Tag: tobacco

January 28, 2025 – Is This Appropriate?

Last weekend, I actually got all of my seeds out to see what exactly I had and what I might want to start. As I have alluded to previously, I probably will start plenty more than I need with an eye toward keeping one and seeing if I can give away the rest. Maybe more aptly said, hopefully I can get one to live.

To me what actually makes the cut are hot plants. That would be primarily peppers and tomatoes. I did discover that I have no tomato seeds left but I have bell, jalapeno and habanero so good to go there. I will probably spend the $2.50 or maybe go to the library for a free package of tomato seeds before I start.

More than anything, I want to get a thyme plant going so that also made the cut. I will also plant as much Italian basil as I can grow. These can take a pruning and keep on going but I love to get a huge bundle and make pesto for the freezer. It is fast and economic if I substitute walnuts for pine nuts and so much better than jarred without the weird preservative taste.

Finally, from my seed stash, I have a lot of purple coneflower (or echinacea) seeds. I love all the flowers in that group be it Black Eyed Susan or Daisy and other varieties. They are extremely tough and for me they are perennial (unless you dump four inches of soil on the top of the bed like I did). I would like to find a place to do some mass planting in my yard.

A new development came up about a week ago. My son purchased a lot of tobacco seeds as a birthday present. Within the Liberty and Freedom movement, I have heard of people growing tobacco as a form of tax freedom, so this was not revolutionary to me. But, it is probably not a good idea for my son to be promoting my involvement with tobacco.

I have a deep reverence for tobacco in relation to the historical fiber of this country. Between that and rum, it was a primary motivator the fiber of our cultural heritage. Both of those certainly come with their own baggage related to history as well but the fact remains that the brown gold was an instigator for fortune seekers and the liberty minded.

My view on tobacco is mixed. I do see it as a personal choice. It is definitely muddied by the industrialization of the product. The more fiddling, the more addictive, the more it becomes less of a choice. My personal opinion is that traditional use, say native use came without most of those trappings of crippling addiction and chronic health problems. This would be my same view of recreational marijuana.

Using a different carcinogen, somewhere, somehow a person was exposed to asbestos and that one event was life altering. I am not denying that recreational use of tobacco comes with risks. But I also wont deny that other culture’s relationship with smoking (primarily) has a much smaller chronic effect. That has much to do with diet and exercise and less to do with the habit.

This is not an argument for or against smoking. My own experience has told me that I could never be a day in day out smoker. I suspect that a large part of it is mental but ultimately, I found that I didn’t like how I felt after the initial buzz. It is just not a choice that I want to make.

All that being said, I think I am going to grow some tobacco this year. I would be curious if I could do it and I am sure that it would be a unique skill to know. Even though I have seen it growing in South Carolina and I have been around the processing, I think that there is probably a lot more to know.

There isn’t a ton of information on the seed package but it seems like different varieties are better for certain things. The indications are that certain varieties make better wrappers for cigars. Some make better fillers and so on. Given my limited space, I will probably try and grow something that might work as a pipe tobacco and probably one plant. From what I have seen, they are big plants.

There are a lot of plant sellers at the farmers market. I could definitely see a specialty booth where you are selling a cigar pack of plants with some information on how to process. I could easily see the novelty going for $50. But, that is getting way ahead of myself, it is just an idea of the potential. For this reason, I am going to give it a try.

End Your Programming Routine: I may not get tobacco to grow. I may give it my usual neglect in the ground and never make it to harvest. I also may never harvest or process. I did find myself wondering how much a pipe would cost and I found what seemed like a nice one to me at $75, imported from Italy. In my area, I was in shock that cigarettes cost $10 a pack. You do the math on that.

April 15, 2020 – Admitting your darkest secrets

I am a very private person. I like to share ‘edutainment’ or an editorial political piece, but I have put very little out about myself personally. Today, I want to write about addiction. I want to put it into an abstract way so as to be approachable to others. I also cannot claim that I know everything, just my brand of problem.

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. It was a well established fact that tobacco caused health problems. That being said, every man I knew was well into his addiction of nicotine. Some later beat it and some did not. My generation was at the crossroads of medically wrong but socially acceptable.

In high school, I had a friend that I used to joke around with. It started with a ‘ha ha, look at me chewing this tobacco’ to lets get together and do it some more. This progressed to not a huge deal physically but mentally I started looking forward to this and associating tobacco to fun and reward. My first physical symptom that I was heading toward a problem was I was in math, the first class after lunch. I literally could not keep my eyes open. This went on for about a week and somehow I associated nicotine after eating as the solution to nearly falling asleep in class.

My other problem was that this behavior wasn’t legal. It drove that activity underground so to speak. Pretty early on I learned that if I spit my first mouthful out, I could swallow the juice the rest of the day. I even learned that I can swallow the tobacco. So, now this became like a candy. In my twenty some years of tobacco, there have been very few people that I have ever visibly used around, even though it has been constant for that entire time.

I tried smoking for a little while, but I couldn’t deal with the smell. The buzz was more intense, but it was also shorter. That led to smoking more but it was harder to hide and required more effort. Eventually, I moved exclusively to smokeless tobacco.

You tell yourself that you can quit if you want to. To a degree that is the absolute truth. You will only quit if you want to, and some days you really have to want it. You of course try half-hearted efforts to quit. Ironically, I think that it is harder to quit when no one knows that you are doing it in the first place. But, every time you fail it is some excuse you tell yourself that is the reason that cant do it. I made it thirty days once and to celebrate I bought some tobacco. A lot of the time, it was something to focus your energy.

What is the psychology of addiction look like? A coping mechanism – What I realized is that this is how I have been functioning for the last twenty some years.

  • Don’t know what to do…
  • When I am done with this…
  • I am glad that is over…
  • This is going to be very hard/stressful…

I believe that this why quitting is so hard, you cant undue all those years of training overnight. I have felt mental fog, a shaking like being cold and a sudden urge to use the toilet. The consistency of the symptoms fade and I have observed acute triggers like stressors. There has been some cases where I have told myself, ‘I don’t have time to quit’ because I didn’t want to attempt with withdrawal symptoms for a particular day.

I have tried patches, gum and cold turkey. After trying to calculate how much nicotine I consumed, I tried the 1st step patch (21mg) and supplemented with 4mg gum. After the patches ran out, I went to straight gum and was using 32mg daily. That lasted three weeks, during Christmas and New Years.

Recently, I went straight gum for nine days (24-40mg) and went cold turkey. This morning is day six. I am definitely not out of the woods on this. I am having strong urges still at times but I know that giving in today means going through this again. So, I am inclined to make this one stick. I suppose that this is one thing about quarantine has been a positive.