Quitting Dip, Alcohol Early In Your Quit and Hooch Snuff

I received an email from a member the other day with some interesting feedback.  As you know I’m a big fan of smokeless alternatives for dealing with the oral fixation that is part of our addition to smokeless tobacco.  For some quitters, these fake dips can be an amazing tool in their fight against craves.  The member asked a question that quite frankly, I didn’t have the answer to so I did a little research and reached out to Hooch Snuff for a response as well.

First, the comment:

I just wanted to put this out there.  I quit Copenhagen snuff 6 weeks ago and found Hooch and loved it.  Problem was, on Saturdays after I had a few beers along with the Hooch, I’d find myself completely drunk after 5-6 beers.  And I mean, waaaay drunk.  I actually had to get a ride home from the bar one night I was so hammered off a few beers.  Looked up the ingredients and the Pueraria or whatever’s in the Hooch, is used to treat alcoholics as you can’t handle the alcohol and therefore, can’t drink as much.  I didn’t see any warning about this on their site and I know a lot of people who chew while they drink, so just wanted to warm people.  I mean, I was wasted and fast!

Note: If you’re interested in the ingredients in Hooch or other smokeless alternatives you can check them out here: Smokeless Alternative Ingredients

We often tell folks to stay away from alcohol completely in the first couple of weeks of their quit.  The reason we say this is simple… alcohol makes people do things they wouldn’t normally do.  It lowers your inhibitions and it makes it that much easier for nicotine to get its teeth into you once again.  However, I’d never heard this particular issue so I reached out to Hooch to see if they’d run across it.

Hooch’s response:

Pueraria (kudzu) has a few studies showing it decreased the desire for alcohol.  The chemicals come from the root, but not the leaves that we use.  The concentration in the leaves is similar to malt or barley.

It is significantly more likely that Matt had an artificially high tolerance through the nicotine he was using in the past.  Here is just one article I found immediately when Googling.  Just like most of the internet it may not be valid either.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-07/ace-sra071706.php

Just to point out a couple of items from the above link (in case you didn’t read it).

1. New findings indicate that nicotine may actually reduce blood alcohol concentrations.
2. This effect may encourage more drinking to achieve a desired “high,” which can lead to greater levels of the toxic acetaldehyde in the body as well as chronic alcohol-related diseases

I would still suggest quitters who’ve recently quit should lay off alcohol entirely for the first couple of weeks of their quit until they get time under their belt.  However, if you ARE going to drink early in your quit you should keep this (and similar studies that I found) in mind.  The LACK of nicotine in your body can actually make your buzz that much worse.  Tread lightly quitters!

Thanks so much for Matt for sending in the comment / question and thanks to Chet May from Hooch for helping us shed some light on the question.  Got a question you’d like us to tackle?  Send it in and we’ll see what we can do!