Smoking!

[Giant Ninja Robot]

Also -the idea that cigars and pipes are not addictive is total bull. I am suprised anyone would even consider that they are different. Nicotine is nicotine.

Your kidding right? This was a joke? I've smoked cigars and a pipe for years now and i havent had a cigar in, oh, say 2 MONTHS? I can go crazy and have like 5 cigars + some cigarillos in a week then stop for months. That sounds like an addiction to me... I have a very addictive personality, I have to watch myself around alchohol, and if I smoke a few cloves or bidis now and then I start to feel my body react in that craving sort of way very quickly. Too much alchohol and I start to feel the need for it. I'm a total lightwieght when it comes to foriegn substances entering my system. Cigars are not addictive dude and neither are pipes. I'm sure they may have a small potential to be addictive but I can't imagine this posts a real threat in comparison to cigs. It sounds like you're downplaying the fact that cigarettes DO have an absurd amount of deadly chemicals (not just artificial flavorings which is a weak argument from my perspective) and that they DO aid in the addiction process. There is a differance between tobacco thats been tampered with and that of cigars which is au naturel.

It's all love though

[TBatcho07]

I use to smoke the smaller White Owl Flavored Cigars and cig's at one point,never got addicted to either.I also use to dip,no addiction.Hookah on the other hand I just can't stop,it's not an addiction,I just enjoy it more than I could ever imagine.

[pigpen]

One absorbs nicotine though soft tissues such as the mouth. You need not inhale - that is evidenced by chewing tobacco, patches, gum and lozenges. It is contrary to logic to say that cigars and pipes are not addictive. They contain nicotine. Nicotine IS addictive.

Personal addiciton has no bearing on the physical mechanics of addiction and nicotine. Cigars and pipes ARE addictive.
I challenge you to find ONE scientific study or medical doctor that will say otherwise.

I am not a doctor. But one can not judge the effacy of nicotine by personal experience alone. Certainly one should not be advising others based on personal experience. Genetics plays a large role in how well a person tolerates and becomes additced to nicotine. "Addictive personality" is a psychological function. Nicotine is a physical addiction. But each person is affected by nicotine in different ways. YOUR experience is dissimilar to every other person out there. Because your genetics are different.

Quite frankly - this argument is absurd. Do your research. Do not crow about your own habits as "proof". There is no logic in your argument, let alone the idea of the thing.

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/...gar_Smoking.asp

[kitefanatic]

I'm gonna have to go along with Giant Ninja Robot on this one. I've been smoking cigars for 15 years, pipes for about 10, and hookah for 3 years. I smoke when want to, and many times I won't smoke at all for extended periods of time for various reasons (too busy, etc.). I have never once experienced anything close to a craving.

As far as nicotine being more addictive than NHT... You might have an argument with cigarettes, but if you try and convince a junkie that it's harder for you to put down your Cohiba than it is for him to quit NHT, you would have a very short lifespan.

Besides, most of these lab test involve insane amounts of pure nicotine being pumped into tiny lab rats. They're about as applicable to real life as the "Hookah Smoking Machine".

Anyway, depending on who funds it, I'm sure someone could come up with evidence to support "little cheese men who live on the moon". Personally, I haven't been there, so I couldn't tell you!

[TBatcho07]

Quite frankly - this argument is absurd. Do your research. Do not crow about your own habits as "proof". There is no logic in your argument, let alone the idea of the thing.

Personally there is no such thing as an absurd argument.Everyone has a voice,an opinion,and a choice...All 3 are part of the little freedom America has left.

[pigpen]

Quite frankly - this argument is absurd. Do your research. Do not crow about your own habits as "proof". There is no logic in your argument, let alone the idea of the thing.

Personally there is no such thing as an absurd argument.Everyone has a voice,an opinion,and a choice...All 3 are part of the little freedom America has left.

Regarding an argument as absurd is not the same as saying someone is absurd for using the argument.
I agree. Everyone has a right to voice their opinion. But when it comes to evidentary data one needs facts. Not opions.

[Chiefin]

I'm more addicted to hookahs than I am shisha. Wrap your minds around that shit.

[vin13]

Also -the idea that cigars and pipes are not addictive is total bull. I am suprised anyone would even consider that they are different. Nicotine is nicotine.

We don't hear about them so much becacuse cigarettes are the more prevelent form of addiction in our society.

I dont want to say anything mean because you guys have all been pretty great on this forum. But your ideas on this one are so far off reality you may as well be speculating about the little cheese men who live on the moon.

What garbage...

[Canon]

hookahs and flavors are my addiction, i crave to eat the same things i smoke. right now its peaches and grapefruit (not mixed)

[TBatcho07]

hookahs and flavors are my addiction

[Rani]

Yeah, but is 0.5% per kg really little enough to get to a large extent rid of nicotine addiction, or just replacing? The average cigarette pack says o.8% for example, but is that per pack, per cigarette or per kg? If per kg, it would mean it holds the same nicotine levels and I am just fooling myself.

0.5% is the highest available (generally) in unwashed flavored tobacco. Go for a washed version (Al Fakher, Starbuzz, new Fusion, Lucid, etc.) and you drop the nicotine down to .05%. (These are packaging designations which still aren't the most accurate.) If you're trying to drop cigarettes and don't want to go into nicotine withdrawals, I'd suggest you start with an unwashed tobacco, and then step down to the washed. Not to mention the fact that you're inhaling one whole hell of a lot fewer chemicals. Quite a few people have quit smoking cigarettes by switching to hookah.

'Rani

[Rani]

One absorbs nicotine though soft tissues such as the mouth. You need not inhale - that is evidenced by chewing tobacco, patches, gum and lozenges. It is contrary to logic to say that cigars and pipes are not addictive. They contain nicotine. Nicotine IS addictive.

Personal addiciton has no bearing on the physical mechanics of addiction and nicotine. Cigars and pipes ARE addictive.
I challenge you to find ONE scientific study or medical doctor that will say otherwise.

I am not a doctor. But one can not judge the effacy of nicotine by personal experience alone. Certainly one should not be advising others based on personal experience. Genetics plays a large role in how well a person tolerates and becomes additced to nicotine. "Addictive personality" is a psychological function. Nicotine is a physical addiction. But each person is affected by nicotine in different ways. YOUR experience is dissimilar to every other person out there. Because your genetics are different.

Quite frankly - this argument is absurd. Do your research. Do not crow about your own habits as "proof". There is no logic in your argument, let alone the idea of the thing.

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/...gar_Smoking.asp

One thing you neglect to mention is personal body chemistry. I'm native american and probably 90% of my "relatives" have a sensitivity to alcohol which is a stereotype, but unfortunately stereotypes come about because most of the time there's some accuracy but I digress...... I have a hyperactive liver. My body burns off alcohol and turns it to sugar so fast in my bloodstream that I have to keep up a serious intake to keep a buzz going. How serious? Try your average night about 10 shots of tequila with a beer behind every one of them, and I'm stone cold sober about an hour after I stop. My point is that everyone's body chemistry is different and every person is more vulnerable to some substances than others. Some people smoke 2 packs a day for 80 years and die of pure old age without single trace of heart or lung disease. Some people smoke for a year, half a pack and end up with lung cancer. It's a crap shoot based in part on your genetics and the chemical stew that is our bloodstream with all it's nutrients, antioxidents and just plain positive thinking thrown in. Does that mean I'm saying hookah is good for you? Of course not. But life is terminal - nobody gets out alive. So if I'm going to go anyway, I'm going to hit the coffin on a hip slide, with a double Chopin martini (3 olives) in one hand, my hookah hose in the other and my little black book in my back pocket, yelling "Hot damn! What a ride!"

'Rani

[kitefanatic]

I'm going to hit the coffin on a hip slide, with a double Chopin martini (3 olives) in one hand, my hookah hose in the other and my little black book in my back pocket, yelling "Hot damn! What a ride!"

'Rani

EXACTLY!!! I mean what do you want people to say at your funeral?

"Damn, he really lived!" or "Well, at least he looked healthy when the bus hit him."

[Giant Ninja Robot]

One absorbs nicotine though soft tissues such as the mouth. You need not inhale - that is evidenced by chewing tobacco, patches, gum and lozenges. It is contrary to logic to say that cigars and pipes are not addictive. They contain nicotine. Nicotine IS addictive.

Personal addiciton has no bearing on the physical mechanics of addiction and nicotine. Cigars and pipes ARE addictive.
I challenge you to find ONE scientific study or medical doctor that will say otherwise.

I am not a doctor. But one can not judge the effacy of nicotine by personal experience alone. Certainly one should not be advising others based on personal experience. Genetics plays a large role in how well a person tolerates and becomes additced to nicotine. "Addictive personality" is a psychological function. Nicotine is a physical addiction. But each person is affected by nicotine in different ways. YOUR experience is dissimilar to every other person out there. Because your genetics are different.

Quite frankly - this argument is absurd. Do your research. Do not crow about your own habits as "proof". There is no logic in your argument, let alone the idea of the thing.

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/...gar_Smoking.asp

Holy shit dude... why do you even smoke? It seems like all your analyzing saps every ounce of enjoyment out of everything. It's hard to understand in this day and age but scientific evidence is NOT the say all end all to everything. Frankly I'm damn sick of science being used to methodically destroy what it is to have a human experience! I don't recall ever "crowing" about anything. Nor did I call my experiences proof. Oh and I also remember stating that "I'M SURE CIGARS AND PIPES HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO BE ADDICTIVE!!!!!!" Did I not? The second you rely on science as a trump card to human experience is the second you lose a part of what it is to live life. Science is there to help us understand this world we live in and our lives as an aid. Not as a dictatorial hammer of fury. Wow this really pissed me off.....End Rant.

[roadie]

I strongly feel that smoking hookah is much healthier (or less unhealthy, whatever) than smoking cigarettes for a number of reasons:

1. When you smoke cigarettes, you combust and burn paper and tobacco, releasing all the very harmful carcinogens. With hookah, you never combust the shisha.

2. I smoked a pack and a half a day before I quit smoking ciggies. There is simply no doubt in my mind that shisha is better for you (or less bad, however you want to put it). My teeth used to be stained brown one month after each dental cleaning. Since I quit smoking ciggies, that's no longer the case, but I smoke a bowl of shisha a day. There is no way that shisha is tarring up my mouth, teeth, throat, and lungs the way that ciggies did. No stupid WHO report will convince me otherwise. I have my own evidence and it's called my BODY and what it does and how it works.

3. When I quit smoking ciggies, I told myself that I get a compromise: no more ciggies, but I can smoke shisha whenever I want. This works because smoking one bowl of shisha takes a few hours anyway... and you can't take your hookah everywhere with you, so you smoke less, anyway.


So in short... if you choose to smoke shisha, you are taking a risk that you know about... maybe it's nothing or maybe the WHO report is right. I doubt it. But if you smoke ciggies, you KNOW you will prolly die of cancer if you don't quit.

+1000000

[TBatcho07]

Holy shit dude... why do you even smoke? It seems like all your analyzing saps every ounce of enjoyment out of everything. It's hard to understand in this day and age but scientific evidence is NOT the say all end all to everything. Frankly I'm damn sick of science being used to methodically destroy what it is to have a human experience!

Very good point,GNR!

Science has put a scare on everything that I can think of...Example..The sun and how it causes skin cancer.Hookah and how it's supposedly addicting and harms you the way cigerettes do(NOT TRUE).All that malarkey about the world ending....every year.

It's complete and utter malarkey.

Pigpen my good friend,just enjoy the splended world of hookah,there is absolutely no need for all this scientific integration.

Don't get me wrong,Pigpen,you seem like an extremely intelligent person,but were not here to learn physics or how to be a better Harvard Student,were here to enjoy one of our many freedoms,and that is the relaxing and unique world of hookah


Amiright?

[Giant Ninja Robot]

Hey I totally appreciate the science of things...I crave knowlege and it's very important to know about the way things work and to seek answers to the mysteries of life. I just get pissed when it's blown the Hell out of proportion and used as a bludgeon. People are allowed to have opinions that are not based on other peoples research and that does not make them less valid for it. That's all I'm saying. Especially since science has the tendency to change when more information is uncovered. The world is flat anyone? "Facts" can easily be affected by human error and are often later proved false.

[Oneeyedziggy]

several comments here.

on nicotine percent:
maybe i misunderstood, and if this has been cleared up skip it, but at least one person from the first page is pretty dense, percents aren't a static measure. saying that this one cigarette is .8% doesn't mean it has any more nicotine than a whole 55gallon drum of tobacco that is only .8%, so you can get the same abount from 50 1gram cigs that are .8% as you do from 4 20gram bowls that are .5%

as for actual nicotine content, it's suspiciously hard to find a solid number for the amount of nicotine per cigarette... all of the numbers i found though, cite less than 2.3mg per cigarette was the highest nicotine content i could find cited, and the average cigarette is a little less that 1 gram of tobacco, even if it were only .5g, that would still mean it has less than the .5% cited by most shisha companies. is there something wrong with my math, or my sources?

I know it's a tall order, but i'd like to see a side by side comparison of the two... anyone own a mass spectrometer?

I think i'll submit the hookah health myth to mythbusters... they can afford all that fancy stuff.

on addiction:
This is totally dependant on the individual... some people are more likely to get addicted to certian things, some people are likely to get "addicted" to just about anything, while there are some who can do just about anything, and have little or no craving, even after repeated use, so just know your self and heck... maybe when you feel like "hey, i really want a hookah right now" that's when you should stop for a month, just so you know you can. all things in moderation.

on health:
no one should fool themselves into thinking a hookah is healthy, but no one should have reason to think it's as harmful as cigarettes either... now where in the middle ground it lies, i'm in no position to say. also consider heriditary predispositions to cancers/addictions and the like

[vin13]

that would still mean it has less than the .5% cited by most shisha companies.

Actually most washed brands cite .05% nic. in their products. Brands like Tangiers are the ones that label .5% I believe.

As far as addiction goes and just the general notion of how "healthy" hookah is, nobody can know but the individual at this point. There isn't enough "scientific" evidence out there to prove much imo. What I do know is how my body reacts to smoking hookah, and that reaction isn't enough to keep me from playing basketball 3 or more days out of the week. This leaves me with little patience for the asshats on here who continue to preach their holier than thou bullshit about how were all fooling ourselves. I say chief on

[pigpen]

The second you rely on science as a trump card to human experience is the second you lose a part of what it is to live life. Science is there to help us understand this world we live in and our lives as an aid. Not as a dictatorial hammer of fury. Wow this really pissed me off.....End Rant.

I actually agree with you. Which is why I smoke. But there is no sense in living life with your head in the sand. As you pointed out yourself - science is to help us. There is no point to that aid if one ignores it. Know what you do and you can not have regrets.

[Oneeyedziggy]

that would still mean it has less than the .5% cited by most shisha companies.

Actually most washed brands cite .05% nic. in their products. Brands like Tangiers are the ones that label .5% I believe.

As far as addiction goes and just the general notion of how "healthy" hookah is, nobody can know but the individual at this point. There isn't enough "scientific" evidence out there to prove much imo. What I do know is how my body reacts to smoking hookah, and that reaction isn't enough to keep me from playing basketball 3 or more days out of the week. This leaves me with little patience for the asshats on here who continue to preach their holier than thou bullshit about how were all fooling ourselves. I say chief on

well i'd love it if there were more impartial scientific data, but all the research seems to be done by extreamists from one side or the other who design tests to provide the data they want, then they only report the numbers that support their opinion. which doesn't do anyone any good

[coplinb]

I'm more addicted to hookahs than I am shisha. Wrap your minds around that shit.

i cant stop laughing at this, but i am intrigued.

[Scoop]

tangiers is only .3%.

like ive said a million times, none of the hookah tobacco companies actually give you an accurate level besides tangiers. every tobacco ive ever smoked besides tangiers has never gotten me so buzzed that i couldn't move for a bit....(except maybe my very first bowl of nakhla).

ive never had any sort of hookah craving. whether i have an addictive personality, i really dont know, i dont smoke cigarettes and have tried them. however ive smoked hookahs for ages now, and am on a break atm, with no signs of cravings. my belief is that this is due to the slower pace of delivery of the nicotine, which is the exact opposite of a cigarette. the cigarette is meant to delivery a sudden shock of nicotine very quickly. the amount of nicotine is greater than the acetylcholine receptors (Nicotinic AChRs), more are made, and the nicotine stimulates them. the slow delivery of hookah nicotine i believe keeps the # of acteylcholine receptors lower (however still higher than a non smoker) than a cigarette smoker.

[TBatcho07]

Epic thread

[eVasKo*]

If anything, use the hookah as training wheels as you devote yourself to not smoking any cigarettes. If anything, it will help you keep your mind off of cigs, and maybe work as a placebo.