Interesting! I feel I’ve been kinda foggy in my head since I quit smoking a year or two before covid and it then got worse with the pandemic. And I’ve felt there’s been more effect from a night out with party smoking than just seeing an old friend. Might need to try my own home grown snuff when it’s done and not just give it away.

Well aged leaf smells amazing. I've often thought about getting into pipe smoking, but my guess is its like coffee, it smells better than it tastes.

I don't smoke cigarettes or pipes, but at least with cigars, it's very easy to get into. You're tasting the smoke in this case, not inhaling it. You'll still get something of a buzz, since there are looooots of entry points into the bloodstream in the mouth, but even for someone like me who's a gigantic baby when it comes to inhaling smoke, it's easy-breezy to enjoy a cigar.

If you like smoked food, you'll love the taste of smoking. Though, I highly recommend limiting it to serious celebrations, for obvious reasons. I generally only have them at weddings.

If it's like coffee, you don't necessarily like it at first.

What do you do for managing dependency / tolerance?

Every person has their own body. For me:

I've never smoked cigarettes, but decided to try Nicorette gum as an alternative to a second cup of coffee (if I drink after 12:00, I wont go to sleep on time).

I've been using it for 8+ years now and have found a sustainable dosage that doesn't give me withdrawal/depenency. I've never had an issue with tolerance.

I buy a big box of 4mg gum and go through around half to one piece a day. I discovered consuming 2+ pieces (+8mg) led to withdrawal symptoms (empathetic lightbulb moment for me for smokers who want to quit!)

Regarding dependency, I don't take any when Im traveling/on vacation, and have never felt the need to use it then.

Any desire comes from wanting to continue the alertness once the caffeine starts to wear off.

> Regarding dependency, I don't take any when Im traveling/on vacation, and have never felt the need to use it then.

> Any desire comes from wanting to continue the alertness once the caffeine starts to wear off.

Anecdotally, this sounds a lot like two of my friends (married couple) who used similar amounts of nicotine gum years ago.

For years they said the same thing: That they didn't go into withdrawals on vacation and that they weren't addicted to the gum, they just wanted to feel awake.

Their experience changed when they decided to quit for a while. As they discovered, actually quitting for an extended period of time was a lot harder than they thought it would be.

They were very much in the "I can quit whenever I want" mindset because they could skip it on vacations, but as they discovered their cravings were intense when they tried to go without the gum during their normal weekly routine.

They finally tapered down with the lower doses and splitting gum over a long period of time.

Sometimes I take the weekends off. Also I get irritable if I don't get enough sleep AND not enough nicotine. It's a trade-off.

As for tolerance, I haven't noticed the brain fog come back since I started, and I've been on this for 6 or 8 months so far.

Go in cycles. Ween dose down to zero for 1-N weeks then restart.

My meditation teacher says what works for him is cannabis.

This does not surprise me, it does have many neuroprotective benefits after all.

I vape like a fiend and I'm probably never going to stop