Ask the uber-nicotine addict how she finally quit smoking after 37 years with e-cigs.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A little background: I am 56 and have smoked since I was 17. I’m a serial quitter and have quit elebenty-twenty times for anywhere from a few hours to about a year, then started smoking again. I am bi-polar and quitting puts me into a rageful depressive state. This is arecognised phenomenon, not an excuse - and I tried not to make it an excuse, but still. Quitting nicotine, for me, was a hugely stressful thing and even after months, I was cranky and craving. And although I have always been a skinny person, a couple of my longer quits led to really unpleasant weight gains.

I was a heavy smoker - 50-60 cigs per day. Rolled my own - Drum or Bali Shag. I was not looking to quit, just harm reduction and cutting down.

Anyway in March 2012, I had a chest x-ray to rule out TB for a volunteer gig. Had to have the x-ray because I am allergic to the TB skin test. It came back with “abnormalities” and I had to re-take the x-ray, then wait a couple of weeks for a verdict. Naturally, I was terrified. Thankfully, the “abnormal” results eventually were deemed artifactual - a smudge on the film or whatever. But in the meantime, I went out and bought several of those cheesy cigarette-analogues available at gas stations and by God, I was able to go hours without a cigarette as long as I had one on hand.

But they didn’t quite do the trick - satisfying but not quite enough. I found that there were many online vendors of better e-cig vaping set ups, as well as vendors who take the same approach to e-juice as craft beer brewers take to beer and produce really fucking amazing tasting e-juice. Once I hit the sweet spot of what worked for me, I started forgetting to smoke. Which, if you are addicted, you’ll get how weird that may feel! But I really did. Sort of by accident, I went from someone who couldn’t go two hours without feeling the strong compulsion to smoke, to going days without even thinking about smoking.

Sometime near late April 2012, I smoked my last cigarette. Yes, I am still addicted to nicotine - although I have cut my e-juice nic strength down from 32 mg to 18 mg over time. I do vape pretty much all the time. But I am no longer smoking - and the combustion is what is most harmful. Is intentionally sucking down vapor an intelligent thing to do? Not really, no. But is it better than intentionally sucking down burning tobacco smoke? YES.

I feel like a non-smoker now. Smokers smell nasty, again. No coughing or chest pain. I did not gain an ounce. I did not get depressed or wigged-out. I’ve been running more and can do so without coughing fits. My mouth feels cleaner. I don’t feel like a loser-smoker any more. I do not want to smoke a cigarette, ever again.

In October 2013 I started with a new doctor and had an extensive medical check up (blood work, heart, etc) and he tells me that I shouldn’t be as healthy as I am, but I am in fact, as far as we know, in perfect health.

Ask me any questions or chime in with anecdotes. It’s been a miraculous thing for me because deep down, I figured I’d never be able to quit smoking. But I have and I am grateful.

2

Congratulations and good work!

3

I don’t have to ask, I did the same. :slight_smile:

What’s your setup? Where do you get your stuff?

4

Congrats, I did the same thing too. I quit cold turkey for a month, and then decided I still need a crutch when I drink, so I took up vaping. I only vape when I drink though.

Be prepared, there are some people on this board who will still look down on you because they still see you as a “loser addict” and then they like to bitch about how your second hand vape is killing them as they choke down a bacon double cheese burger with a large side order of fries.

5

Ditto.

It’s funny, every time we have another Yay! Vaping! thread, I find a new line I’ve recently crossed that I never thought I would. This time, it’s eliquids: I’m making my own now. Well, I say “making,” but really it’s just mixing the propylene glycol and the vegetable glycerin and adding flavoring. I also have some really potent nicotine* I add to my husband’s blends (I gradually weaned down to no nicotine myself.) I love it. It’s so incredibly cheap this way - Enough supplies to make me 2 **Liters **of eliquid cost under $40! (I get the PG and VG from Bulk Apothecary - a pound (just under a Liter) of each is under $4; the flavors I get from vaporshots.com) Since I vape about 1.5mL a day, that should literally last me for 3 YEARS.

I think about the only “nah, not interested in doing that myself, I’ll just buy it” DIY thing left to me is rewiring my own atomizers. They’re so cheap, I just don’t see the point. But that’s what I said about eliquids 6 months ago, and variable voltage batteries 6 months before that, and tank style systems instead of cigarette lookalikes 6 months before that! :smiley:

*100mg/ml - TO BE KEPT OUT OF THE REACH OF CHILDREN AND PETS!

6

Various places. Mostly Hoosier for supplies, and Ahlusion (they also have a brick and mortar store near me and the owner is both a chemist and Cordon Bleu trained chef) and Backwoods Brew for juice. I haven’t gotten super-geeky about variable voltage and super-expensive set-ups. Mainly because I’ve owned and tried them, but am just as happy with a basic clearo and KGO-type batteries.

I’m avoiding recommending specific suppliers by linking to them - there are many excellent sources and vendors; I’ve only tried but a few!

7

Oh yah, no doubt. Those folks are everywhere and I have run into them already. That is OK. I did make a point in my OP to acknowledge that I am not in denial about being addicted to nicotine and I see myself as a winner addict (albeit with a crutch) instead of a loser addict. :slight_smile:

8

:eek:

Ha! That’s cool. I’ve thought about getting into mixing my own but really vaping is so much cheaper than smoking, and I’ve found some vendors that make really excellent and satisfying juice, there doesn’t seem much of a point, personally.

I do avoid buying e-juice from Chinese sources or from anyone who uses Chinese raw ingredients. I suppose that’s a whole 'nother thread but I do try to go domestically-sourced as much as possible.

9

Indeed. You can buy it much weaker, but as I have the equipment (tiny syringes) to accurately measure fractions of a mL, and the math skills to be safe (thank you, Medication Math in nursing school!), I went with the wholesaler’s stuff. Very potent.

10

I’ve tried vaping, and I’m just not there yet. I have two issues:

  • not used to the weight difference (I suppose I can get used to that)

  • I’m concerned about the timing. I’m a very habitual smoker - always after meals, when I need a break from work - I smoke based on what I am doing, and what habits I’ve developed. With an analog, it’s a predetermined 7 minutes/13-15 drags (I timed it before one of my vaping experiments). With an ecig, it’s just kinda…whatever. I wish they made an ecig with a timer.

Any suggestions? My best successful quit was cold turkey - the nicotine urges were not that bad, and I made it almost a year. But the habitual stuff was too tough for me. They say find something else, but yeah…that didn’t work. What else would I do for seven minutes in the middle of working? I’m too regimented to meditate, too lazy to jump rope, too afraid of weight gain to snack.

Also - I smoke Ultra Lights, so I always got a .6 cartridge, but the pull was not satisfying. Do you get a stronger pull with higher nic levels?

11

I’m a non-smoker, and I think this is godsend. I’m very happy for the smokers out there that they now have this, and even I reap the benefits - fewer clouds of smoke to walk through when passing the smoking area, fewer butts on the ground, and - oh, yeah - fewer people dying of lung cancer.

I read an article recently that went into how nicotine is not a carcinogen. It downplayed the toxic effects of nicotine overdose (WhyNot is not kidding when she says don’t let the kids or pets get into it.), which I thought was unfortunate, but it did point out that nicotine in and of itself is a safe and tolerable stimulant when taken responsibly. It’s the other chemicals in tobacco which are carcinogens.

I think that jibes with statistics I’ve read where about half of adults with ADHD are cigarette smokers. They crave stimulants because it makes their brains work better. Caffeine isn’t strong enough. The next legal stimulant is nicotine. Far, far better to get your stimulant through something like an ecig than to smoke it.

I’m afraid, however, we’ll see some kneejerk responses, because it is addictive, and because the ecigs and vape pipes are new and “hip” and are still associated with the evils of smoking. The NYC council has banned it wherever cigarettes are banned, and even I, the wimpiest, most sensitive asthmatic I know, think that’s stupid.

chiroptera, congratulations on kicking the coffin nails, and the same to all the other ex-smokers who’ve done the same.

12

I do have a couple of tips, but I’m in the middle of a busy work day. If I forget to answer this tonight, bump it for me tomorrow, will ya?

13

Do you mean the weight of the cigarette itself? Holding an e-cigarette is different…of course there are so many designs and types (browse here, to get an idea) that something will eventually feel right. I do recall feeling a bit funny holding a non-traditional device at first. Also it’s different - you’re correct that it’s not like taking a “smoke break” because you don’t vape for seven minutes, then quit until the next smoke break.

The habitual thing was hard for me too, and actually still is when I am around smokers. What did the trick for me was finding really excellent-tasting and satisfying e-juice. It tastes SO much better than dragging on a cigarette that smoking fairly quickly became unpleasant to me. (And that looks so weird, that I actually wrote that as a long-term dedicated smoker!) If the really good flavors that I’ve gotten used to were to be banned? I’d probably go back to smoking.

I never found the pull/throat hit of any of the cigarette-look-alikes satisfying enough to want to quit. It was only once I started with the somewhat more higher-end devices (see the link above) and good juice that I was able to put away the analog smokes. The device and juice I use is not actually that strong but definitely gives me a good hit.

ETA - curious what WhyNot has to add. :slight_smile:

14

Thanks!

And yes there is quite a bit of hysteria over the OMG addictive dangerous and What About Teh Children, and all sorts of politics over vaping. Any reasonable person thinks that selling e-cigs to minors is a bad idea, and I know of no vendor that will. I personally respect the dictates of wherever I am - if a business doesn’t want me to vape on their property, I won’t.

But sometimes it gets silly. Last summer, I went to a steak house with a friend. Their outdoor seating area was arranged around a big grill and BBQ-pit arrangement, which was of course spewing carcinogens all over the place. Not to mention it was near a highway and the busy parking lot, where automobiles were also spewing carcinogens. I asked the waiter if they were OK with me vaping and after checking with his pinhead manager, he told me sorry, no. I complied, but have never been back.

15

Where I live a pack of cigarettes is less than $2 US - sadly vaping is going to be more expensive :confused:

16

I switched to gums and mints, nicotine and other, and was just about ready to call myself a non-smoker, when I tried an e-cig. Way too much like smoking, I will never touch one again. (Most anti-vapers sound like anti-Harry Potter-ers - anything people enjoy must be bad for you, but I am truly afraid I will slide back down the slippery slope.)

But good for you, and you never make that nasty gum chomping sounds, the way I do when I’m tense.

17

Speak for yourself. I’m a non-smoking (never have) vegetarian since I was 20 (27 years now), and I don’t like deep fried foods all that much.

I’d also much rather see people with ecigs than real ones-- aside from everything everyone else has mentioned, I haven’t yet heard of a house fire caused by someone falling asleep with an ecig.

Yes, I would rather no one smoked anything at all, and I hope that no-smoking areas legally remain vapor-free as well, at least until we have studies on second-hand vapor, but cigarette smoke makes me sick-- I think I’m allergic to tobacco, because even being in a room were there are a lot of ashtrays, and people have been smoking, even if no one is currently smoking, makes my nose run, and I get a mild skin rash-- I really can’t breath, and it triggers migraines, so every person who switches to ecigs is one in the win column for me.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s kinda like using chewing tobacco or snuff. It may hurt you, but it’s not bothering me.

The same goes for eating stuff deep-fried in lard, too.

18

Good work.

I’ve had high blood pressure for a while and the doctor has been nagging me at various things to help reduce it. One of these was to give up smoking.

The vaping gear is available in Australia but not actually legal or endorsed so it can be tricky but I got hold of some stuff early this year and gave it a go. I found I could cut down significantly on the number of cigarettes with it and at around $20 for a pack of 30 cigarettes it was a hell of a lot cheaper.

I would have been quite happy to go down that path but the Doc informed me that it was the nicotine that was effecting the BP so even though the vaping was better for me, it didn’t help the BP.

So, I got Champix and quit instead. Stopped taking the tablets 4 weeks after stopping smoking so now I’m officially a non smoker and am supposed to curl my lip with disdain at those afflicted unclean people who smoke.

Except that I miss it.:frowning: Pity I couldn’t have stuck with Vaping but what’s done is done.

Well done to you.

19

Yeah, that phrase which you seem to like a lot make no sense in this context.

Besides, I said some people, not all people. I hope you understand the distinction.

20

There are three things which can affect “throat hit.”

(Pause for a disclaimer: if you’re new to vaping and you like it, skip this stuff. It can be totally overwhelming and a turn off. I only offer it because there really is much that you can geek out over if you want to, if the default vaping stuff isn’t doing it for you.)

Battery: a higher voltage battery will give you both more throat hit and more vapor production. Those little batteries on the ecigs that look like cigarettes are very wimpy in terms of voltage. They tend to run around 2 or 2.5 volts. My variable voltage battery (it’s a knock off of the eGo Twist) goes from 3.3 to 4.8 volts. There are even higher voltage batteries out there, but I’ve been content in the 3 - 5 range.

Resistance of the atomizer or cartomizer: a lower number of ohms will give you more throat hit and more vapor production. Again, those cigarette look alikes are pretty meh. Resistance tends to run around 2.4-2.8, which is pretty high. The atomizers I use in my tank (I use a number of tanks, including Vivi Nova Mini, Kanger Evod and the Kanger ProTank Mini) are 1.8ohms. 2.4 works fine for me, too, but I need to turn my voltage up a bit to compensate. Some people make their own atomizers with resistance as low as 0.7. I’m afraid I might catch things on fire burning that hot!

There’s an excellent entry in post 6 of this thread if you want to understand the science and math here. I’ll be honest, I don’t get it, I just remember it: higher voltage, lower resistance = hotter, more vapor, more throat hit.

Eliquid: Proplyene glycol (pg) gives throat hit. Vegetable glycerin (vg) gives vapor production. Most off the shelf eliquids use a combination of proplyene glycol and vegetable glycerin in their base (and then they add nicotine and flavors). There are some pure vg eliquids out there, often marketed as “greener” or “all natural”. They do produce a lot of vapor. Great poofy plumes of vapor…but hardly any throat hit. Some people like this. I don’t. Like you, I’m an ex-smoker, and I want something that burns the back of my throat just a wee bit. (It is also very hard to get flavors to disperse evenly in pure vegetable glycerin, so I’m always dubious about “100% vg eliquids”; I suspect some of them secretly have a small amount - 10% or so - of pg or something similar in them.)

The sweet spot for most people in terms of throat hit and vapor production is 70% proplyene glycol and 30% vegetable glycerin. YMMV, though. If that’s what you’ve been using and it isn’t doing it for you, find a 80/20 blend, or even a 90/10. If your local vapor shop can’t make a custom blend, you can order custom blends at many websites. Primevaping is one, but there are others.

Nicotine doesn’t affect the flavor much at all, nor does it affect the throat hit in my experience. That being said, the fact that you smoke Ultralights does not mean that you’ve been getting a low dose of nicotine. In the US, cigarette manufacturers are now prohibited from using the labels “Light” or “Ultralight,” because in actual practice, they don’t mean jack. The amount of nicotine you get out of a cigarette is dictated by how hard you drag, how quickly you take repeated drags and how long you hold the smoke in your lungs. If you give a smoker any cigarette at all, within a few puffs, she’ll change her smoking style so that she’s getting essentially the same amount of nicotine from the smoke, no matter what the nicotine content of the actual tobacco is. Crazy, isn’t it? So if you’re having nic fits, go up a little bit on the nicotine level (temporarily) for that reason, but no, it won’t really affect the hit.

The other nice thing about using the tank system with eliquid you refill with a dropper bottle is that you can easily and very gradually go down on the nicotine until you’re vaping nicotine free liquid. Just get a 0 nicotine bottle of your flavor of choice, and fill your tank mostly with the nicotine liquid and a few drops of the 0 nicotine liquid. Next time you fill it, make a few drops more of the 0 nicotine. If at any point you start to fit, add a few more drops with nicotine and stay there for a week or two to let your body adjust, then start diluting with more 0 nicotine liquid again. Took me about 3 months to wean from 24mg/mL down to 0 nicotine without any fits.

Bottom line: if you’re using a cigarette look alike (which I suspect you are, as those are what’s sold in “.6 cartridge” kind of measurements, whereas eliquid that goes into a tank is sold by milligrams of nicotine per milliliter, as in, “12mg/mL”) stop that. Go with a bigger battery and tank style system and I bet you’ll be happier. You can get a Kanger Evod starter kit for around $35 at many brick and mortar vapor shops, and it’s totally worth the investment (still less than a carton of smokes!) Frankly, even the cheaper knock off Evods are superior to the cigarette lookalikes. I’ve seen some as low as $13.95 for a starter kit.

No, it doesn’t solve the weight problem, but what my husband (who had the same complaint) has found is that the better throat hit and vapor production make up for the weight weirdness, and having a device that’s actually MORE different from a cigarette helped him to accept it. Instead of being a poor substitute, it’s another thing entirely. If you’re already using a tank, try a lower resistance coil in your atomizer, or try a higher voltage battery.

As for the timer - I know, right?! That kind of drives me crazy, too. I don’t know why someone hasn’t added a timer to their battery, but if anyone has, I don’t know it. I set the timer in my cell phone instead. Not ideal, but yeah, it makes me feel like I’m finished now. :smiley: