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Tabaquero One Who Heals With Tobacco
- Jeffrey Schmitt PhD
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Hello and welcome to Healing From Within I am your host Sheryl Glick Reiki Master Teacher medium and author of my newest book the last in a trilogy intitled A New Life Awaits Spiritual Guide Insights to Support Global Awakening which shows us that our challenges are not economic political or social but a spiritual disconnect from our inner true being or soul reality. I am delighted today to welcome Dr. Jeffrey Schmitt, a forty -year veteran scientist and university professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine who brings to us his knowledge of the sacred healing plant tobacco. He helped to start a company to fight diseases like Parkinson and Alzheimer’s based on this research on nicotine. He will also describe AoMR a website and app dedicated to understanding tobacco dependence and its implications.
As listeners of Healing From Within are well aware my guests and I share intimate stories and insights leading us to recognize we are more than our physical body and energetically within have much knowledge and wisdom that can help us handle any challenge and create with our inspired thoughts and help from Universal Source a productive healthy and fulfilling life journey.
In today’s episode of “Healing From Within” Dr. Jeffrey Schmitt will show that unhealthy relationships (addiction, dependence) are symptoms: they are the result of deeper causes, so we can when we help people develop new skills and insights into themselves get beyond the need to smoke. The program has developed dares people to grow and evolve.
When Jeff is asked to think back to his childhood and remember a person place or event that may have made a lasting impression on him and perhaps directed the course of his life he tells us of a time when he was about five years old and his parents took him to a Japanese restaurant where he sat in a low pit and watched them prepare the food and a woman dressed in a kimono talked to him. He was sensitive to the beauty and uniqueness of the woman place and food and it set up within him a desire to learn more about other places and cultures and healing through feeling connected to a higher place within himself and with perhaps Universal energy.
Jeff tells us how he became a highly respected expert in the neuropharmacology and ethnobotany of tobacco and developed a new model for treating tobacco dependence based on native principles of healing self-awareness and accountability. We all know that tobacco if smoked over a period of time and as an addiction causes irreparable damage. Understanding addiction withdrawal and the underlying conditions that lead one to a tobacco dependence or any other addiction lie within the emotional and physical structure of a person.
Withdrawal and addiction are two related but separate parts of substance use disorders. Dependence is a chemical adaptation to a psychoactive substance in your brain. When you smoke, your brain gets used to nicotine and adapts around it. It makes even make more nicotine receptors to bind with more of the drug. When you stop using, you’ll feel a chemical imbalance that causes withdrawal symptoms and cravings.
Nicotine withdrawal can cause irritability, anxiety, depression, headaches, constipation, and sweating. These unpleasant symptoms can make it difficult to quit. However, addiction makes it even harder as it involves compulsions to smoke despite harmful consequences. For instance, many people start to develop lung problems or other health problems and are told to stop smoking, but they can’t. Nicotine dependence and addiction can be treated and overcome, although it may take professional help in some cases.
Since tobacco addiction is harder to hide than other addictions. This is largely because tobacco is legal, easily obtained, and can be consumed in public it has in the past been more acceptable or tolerated more so than alcoholism or drugs.
Some people can smoke socially or occasionally, but others become addicted. An addiction may be present if the person:
cannot stop smoking or chewing, despite attempts to quit
has withdrawal symptoms when they try to quit (shaky hands, sweating, irritability, or rapid heart rate)
must smoke or chew after every meal or after long periods of time without using, such as after a movie or work meeting
needs tobacco products to feel “normal” or turns to them during times of stress
gives up activities or won’t attend events where smoking or tobacco use is not allowed
continues to smoke despite health problems
Dr. Schmitt tells us of the spiritual and holistic healing of the AoMR platform and app and what it provides. AoMR stands for All of My Relations and in healing it is always about uncovering the underlying causes of a disease or emotional dependence which leads to an addiction or any illness or dysfunction.
The app provides:
Audio recordings that lead users through a variety of exercises that address the underlying cause of dependence on tobacco and other substances/behaviors.
Also provides Audio recordings based on advanced brain state technology (binaural beats, diachronic beats and hearing frequencies that support healthy behaviors healthy outlook and the release of addictive behavior.
Simple exercises that enhance users capacity to understand themselves and where they are on the journey to having the healthy happy life to which they aspire.
The recordings are not only powerful and effective but are beautiful as well Dr. Schmitt a musician himself has collaborated with world renown musician River Guerguerian to create custom sonic landscapes for each recording
Dr. Schmitt tells us more about the healing effects as well as the destructive effects of smoking Tobacco. Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the Nicotiana genus and the Solanaceae (nightshade) family, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of the tobacco plant. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the chief commercial crop is N. tabacum. The more potent variant N. rustica is also used around the world.
Tobacco is one of the deadliest drugs on the planet, and smoking it leads to more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Many people who smoke are aware of the dangers and repeatedly try and fail to quit using nicotine. That’s because nicotine is notoriously addictive, and quitting it can cause uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms and powerful compulsions to use.
Smoking and vaping nicotine can lead to deadly health risks. It can also cause a shortness of breath, or create a morning cough, among other uncomfortable symptoms. Plus, areas where smoking is permitted are increasingly difficult to find in public places. By why is it so difficult to stop using nicotine despite the health risks and other inconveniences?
Tobacco is one of the most widely abused substances in the world. It is highly addictive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that tobacco causes 6 million deaths. Trusted sources tell us. Nicotine is the main addictive chemical in tobacco. It causes a rush of adrenaline when absorbed in the bloodstream or inhaled via cigarette smoke. Nicotine also triggers an increase in dopamine. This is sometimes referred to as the brain’s “happy” chemical.
Dopamine stimulates the area of the brain associated with pleasure and reward. Like any other drug, use of tobacco over time can cause a physical and psychological addiction. This is also true for smokeless forms of tobacco, such as snuff and chewing tobacco.
Tobacco use is associated with 5 million deaths per year worldwide and is considered as one of the leading causes of premature death. Comprehensive tobacco control programs can significantly reduce the prevalence of tobacco use. An important component of a comprehensive program is the provision of treatment for tobacco addiction. Treatment involves targeting multiple aspects of addiction including the underlying neurobiology and behavioral processes. Furthermore, building an infrastructure in health systems that encourage and facilitate cessation and expanding the accessibility of treatments are necessary. While current pharmacological and behavioral treatments are effective in improving cessation success, the rate of relapse to smoking remains high, demonstrating the strong addictive nature of nicotine. The future of treatment resides in better patient matching to treatment, combination or novel medications, and conceptualizing nicotine addiction as a chronic disorder which may require long-term treatment obacco use is associated with 5 million deaths per year worldwide and is considered as one of the leading causes of premature death. Comprehensive tobacco control programs can significantly reduce the prevalence of tobacco use.
Learning more about how nicotine works in the brain and why it’s so addictive is important to understanding how Dr. Schmitt’s use holistically of the tobacco plant as a living essence which can communicate it’s healing message without necessarily smoking it. So tobacco is an ancient herbal healing substance when used in another way.
Nicotine is a psychoactive chemical in tobacco that causes the stimulating effects when it is smoked. Among these chemicals is dopamine, a neurotransmitter that’s involved in reward and motivation. Dopamine release can cause positive feelings that can reinforce the behavior that leads to its release in the first place. This is an important function that helps motivate us to survive.
When you’re hungry but don’t feel like going out for food, the reward center of your brain remembers the dopamine and other feel-good chemicals that were released when you ate before. That is how addictions are formed.
Dr. Jeffrey Schmitt is a dedicated practitioner and student of the folk healing traditions of Peru and North America and over the years your relationship has shifted to working with tobacco as a teacher and catalyst for sacred healing. He tells us of his research and new awareness of sacred healing and the use of tobacco as a sacred plant used by many indigenous peoples around the world. The tobacco we will work with is from the jungles of Peru. It is pure nicotine rustica, and is used by Peruvian shamans for clearing low frequency energies, such as trauma, unpleasant fear patterns and emotions. It is also used for protection and greatly assists sensitive, empathic people when used consciously as an ally, through prayer and with intention.
This is a one-day prayerful diet with tobacco, with an opportunity to get to know it better as a spirit ally and powerful healing tool. You learn to smoke it prayerfully and do not inhale the smoke. You can also opt in to pray with it as an ally and not smoke it, as the relationship is not dependent on smoking it, but on how you honor it and call it in as a spirit ally.
The Spirit of Tobacco is a masculine energy and a fire medicine.
“To get to know this plant, the shamans create a fresh pressed drink out the leaves of the tobacco plant. Each day the shamans pray into the plant drink with prayers for the medicine to assist us, and for us to become allies with it and its powers. They would also put prayers into three mapacchos for us to work with each day. A mapaccho looks like a cigarette, but is not, as it is pure tobacco and only meant for prayerful use. Then we would pray into our tobacco drink (or whatever plant we were working with), and drink it down. We would then rest, fast, pray and dream during the day. We began at dawn and were in ceremony until 3pm. Then we could break our fast. We did this for 7 days, as that is the minimum time for the sacred relationship to be created, and for the plant to lay its energy matrix into our field.”
Tobacco is sacred and not meant to be used mindlessly. It knows your prayers and will go to work for you if you hold it in its sacredness. And if you disrespect it, it will kill you!
We thank you Dr. Jeff Schmitt for sharing your research and insights into understanding the need of some people for tobacco dependence and the AoRM system for a look at the unhealthy factors that may lead to any of a number of addictive needs. To learn more of this holistic approach to healing go to www.AllofMyRelations.com
In summarizing today’s episode of Healing From Within Dr. Jeffrey Schmitt has discussed the story of tobacco and other addictive behaviors offering ways to understand how the brain can be trained to require continued use of a substance once the chemical stimulates receptors and this creates a feel good reaction which is the basis for the addiction. Dr. Schmitt offers a six month program using recordings music exercise and ways to know yourself in order to discover why you are addicted in the first place as we know some people can use tobacco or any product socially and occasionally, but do not become addicted and use of tobacco as a sacred healing essence to communicate with and derive benefits from this action. Even when people are aware of the many health problems and deaths generated from excessive use of tobacco often they are unable to break the habit so we must seek out new creative holistic ways to solve this issue.
Jeff and I would have you seek therapists hypnotherapists and medical advice energy healing practices such as Reiki Acupuncture Craniosacral therapy as well as programs like AoRM to find your way past the traumas fears and suffering that made you accept another unhealthy practice to handle the disconcerting anxiety and pain at the root of the addiction. There is always help available…often we simply have to ask.
