Aka Sherri (College Station, Texas, United States) on 04/30/2012:

I found a remedy that works nearly instantly!

Someone told me about this remedy years ago. It's supposed to be an old Native American remedy. As the subject says, it's disgusting! However, when I've been stung I can easily deal with gross if it means the pain will go away right now instead of 3 days later!

If you smoke, shame on you! But when it comes to stinging insects, you are in luck! Bite off about half the length of a cigarette and chew it. Your mouth will immediately dry up, but then it will begin to salivate profusely. As soon as the tobacco is wet and chewed up, spit the wad out on the sting/bite site and leave it there. I promise, you won't be much concerned about the taste of the tobacco given the serious pain you're in! :)

The sooner you can get the chewed tobacco onto the sting site, the less time it will take for the pain to go away and all of the poison to be drawn out of the body. Even though the pain will dissipate quickly, the tobacco needs to stay on longer to remove all the poison.

For example: If you get tobacco onto the wound with in 30 seconds, the pain will be gone almost instantly and it will probably only take about 5 or 10 minutes to get all the poison out. If it takes 5 minutes to get the tobacco, it might be a few minutes before the pain is gone and might take an hour to get all the poison out. This is why I always keep a bag of additive free natural tobacco in my bag of gardening tools, so I can stop the pain ASAP!!

You will know when all the poison is gone if you can remove the tobacco and the pain stays gone. If you still feel pain or it starts to return, put it back on.

The tobacco needs to stay wet. If it dries up and you start to feel pain, spit on the tobacco, or better yet, chew up some fresh tobacco.

****I tried just wetting the tobacco with water instead of chewing on it. It didn't work for me. There seems to be something about the saliva/tobacco/nicotine mix that helps****

If you have fresh sage, mix that in with the tobacco. It seems to step up the relief. I've never tried using sage alone. Frankly, I'm not willing to experiment and find out if sage on its own will work when I am in so much pain. I'll only do that when/if I find myself with out any tobacco!

I have used the remedy countless times and it has NEVER FAILED ME!

I hope it works for others as well. I will surely feel terrible if it doesn't work for someone who braved the disgusting taste cigarette tobacco but didn't find relief!