but not to the point of an astral projection.
My third wife used to call a cigarette a "breathing treatment", and we laughed at her when she did, but I've found that smoking the rustica when my lungs get clogged up clears them out paradoxically. I don't smoke the rustica every day, but when I get clogged up, it clears me out. The same can be said of eating hot peppers - something in them, probably the capsicum, clears my lungs. In the early 1600's, when tobacco was still a novelty in Europe, doctors prescribed it to "purge the body of superfluous humours", which I've found it to do an admirable job at.
Tobacco seeds have been shown to remain viable for 50+ years. I know that I have planted seeds that were 5 years old with a 100% germination rate. They are tiny, with about 3000 seeds to a gram, and each seed head will produce probably around 800 seeds in the rustica species. I now have enough seeds to last the rest of my life, and then some. I only grow a small plot, but every year generally get between 60,000 and 200,000 seeds from what I grow. I plant maybe 100 seeds every spring, and cull those down to about 30 - 40 plants usually, so every year my seed stash just grows and grows, with more seed now than I'll ever be able to use.
I've never had it take more than 2 days for my tobacco seeds to start sprouting.
The flowers of rustica are also different. They are trumpet-shaped, as are the flowers of all tobacco species, but shorter than the flowers of tabacum, and greenish-yellow, where all the tabacum flowers I've see anre genrally pink or white, and 3 to 5 inches long. Ristica flowers are 1 to 1 1/2 inches long. The seed heads are about 1/2 inch or about a centimeter in diameter.
We also have a stash of pure nicotine, USP grade. Some of it is 100 mg/ml, and some of it is 250 mg/ml. Be warned, it's expensive to get it that way. I think we gave $400 USD for around a gallon of it, and that was on a steep sale, about 1/2 off.. However, at concentrations of 250 mg/ml, a gallon should last damned near forever.
The doctor's mention of a treatment for A-fib using tobacco leaves piqued my interest. I have A-fib, and may try that treatment, since I have pretty easy access to raw tobacco leaves. I can tell you that the treatment prescribed, in my case Eliquis and metoprolol, has pretty much wrecked my health while keeping me alive - of what use is staying alive when quality of life is severely reduced via chemical consumption? If that treatment works, it might be a godsend, although I don't know if my health will ever recover from what the pharma industry has done to wreck it, even if the tobacco treatment works.
Rustica is called "sacred tobacco" and "shaman's tobacco" because as a hallucinogen, and in higher doses, it will give you the feeling of leaving your own body, and was used for that purpose by Indian medicine men, to speak to the spirits. You will actually feel as if your spirit is separating from your body and floating into another place. Ask me how I know.
The tobacco I grow is the same as was originally grown by the Indians in Virginia (which I have roots going back to - the Pamunkey tribe specifically) at contact with the Europeans. The tabacum variety only came here later, when John Rolf "imported" (actually smuggled, because export of tobacco seed was punishable by death under the Spanish authorities - they wanted to maintain their monopoly) around 1612. Rolfe had smuggled in a variety called "Orinoco" from the Caribbean, and it caught on amongst tobacco growers due to it's higher yield of leaf. The rest is history.
To respect the plant, and the native traditions surrounding it, I cannot sell it, neither leaf nor seed. It can be "gifted", however, while still respecting the traditions. A pouch of tobacco was a traditional gift to the village healer, tribal elders, and anyone else one desired to gift it to. That gifting also has, in some tribes, more tradition surrounding it. For example, if an elder refuses a gift of tobacco, it means he will not speak to you about the matter that you are seeking advice for.
Tobacco was also "gifted" to spirits. It would be sprinkled on the water for safe passage, and was often left behind to the spirit of a plant when harvesting a plant for use or consumption. small piles of it were occasionally left on rocks or stumps in he forest as gifts to "The Little People" to curry their favor. It was used as a "smudge" to draw positive spirits and block negative spirits, and I knew at least one old Cherokee medicine man who would sprinkle it along the perimeter of a room, next to baseboards, to prevent access to that room by bad spirits. Sort of in the same way that Europeans used to use salt.
I have a long-time friend in North Carolina who is a member of the Lumbee tribe, which tribe was the subject of a fairly recent Executive Order to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to move forward on Federal recognition for the tribe. I've fixed up a package of rustica leaves and seed to send to him as a gift marking Federal recognition of his tribe. They have lost many of their traditions over time, and I think their original "sacred" tobacco is one of those traditions, so it's a way to get it back into the tribe for me.
Old timers here in the mountains used to use tobacco as a poultice to draw out venom from insect stings (a use they probably got from the Indians). They also used diced and mashed raw onions to draw out venom from snake bites. I combined the two - using snuff and onion powder, together with a little salt, all bound up in a lard base to hold them together and on the spot - to treat insect stings and festered puncture wounds, and it has worked tolerably well. I used it to draw out a thorn that had embedded in my foot once, although even at that there was a little cutting involved to finally extract it. It had been in there for about 4 months or so, to the point that gristle had started growing around it as the body's defense mechanism against a foreign body... which is why I think that the cutting was required. The poultice for about 3 days, followed by a little razor blade work and a pair of tweezers (splinter forceps) was all it took. Had I used the poultice earlier, the cutting and tweezers might not have been necessary.
Tobacco has a lot of medicinal uses, many of which will probably still have to be discovered, or re-discovered.
.
“Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake