A few days ago, I was reminded that the luxury of a gradual transition is not enjoyed by the entire old and sick population.
There are many people whose injuries, illnesses and conditions demand that they cease ingesting the things immediately - and if any of those people have Smart doctors, they don't like that any more than their patients do.
If you happen to be among their number, and you do not have a Smart Shaman, do all you can to obtain one.
Next, get this firmly into your head: What you're going to do is NOT "quitting smoking."
It's not even transitioning to e-cigarettes.
It's just a medically-mandated brand switch.
If you use a tobacco-flavored cartomizer, you can duplicate the sensation of smoking your regular cigarette - sometimes at first, and eventually all the time. (See Puffology 101).
Hope for the best, but be prepared to accept some difference in taste.
Cartomizers are available in several different tobacco flavors, and juice is available in about a gazillion.
Subjective perceptions of unique individuals times a bazillion flavors means anything is possible, but the odds dudes in Vegas are putting their money on your having to learn to love a new flavor as much as you love the taste of your current brand.
And you'll find at least 2 or 3 people on the forums here who agree that each and every one of those gazillion flavors tastes variously just like Camel Ultra Light Menthol 100s, Pall Mall Unfiltered, Great Uncle Ahmed's pipe, and Lemon-Freshened Viceroy.
You can be sure that your Smart Shaman, along with me and everyone else here, hopes you and I will both find one that tastes just like whatever we're smoking.
But even if we don't, as worst case scenarios go, it could be a lot worse. The only thing any of us is really giving up is that one particular taste. Everything else, we can duplicate. (Well, except for the 1635 carcinogens and toxins).
A few days ago, a colleague's husband presented me with a collection of cartomizers (from the Vapor for Life company), in flavors not needed by his wife, who has not only moved up to the juice-Squirt level, but settled on her own assortment of preferred juices! She was a menthol smoker, which means that she'd rejected virturally every non-menthol flavor she'd tried, and doesn't even want them for handy travel packs or Those Days Emergency Comfort Kits!
(There's an an amazingly heart-warming longer version of this story, already outlined on the forum, and I'm sure I'll recount it again, both here and there, at least once, so don't worry)
It was maybe 48 hours later, that the kind person on the forum reminded me that some of We The Old And Sick have the single option of Cold Turkey Non-Consensual Brand Switch
Clearly that's Fate talking. So, presumptuous though it may be for someone who isn't doing that to hold forth on it, witholding even the smallest potentially useful info-bits that fall into my lap (or defy Fate) would be worse.
If coughing itself has been forbidden, your Puffology training will require some tweaking.
I've noticed that certain flavors, like piña colada, are less coughy than others, like wowboy.
I also noticed that cappucino, which I have in zero nicotine, has a zero coughiness level. No matter how longhardslowfast Papa Bear Puff I hit that one, it never produces a cough - or a throat hit.
Which brings us to physics. Or is it metaphysics? Anyway:
Throat Hit comes before cough, in the puffing vigor hierarchy. Or if you prefer:
Juust Right! Puff = Juuust Right! Throat Hit sans cough.
If your physical condition has locked you into a Cold Turkey Non-Consensual Brand Switch, AND you've been forbidden to cough, it's going to be harder for you to learn to puff, so hang onto that important formula.
You'll also need to do lots more planning, and you'll have to be extremely careful, but you've probably, at one or more points in your life, done some difficult things that required being everything from extra careful to downright stupid in order to get or smoke cigarettes, so this is just another one.
I'm hoping people who have done it will see this and offer their advice, which will be much more valuable than mine - and I'm also hoping that you'll go ask about it in the forum!
Now, I'm not forbidden to cough, as such, but it does tire me out, so what I've taken to doing is putting something coughy in the electric hookah-doodle, and something non-coughy in a wireless one, and alternating, so I can continue to practice puff nuancing even as I take a break from coughing.
What I'd suggest for you, if you're Not Allowed To Cough, is to put a non-coughy but nicotine-havin' cartomizer in one, and a non-coughy 0 nicotine one in the other, and alternate those.
Another thing you could try is appointing a surrogate. Ideally, this would be someone who smokes the same brand of tobacco cigarette you do, or as close as you can get.
Have your surrogate do the first round of experiments with different flavors and strengths, and select the ones she thinks are most likely to give you a throat hit without a cough.
While she's doing that, you practice puff nuancing with something totally non-coughy.
When you puff the ones selected by your surrogate, do it very, very gently, so that you feel nothing at all. Baby Bear Puff.
What we want is for your practice to have improved your ability to make subtle changes in puffing force, so that you'll be able to find that Juust Right! combination of your accustomed and preferred throat hit - without coloring outside the lines into Coughlandia.
Once you know what that is, you'll be able to practice getting it consistently, and then unthinkingly and automatically - just like I'm doing!
IF - that's Big IF and Only IF - you have a Smart Shaman, ask her if she thinks you might benefit from a Patch-e-cigarette combo, which, you may have noticed from reading the forums, is generally considered a big Danger, Will Robinson! grade No-No, but - what if you did a patch (or gum or whatever nicotine delivery system your Smart Shaman likes) and ONLY zero nicotine e-cigarettes, hmmmmm?
Because Shamans are more likely to be familiar with those older systems, depending on what tobacco cigarettes you smoke and how you smoke them, a Smart Shaman who is also a Nicotine Replacement Adept might be able to work out an old method plan that would be just right for you, and the e-cigarette's job would be taking care of the non-nicotine aspects of your Brand Switch.
As we all know, for many, if not most of us, nicotine is small potatoes, it's that other stuff that's the major player.
Surely some of those gazillion flavors have a throat hit even in zero nicotine - and with close to 10 thousand active forum members, somebody will be able to tell you which ones!
There are many people whose injuries, illnesses and conditions demand that they cease ingesting the things immediately - and if any of those people have Smart doctors, they don't like that any more than their patients do.
If you happen to be among their number, and you do not have a Smart Shaman, do all you can to obtain one.
Next, get this firmly into your head: What you're going to do is NOT "quitting smoking."
It's not even transitioning to e-cigarettes.
It's just a medically-mandated brand switch.
If you use a tobacco-flavored cartomizer, you can duplicate the sensation of smoking your regular cigarette - sometimes at first, and eventually all the time. (See Puffology 101).
Hope for the best, but be prepared to accept some difference in taste.
Cartomizers are available in several different tobacco flavors, and juice is available in about a gazillion.
Subjective perceptions of unique individuals times a bazillion flavors means anything is possible, but the odds dudes in Vegas are putting their money on your having to learn to love a new flavor as much as you love the taste of your current brand.
And you'll find at least 2 or 3 people on the forums here who agree that each and every one of those gazillion flavors tastes variously just like Camel Ultra Light Menthol 100s, Pall Mall Unfiltered, Great Uncle Ahmed's pipe, and Lemon-Freshened Viceroy.
You can be sure that your Smart Shaman, along with me and everyone else here, hopes you and I will both find one that tastes just like whatever we're smoking.
But even if we don't, as worst case scenarios go, it could be a lot worse. The only thing any of us is really giving up is that one particular taste. Everything else, we can duplicate. (Well, except for the 1635 carcinogens and toxins).
A few days ago, a colleague's husband presented me with a collection of cartomizers (from the Vapor for Life company), in flavors not needed by his wife, who has not only moved up to the juice-Squirt level, but settled on her own assortment of preferred juices! She was a menthol smoker, which means that she'd rejected virturally every non-menthol flavor she'd tried, and doesn't even want them for handy travel packs or Those Days Emergency Comfort Kits!
(There's an an amazingly heart-warming longer version of this story, already outlined on the forum, and I'm sure I'll recount it again, both here and there, at least once, so don't worry)
It was maybe 48 hours later, that the kind person on the forum reminded me that some of We The Old And Sick have the single option of Cold Turkey Non-Consensual Brand Switch
Clearly that's Fate talking. So, presumptuous though it may be for someone who isn't doing that to hold forth on it, witholding even the smallest potentially useful info-bits that fall into my lap (or defy Fate) would be worse.
If coughing itself has been forbidden, your Puffology training will require some tweaking.
I've noticed that certain flavors, like piña colada, are less coughy than others, like wowboy.
I also noticed that cappucino, which I have in zero nicotine, has a zero coughiness level. No matter how longhardslowfast Papa Bear Puff I hit that one, it never produces a cough - or a throat hit.
Which brings us to physics. Or is it metaphysics? Anyway:
Throat Hit comes before cough, in the puffing vigor hierarchy. Or if you prefer:
Juust Right! Puff = Juuust Right! Throat Hit sans cough.
If your physical condition has locked you into a Cold Turkey Non-Consensual Brand Switch, AND you've been forbidden to cough, it's going to be harder for you to learn to puff, so hang onto that important formula.
You'll also need to do lots more planning, and you'll have to be extremely careful, but you've probably, at one or more points in your life, done some difficult things that required being everything from extra careful to downright stupid in order to get or smoke cigarettes, so this is just another one.
I'm hoping people who have done it will see this and offer their advice, which will be much more valuable than mine - and I'm also hoping that you'll go ask about it in the forum!
Now, I'm not forbidden to cough, as such, but it does tire me out, so what I've taken to doing is putting something coughy in the electric hookah-doodle, and something non-coughy in a wireless one, and alternating, so I can continue to practice puff nuancing even as I take a break from coughing.
What I'd suggest for you, if you're Not Allowed To Cough, is to put a non-coughy but nicotine-havin' cartomizer in one, and a non-coughy 0 nicotine one in the other, and alternate those.
Another thing you could try is appointing a surrogate. Ideally, this would be someone who smokes the same brand of tobacco cigarette you do, or as close as you can get.
Have your surrogate do the first round of experiments with different flavors and strengths, and select the ones she thinks are most likely to give you a throat hit without a cough.
While she's doing that, you practice puff nuancing with something totally non-coughy.
When you puff the ones selected by your surrogate, do it very, very gently, so that you feel nothing at all. Baby Bear Puff.
What we want is for your practice to have improved your ability to make subtle changes in puffing force, so that you'll be able to find that Juust Right! combination of your accustomed and preferred throat hit - without coloring outside the lines into Coughlandia.
Once you know what that is, you'll be able to practice getting it consistently, and then unthinkingly and automatically - just like I'm doing!
IF - that's Big IF and Only IF - you have a Smart Shaman, ask her if she thinks you might benefit from a Patch-e-cigarette combo, which, you may have noticed from reading the forums, is generally considered a big Danger, Will Robinson! grade No-No, but - what if you did a patch (or gum or whatever nicotine delivery system your Smart Shaman likes) and ONLY zero nicotine e-cigarettes, hmmmmm?
Because Shamans are more likely to be familiar with those older systems, depending on what tobacco cigarettes you smoke and how you smoke them, a Smart Shaman who is also a Nicotine Replacement Adept might be able to work out an old method plan that would be just right for you, and the e-cigarette's job would be taking care of the non-nicotine aspects of your Brand Switch.
As we all know, for many, if not most of us, nicotine is small potatoes, it's that other stuff that's the major player.
Surely some of those gazillion flavors have a throat hit even in zero nicotine - and with close to 10 thousand active forum members, somebody will be able to tell you which ones!
