Secondhand Smoke Withdrawal

I learned about tobacco this past year during the contamination. One of the herbs I tried to grow indoors was tobacco. It sprouted and grew for a few weeks before I got rid of all the herb-growing equipment because of the ephedra disaster. I threw all of it in the garbage, including the tobacco plants.

To recap what happened: I touched the seeds of the ephedra plant, which triggered a terrible reaction - it went through my skin. I then touched a few other objects and contaminated them. I also had touched things with the envelope the seeds came in. I didn't realize how bad it was at the time.

It wasn't only ephedra that contaminated various things. I also grew, as I said, tobacco, and St. John's Wort, indoors. I have touched various objects, such as the floor beneath where the plants grew, and had symptoms of those drugs - they all have the ability to go through the skin (transdermal route of entry).

My theory is that the live plants emitted vapors. I have done many tests of inhaling the vapors from St. John's Wort without eating or touching the leaves, and I do get the effects of the drugs. The vapors are very volatile. I believe that some of these vapors settle on nearby surfaces, such as walls and floors and carpets. The ephedra wasn't around long enough to do that - I threw away the seeds immediately after having the reaction. But the tobacco and SJW were around long enough to emit vapors that settled on surfaces.

I think that's how the whatever-it-is got all over the floor. I tracked it around the carpet by walking on it, and when I tried to shampoo the carpet, I successfully removed some of it, but also spread it around and didn't remove it entirely. It is very difficult to dissolve an oil that's poorly soluble in water. It requires very hot water, or some other solvent.

Some of the things I've touched gave me nicotine effects. I discovered that yes, I like nicotine, and it's a very good thing that I never started smoking, because I would definitely be addicted to it. I find it helpful, and it cheers me up and gives me energy. I wanted to use it for that very reason. I was going to try to use it as a transdermal herb instead of through cigarettes. I've abandoned the whole idea of doing that.

I think it also makes my heart pound. There's something in this house, and I don't know what it is, that makes my heart pound, and it raises my blood pressure. SJW also does that, to some extent - all three of those things affect the heart, which is one of the reasons why I've abandoned any attempt to use nicotine.

Also, nicotine makes you very sick and you have to be careful not to use too much of it, which is the reason why people don't like nicotine patches, from what people have told me. I talked to someone who used a nicotine patch and it was much stronger than ordinary cigarettes, and it made him deathly ill.

After I learned how to recognize the effects of nicotine, I learned that I get those effects from secondhand smoke. I have found that the nicotine also affects my blood circulation and it cuts off circulation to my feet. My right foot is especially sensitive to this. It was 'burned' by pesticides a couple years ago when I had some flea spray on the floor and I let the right foot press down on the wet flea spray for several minutes before I realized I was getting a chemical/poison burn. (This is why I think it's horrible and inhumane to put flea spray on animals. I also can't stand flea collars. I wore one on my wrist to see what it felt like, and it burned a lot and felt very uncomfortable.) Anyway, that foot was burned by the flea spray, and ever since then, that foot has been hypersensitive to various things, like the loss of circulation caused by nicotine use, and also, more vulnerable to frostbite. So I have observed that when I'm around secondhand smoke for a very long time, in large amounts, the right foot loses circulation, and it becomes extremely painful. The first time this happened, I had no idea why my foot was hurting so badly. It took a while to figure it out.

Well, I also noticed that I would go into withdrawal after accidentally touching nicotine. It hasn't happened in a while, so I forget exactly how long it took to happen. I think it happened about four hours after the contact. I would go into withdrawal, and feel hungry and get mysterious cravings, and get irritable, and sometimes I would even start crying.

So I suspect that people who are around a lot of secondhand smoke - if they're nonsmokers - get the same withdrawal symptoms as people who are trying to quit smoking. They would get these withdrawal symptoms every time they had a major exposure to secondhand smoke. If someone was a smoker, they would know they wanted a cigarette, and would just go get one. But if someone was a nonsmoker, they wouldn't necessarily know what was happening, and they wouldn't have any cigarettes, so they would just go through the withdrawal over and over again. They'd have food cravings and those 'unknown' cravings when you don't know what you want, irritability, moods, crying, and all the other withdrawal effects.

I don't advocate smoking. I was growing tobacco for a couple of reasons - I was going to try to use it through the transdermal route instead of through inhalation. I also wanted to give it to friends who smoke. I abandoned the whole thing and I'm not going to try it again. All of the herbs that I handled cause severe insomnia, high blood pressure (immediately), pounding heart, and increased heart rate. (I emphasized that the high blood pressure happened immediately, because for a long time, whenever I read about how so-and-so causes heart problems, they made it sound as though you would only suffer those effects after years and years of chronic use. No, it happens immediately, within minutes.) The side effects are so undesirable that I do not find them worthwhile to use. I can't tolerate them.

I don't have much knowledge about lung cancer, but I did learn one interesting thing. Supposedly, there is something called 'snus,' originally from Sweden, which is similar to snuff in some ways, and it's processed differently from the tobacco for cigarettes. The different way of processing supposedly doesn't create the nitrosamines that are thought to cause cancer. However, I knew a smoker who tried using snus, and she said that the drug effects felt different from cigarettes. So it might not be a perfect substitute for cigarettes. But it is still worth a try to anyone who wants to experiment or make changes to their smoking habits.

Anyway, I was thinking about the secondhand smoke withdrawal symptoms because of something that 'the voices' were asking me about tonight (that's a whole separate subject of its own). So I thought it might be worth posting a blog about. It seems like a possibly helpful piece of information that not everybody would know.

I have to edit this and add something, which is that nicotine is SO ADDICTIVE, you don't want to even start it, if you are a nonsmoker. Again, I don't advocate smoking. I tried growing tobacco because I thought that I would be able to use it in a careful, controlled way, like an herbal medicine. I also thought I would be able to help other people who are already addicted to cigarettes. There are real benefits to using nicotine, but the dangers are also very real - I knew a chronic smoker who was also diabetic and he had some part of his foot amputated because of the poor circulation (if I recall correctly - I'm not sure if I'm remembering that right). I just don't want anyone to think that I would tell people to start it if they haven't already. The idea was, instead, that a nonsmoker would get effects from secondhand smoke.