Is There an Alternative?

 I smoked from a water pipe for the first time recently.  Some might call it vaping.  I'm not going to get into vaping, but I understand that pipe or even cigarette tobacco can by used in water pipes.  I'm just not a vaping kind of guy.  Maybe if something stronger like Marijuana were to be used it might be different, but I've never used any kind of illicit drug, so I don't know.

The Marharishi was said to have introduced the Beatles to opium.  I can imagine them sitting around on overstuffed pillows, writing their music, while smoking Marijuana through a hookah.  The images I have from water pipes for vaping are all psychedelic images from the 60's.  I found the vaping to be flavorful enough, but I had the most difficult time with inhaling, because that is the only way to get the full effect of the vapors.

I'm used to puffing on a pipe and not inhaling, which made me cough.  Each time I would inhale, I coughed.  I could blow the vapors from my nose, which with pipe smoking is called the retroohale.    It can literally take years for a pipe smoker to learn to retrohale through the nose without breathing into the lungs of the pipe smoker.  But with vaping, one breathes the vapors into the lungs, which is what I did not like about it.

Is vaping an alternative to pipe smoking, even with the use of tobacco?  I don't think so.  Some pipe smokers are into vaping, because vape shops are everywhere and will sell limited selections of pipe tobacco.  But the one thing no pipe smoker should ever do is inhale pipe tobacco smoke into their lungs.  Doing so, is about 20 times worse than inhaling cigarettes. Pipe tobacco is not intended to be inhaled as one doesn't inhale from a cigar.  If inhaling pipe tobacco doesn't kill you, the effects could at least make you very I'll.

Getting nicotine from pipe smoke without inhaling is relatively easy.  I can tell when the nicotine kicks in because I don't feel 100% and I need to put my pipe away for awhile.  Some tobaccos have more nicotine than others and one just learns how to pace oneself with certain tobaccos.  So, no, I wouldn't try smoking pipe tobacco from a water pipe.  I get nothing from it but a little taste and absolutely hate the idea of inhaling.  I'll stay with just my plain old pipes.  There's nothing fancy about them.  Like my Churchwarden KS7 this morning with some Estate Blend.  Thank you for your time and Peace to all.  

Dave