I have a friend who has been using an e-cigarette for 10+ years. He doesn’t seem any less addicted to smoking as back when he was using old-fashioned cigarettes.
I understand e-cigarettes are supposed to help you quit… but has anyone actually had success with them? Or, is it more like trading one vice for another?
Current e-cig user here.
Honestly, as a smoker, it’s a godsend. The smoke goes away so quickly, it has higher nicotine than cigarettes when purchased the RIGHT way, and since I can now smoke inside, I can puff on it all day every day as I work from home!
In all seriousness, it’s worse imo. It sets the precedent from the 50s of smoking EVERYWHERE and now without any of the negative outward effects like smell or yellowing of the teeth/walls.
It’s honestly made my addiction worse. To each their own for sure, but in my experience it just made my bad habit SLIGHTLY healthier, but much more accessible.
It requires a significant amount of willpower to break the addiction, but for those of us that do not, definitely do not pick this up. It will not help. If you have that willpower, it is useful.
Estimates put out after research by Public Health England suggest that vaping is 95% better for you than smoking. So unless you’re vaping 20x more than you were smoking you’re probably benefitting.
There are tons of harmful chemicals and tar you aren’t inhaling by vaping, instead of by combustion with traditional cigarettes. Not sure if they’re worse.
Being that I now vape from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed simply due to accessibility, I’d say it’s worse.
You could also argue that that doesn’t apply to everyone. I treat vaping like it’s smoking, and I have from the start.
On the health side, I don’t want other people to be exposed to my bad choices either in public or residential buildings. So, I only vape when I am far away from others out of respect for them.
From another angle, I don’t enjoy the residue buildup that would happen over time. Imagine that stuff building up on your walls, in your PC, on your counters and cabinets, etc. The vapour you exhale doesn’t evaporate like steam in the sense that it isn’t water.
I think it might be an individual thing. You have the choice whether or not you treat it like a cigarette. It sucks going outside in poor weather, but it makes me actually want to quit more.
Same situation here, vape more than I used to smoke.
Only concern I have is long term affects, since we don’t actually know what they are yet.
Depends - it can be used to quit by controlling and lowering the nicotine content, but it could just be used as a harm reduction method.
While certainly not healthy, it’s significantly much less bad for you than smoking.
This is what I did. Started at a “normal” nicotine level, then once I was used to that level and wasn’t getting any cravings (took a few months usually) I would lower my nicotine strength a little bit then repeat the process. It made it way easier for me to quit once I did. I barely got any cravings.
E-cigarettes is designed to replace cigarettes nowadays, not to help you quit smoking.
If you use them that way. You can also dial down the nicotine in them to zero to wean yourself off of it.
That’s what I did after 5 years of vaping. Gradually went down to 0.5% nic and finally quit in May.
Congrats! Good for you! That’s so hard to do.
I actually just made the experience worse and worse without adjusting the nicotine. Switched to unflavored, then switched to freebase, then my vape broke and I started using my shitty old vape. It became a chore to smoke so it was easy to stop.
Although, I’ve usually been pretty good at controlling my nicotine when needed, so I would not describe myself as some highly addicted even when I was vaping a lot.
freebase
Mfer are you smoking crack?
I just saw your response to my comment, didn’t load earlier. Yes is fundamentally the same chemical reaction. Acid/base reaction that results in a salt. Makes a huge difference in the experience in my opinion, I find the salt form to be much closer to real cigs. But as you can see from the other commenter, people have different preferences.
Cool, is there any downsides to using the salt over the freebase form?
I think the main thing is that you can get a more intense nicotine hit, probably because it is easier to smoke higher concentrations, so I assume it is more addictive in that regard. It’s a smoother smoke and you don’t get that residual nicotine in the mouth that you would at high concentrations of the freebase. You can always just try it out, most vapes are compatible with both juices, although they might be optimized for one over the other.
There’s two types of nicotine used in vapes freebase and salts. When vaping first started everything was freebase. In my experience it’s a slower come up and doesn’t hit as strong. Although I prefer freebase. Nicotine salts are easy to over do.
Huh, never knew that. Always just seen nicotine as nicotine. Usually when I hear freebase when referring to a substance as smoked though, it is typically cocaine lol
Keep in mind that ALSO comes in a salt form, which is the typical powder you see.
I don’t think he is…
Most of them are actually cigarettes company subsidiary, just look up some f1 sponsor and you will find them.
I successfully quit with vaping.
Switched to vaping not with the intent to quit, but to just get rid of the smell I get after smoking. While trying different flavors, in time I decreased the amount of nicotine every time I time I bought a new bottle. I then slowly started to forget to bring it with me when I leave the house until I vaped exclusively in my home and after a few more months decided to just throw it all away.
Very similar here. Smoking buddy at work was turning 40 and was like “If we don’t quit now, we never will!” so headed to a random vape shop. Bought a vape for lke £50, was on 1.2mg nicotine strength. First day was fine. 2nd day was tough. 3rd was also tough. 4th day I realised “oh shit, never going back to smoking…I feel fine. I can work with this.” So that caused me to panick but then thought ok, bought the same vape as a redundancy (so as to not have to fall back on ciagarettes).
Then, after 6 months switched to 0.6mg nicotine. 6 months after that, 0.3mg. 3 months after that 0.2mg (put my high school chemistry hat on, figured 10ml 0.3mg + 10ml 0.3mg + 10ml 0.0mg mixed up in a 30ml bottle = 0.2mg per 10ml). 1 month after that 0.1mg, 1 month after that 0.0mg - 1 month later, stopped entirely (you genuinely just start forgetting about it, it’s weird).
Went from 30 cigarettes a day to no nicotine and no vape in 18 months.
You probably added 10 years to your life with that. Healthier years too.
Yeah, I hope so. This infographic used to haunt me a little before I stopped:
I love those at the end how you can return to the risk levels of non smokers in really not that much time in the grand-scheme.
I also quit with vaping, but in a roundabout way. I used to smoke, but my wife would not have me smoking indoors, and my office was likewise no smoking, so I was on perhaps 10 cigarettes a day. I switched to vaping, and still couldn’t vape in the office, but my wife didn’t mind me vaping at home if I restricted it to one room.
Then COVID happened, and I ended up working from home. So… Even though the amount of nicotine I was using in the vape was low, I had nothing stopping me from vaping all the time, which is what I did. I actually began feeling just as bad in terms of lung capacity when vaping as I had when I was smoking, largely because I was vaping pretty much constantly whilst awake.
One day I just had a flash of self control, and. chucked my vape, batteries, coils and all the paraphernalia. That was late 2020, and I haven’t vaped or smoked since.
Weirdly, even though I ultimately went cold turkey, I do think switching to vaping from smoking helped me to quit. There was a marked improvement in my lung capacity and ability to smell during that time, and that gave me hope.
It sounds like you vaped for a while and then quit (congratulations btw). I smoked for many years and then quit, and that doesn’t mean cigarettes helped me quit, or that I quit with cigarettes. You quit the day you “decided to just throw it all away.”
FDA has said that they find no evidence vaping improves quitting outcomes for smokers.
They work just fine.
They get you off cigarettes. Problem solved.
You’ll just be vaping all the time, instead.
They were never for quitting everything. Just cigarettes.
If only there was some benefits from switching. Like financially or lung-capacity wise.
Maybe add a /s although I hate having to add an /s.
Actually, vapes were created to get you smoking MORE because you can smoke them inside. They indeed get you off of smoking cigarettes, they did for me, I probably vape 1.5-2x more than I ever smoked.
He’s not smoking.
Pure nicotine is about as harmful as caffeine. Some people will want to quit it altogether, others find it useful. It’s all good.
I am currently using e-cigarettes as a former smoker
I would say:
- if you aren’t smoking already, there isn’t really a good reason to start
- if you are smoking and sort of kind of want to continue, e-cigarettes are most likely healthier than analog
- if you are smoking analog and want to quit, there are better ways to quit for sure - I don’t feel like committing to quitting just yet, however when I do feel committed, I will go with the tips outlined towards the end of the Huberman Lab - Nicotine’s Effects on the Brain & Body & How to Quit Smoking or Vaping podcast
- if you aren’t smoking already, there isn’t really a good reason to start
This is why I was glad to see all the legislation beginning to come out banning disposables. I swear 95% of disposable users I see are kids who’ve never smoked, and disposables are just the alcopops of the smoking world - cheap, sweet, and used as a gateway in rather than out.
This is healther alternative to smoking and way easier to quit.
Quiting is relatively easy if done the right way - add less and less nicotine shot to each bottle until you start forgetting your vape. For example, go from 3mg/ml to 0mg/ml in the period of 6 months.
Yes. Pack a day + chain smoking when I drank. I used an ecig to quit. Over the course of about 7 years, (yeah, just like your friend!) 12mg then 9mg then 6, then 3, then 1.5, then 0. I stayed on 0 for awhile and then one day I got out the car at a store and my ecig must of hit the ground. I never saw it again. That was the day I finally quit for good. Been 3 years now.
If nothing else, ecigs are way less of a risk and way less of a diminisher to ones quality of life compared to analog cigarettes. There is no stank left on the user and the users clothes. There is no more hacking up a lung every morning. ecigs seem to not suppress the immune system as harshly as analog cigarettes either. ecigs are incredibly cheaper too.
There is a lot of propaganda out there, misinformation, being disseminated by “big tobacco” - cause they are losing and have lost A LOT of profits due to people switching to ecigs and quitting analog cigarettes. They’ve even lobbied governements to pass legislation restricting access to ecig materials - citing the same old bullshit line: “Won’t somebody think of the children!?! OH THE CHILDREN!!!”
As someone who smoked a pack a day until last year and switched to an e-cigarette yeah, they can definitely be helpful in quitting. I have a few friends who switched over and slowly lowered the nicotine levels until they had non nicotine and kept it for the oral fixation. Personally I switched just because it’s a lot cheaper, and I don’t have plans to lower nicotine anytime soon, but I’ve even felt better using just the ecig compared to normal smokes.
I started vaping seven years ago as a way to quit smoking; I smoked my last cigarette literally outside the vape store before walking in and asking what to I buy to pull this off as nothing worked. The transition was seamless; not only did I never even crave a cigarette again, I very quickly learned to loathe the smell of cigarettes once my full range of smell came back. There’s not even a temptation to start up again.
It also helps that I choose vapes that smell amazing.
I am still vaping, yes, but I’m stepping down my nicotine pretty much every two years. I started at 24 and am now at 15 (I was stuck at 18 for a while). Those transitions I can definitely feel, but I can start with adjusting my mod’s wattage, air flow, use different coils for a bit, and ease into it so once I step down, there’s no chance I step back up, and then reward myself sometimes with a new fancy mod with a touchscreen with more leds or a cooler tank or something. All that and I am spending an order of magnitude less than I ever did on cigarettes and I have the math to prove it.
It’s certainly not ideal and yeah, it’s slow and basically only progressively reducing harm, but it’s a process that for me is guaranteed to work with no backtracking and progress is assured.
It worked for me, but the intent was to quit. Your friend isn’t trying if it’s been more than a decade. I started at a higher nicotine, and slowly got lighter nicotine options. Once I got to 0 nicotine, it was mostly just breaking the physical desire to do something when my hands were free or while driving. I think I only bought one bottle of 0 nicotine and moved on.
They’re not inherently “supposed to help you quit”. That’s only if you use them with that superficial intention.
They certainly allow you to reduce or remove nicotine intake - because you can change the fluid.
It helped me quit.
Been a smoker for 20+ years, a pack a day. Wife made the ultimatum: kids, or a smoke.
In the end, quiting is about the reason why. Some people do it for themselves, others of others. Whatever works for you.
I used the nicotine stickers and a clean esmoker to disconnect the habit from the addiction. Worked like a charm, the esmoker got lost in the car dashboard after a week. The stickers hurt. You wear them for 24h so I put them on my hips, my ass etc because I need to wear them in my sleep. After a few days I ran out of space since the skin is slightly inflamed from the stickers. Switched to a lower dose, didn’t help. After 2 weeks I stopped all together.
Mind you, this would not have worked without the esmoker.
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