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.
It seems useful for people who were addicted to cigarettes by providing a potentially less harmful alternative.
But, for the generation that didn’t have addiction to cigarettes prior to E cigarettes I wonder how many went on to pick up the addiction to nicotine they otherwise wouldn’t have, since smoking cigarettes seemed to be going out of style.
I do kind of wonder what the endgame of addictive product development is. I mean, if you assume that technology can both reduce negative side effects and make the product more-potently-addictive, absent some sort of social movement or something opposed to them, I would think that we would get closer to a point where there is stupendously-addictive stuff that has no intrinsic harm other than the addiction itself, but that the addiction could be crippling and extremely hard to kick.
Science fiction has explored the concept:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_%28science_fiction%29
Wireheading is a term associated with fictional or futuristic applications of brain stimulation reward, the act of directly triggering the brain’s reward center by electrical stimulation of an inserted wire, for the purpose of ‘short-circuiting’ the brain’s normal reward process and artificially inducing pleasure. Scientists have successfully performed brain stimulation reward on rats (1950s) and humans (1960s). This stimulation does not appear to lead to tolerance or satiation in the way that sex or drugs do. The term is sometimes associated with science fiction writer Larry Niven, who used the term in his Known Space series. In the philosophy of artificial intelligence, the term is used to refer to AI systems that hack their own reward channel.
Wireheading, like other forms of brain alteration, is often treated as dystopian in science fiction literature.
In Larry Niven’s Known Space stories, a “wirehead” is someone who has been fitted with an electronic brain implant known as a “droud” in order to stimulate the pleasure centers of their brain. Wireheading is the most addictive habit known (Louis Wu is the only given example of a recovered addict), and wireheads usually die from neglecting their basic needs in favour of the ceaseless pleasure. Wireheading is so powerful and easy that it becomes an evolutionary pressure, selecting against that portion of humanity without self-control.
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.
It’s not though. Your inhaling nicotine - which does not cause cancer or any other health issues - and water vapor. Probably burns your throat which can’t be too great, but no internal damage except from the mental standpoint of addiction.
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.
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.
Use your willpower in a small burst to buy a low nicotine juice and literally throw away the high nicotine stuff. You need to actually toss it and never use it again. Yes, it costs money, but do you want to quit or not?
Now use the low nicotine juice for a set amount of time (say, a month) and then switch to zero nicotine juice. Try to keep the same flavors you’re used to already.
Eventually you will stop smoking because youre only getting the positive feelings from the habit itself and not the nicotine.
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.
Burnt cigarettes have over 9000 different chemicals, several of which are addictive MAOI antidepressants. It’s not the nicotine hooking people to the level we see in smokers, it’s that, they’re having legitimate withdrawal symptoms from a legitimate drug dependency. Nicotine itself at the levels anyone takes it in is maybe a little more addictive than caffeine.
Ecigs, at minimum, have propylene glycol (GRAS) and nicotine which isn’t necessarily from tobacco, and even the nicotine is optional. Many have a couple other ingredients like vegetable glycerine (makes “smoke” clouds puffier) and flavorings, but even loaded up it doesn’t compare to the count in the first paragraph. Ecigs also don’t burn anything unless you’re doing it very wrong.
Also since I’m on the soap box anyway, when you hear fear stories about “vaping” they’re usually lumping in thc/marijuana which is effectively different even though it doesn’t need to be. Because it’s regulated if not illegal you’ll chance getting things like adulterated cartridges with oils in them, if you breathe in oil particles you’re getting pneumonia. So when you’re reading or hearing about some scary story it’s probably that and the one “reporting” is too lazy or too ignorant to make the distinctions they should.
That was the vitamin E acetate shenanigans from a few years ago that people were cutting with THC concentrate to make it look thicker/more quality than it actually was. Huge disinformation campaign somehow made nicotine vapes the bad guy even though it was entirely unrelated
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.
I vape now. I used to smoke a lot. I agree it can be effective but the end result may not always be complete withdrawal from nicotine.
While certainly not healthy, it’s significantly much less bad for you than smoking.
It’s much better, tbh, aside from the health benefits vs cigarettes. The stench is no longer there - at worse, it’s just this annoying sweet smell. No more cig butts that you have to dispose of all the time - I know use “pods” which, if I’m stressed, I replace after 5-6 days. If anyone’s a smoker, I’d recommend to switch to vape. But if not, I’d suggest they stay away from vapes/nicotine.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, I hope so. This infographic used to haunt me a little before I stopped:
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.
