Dizziness/Spaceyness/Foggy-Headedness

[jigtg]

I would try taking first 5 or so puffs without inhaling and/or with greater intervals between puffs. Many reasons why this might help.

[LiLi]

My first day and a half. and the spacey high feeling is very much there. My ecig is an epuffer super mini and my husbands' is a DSE910; it came with some weird sort of blueberry stuff and he didn't like it so we switched. Went through all of the thoughts of cause/effects that have been enumerated here, but can't deal with this! Gah!

[lachirris]

Hi all, I just wanted to share similar symptoms and what it results to be the solution for me.
I'm vaping since Feb 2009. Been using Njoy cats, then I get some ePuffer juices. All went smoothly until one night I opened an ePuffer Chocolate bottle (I'm not allergic to chocolate).
After 2 o 3 puffs, I started to experiment a strange feeling in my skin. (I´m allergic to certain things, like metals, hair dye, dust). Like been pinched by hundred needles all over. And itchy. Immediately I felt foggy brain, can't concentrate at all, like I was out of my body, seeing the world developing around me. I never felt this before. Also I noted my skin temperature arising. The air was kind of cold but I don't know why I just can't felt the cold in my skin.
So I went home and take a Benadryl. (antihistamine).
In the next half hour all the symptoms was gone.

All my e-liquid is PG based. The only one that made me feel that horrible way was the ePuffer chocolate one.
From time to time I have a little itch area but is not that important.
But needless to say I always take Benadryl pills on my bag.

[Vee]

Wow, you guys just freaked me out! I am having the same symptoms. I seriously thought I was just getting too much nicotine.

I'm using Red Dragon Marlboro Med Nic, Vanilla Med Nic, and Menthol Med Nic. All three carts give me the same thing. I get dizzy, can't concentrate, have chest tightness, neck stiffness, etc. I never got any allergic reactions like lachirris described though. The symptoms last a looooong time (2-5 hours). I've been vaping for about 5 or 6 days now.... on and off and having real cigs in the middle (maybe 5 or so per day) when I just can't take the whoozyness, etc. There's gotta be an explanation but this is too scary. I'm done with my vap.

[lachirris]

I´m NOT giving up on vaping. I refuse to light an analog.
The taste is awful, the noisy breathing is annoying!

I´m just confused. This symptoms seems to be related to PG or VG?
PG produces high lactic acid in blood stream, and VG produces glucose.
Anybody can confirm that the glucose levels increases that much to be worried about?

[Vee]

I WAS planning on ordering a different e-cig until I realized these are side-effects not too much nicotine. Until I hear from any of you saying that moving to VG or something worked, I'm not going to waste the money. Please tell me someone out there with our symptoms has found a work around!!!

You are a serious trooper for sticking with it lachirris. I'm not even having the allergic reaction you are and I'm freaked out! Just be safe is all... and good luck.

[Satire]

Well from personal experience and from reports of pretty much every e-smoker I have talked to, most people had some side effects (especially throat irritation) when they started, the irritation definitely goes away in time as your body gets used to it (comparable to the first time one drinks straight liquor and has a reflexive gagging response and intense burning compared to an alcoholic who can down a bottle without even cringing). When I first started, I got "high" off of it, I felt like the pleasure of painkillers without the drowsiness and an extremely alert feeling, not really a spaciness but as an experienced and far-ranged substance user my ability to maintain (or ignore the cloudiness of) mental clarity is different than a non-drug user (people with allergies can take allergy medications daily and function, I took half a dose once when I had a reaction and was zoned out for two days, every person is different). However the lethargy could be from the breakdown of PG into lactic acid (lactic acid is a by-product of sudden muscle activity in non-athletic people, like if a mall security guard suddenly put down his donut and ran around the mall at full speed), this is then processed by the liver and is a normal part of metabolism, but could leave you feeling winded (liver needs extra oxygen to process it, you can imagine that when the aforementioned security guard stops running he is going to be panting pretty heavily for a while to provide the extra oxygen until the liver processes it and lactic acid levels return to normal) and lethargic. One thing I found helpful was to switch to a high-nic fluid and simply smoke it less instead of using low nic and smoking all the time (I smoke more for the nicotine than the physical habit though, find what works for you). You should hear the crazy **** Steve (owner of puresmoker.com, used to be considered a nice guy and friend of the forum) had to go through when he first started. However, just like with any other habit (when you first started smoking cigarettes, first time someone drinks hard alcohol, first time someone smokes weed and goes into a coughing fit), your body will adjust to it and the side effects will go away with time (your body has amazingly versatile methods of adaptation). You can of course try switching from PG to VG or vice-versa or trying low/high nic fluids, but both are alcohols and will cause some irritation to the un-adapted respiratory tract at first, and the body will become used to the extra lactic acid from PG (or glycerine by-products) and become more efficient at processing it. Give it time, take it slow, and be patient, your body will do the rest for you.

[Vee]

Well said Satire. What you say makes sense. I have to say, though, I've used just about every drug out there. Some very heavily, some once, so I know the deal with what happens when your body takes in a new "poison". With other drugs, though, the side effects are afterwards, not during. This is what makes you want to use the drug in the first place... a feeling of euphoria of some sort or another be it psyco-active or physical.

That's the hard part here, if what you say is true... I'm not getting the "fun" out of this drug. The plus being getting off "analogs". The minus, my sickly feeling and fear of wtf is happening to my body... wondering if I've made things worse for my lungs having a reaction that normal people don't. As you well know, there's no guarantee of an effect of a drug on an individual.

This is an interesting part of the forum. This may well be the area where we are seeing others struggle with the withdrawals and mental habits of tobacco and seeing an odd mixture of trading poisons mid-stream. If what they say is true about nicotine and MAIO (I think that's what they're called), then really, going to e-cigs is no different than getting on the patch or going cold-turkey.

I'm glad you posted though. I'm still in a major haze from the PG, I guess. It's been at least 5 or 6 hours since my last puff of an e-cig. I'm not thinking straight. My body (or is it my mind or both) says this is completely wrong. I'll keep an eye on these part of the forums. Gonna stay away from the e-cig though. Until I feel better. I'll think about it more when I'm clear headed and less reactionary.

[Satire]

Sounds good, better to be safe than sorry, if you have any chemistry skills and a little free time I can make a walk-through for you to extract and purify some nicotine at your house and you can mix it with glycerine and water to make sure you aren't getting something crazy from the commercial manufacturers (I did a toxicology report in Jan on the known ingredients and some of them were crazy and had no business being smoked, I posted it on this forum if you want to see it just do a search for "satire toxicology report").

The MAOI part is true in that they are in tobacco, but be wary of any "scientific claims" you read on this forum (including mine, I'm not in med school yet) because a lot of people here state rumors and explanations from vague, unqualified, or simply poorly read sources as facts. MAOIs are simply inhibitors of mao (enzymes throughout your body that break down amines, like amphetamines, tryptamines, ......., nicotine, many natural neurotransmitters etc. via oxidation, hence the name monoamine oxidose) and thus inhibiting them just slows the breakdown of nicotine and other naturally occurring amines. As far as "cold-turkey," the MAOIs in tobacco are really MAO destroyers that permanently disable the MAO they latch on to (compared to temporary inhibitors like harmaline that leave the binding site within a few hours, restoring MAO function shortly), and the body takes weeks to restore that, so the only thing from going cold-turkey that is missing is the nicotine, not the MAOIs (as least at first, this may also explain the symptoms noticed in the first few weeks of e-smoking as the enzymes become active in the body again but I have nothing to back that up except theory and instinct), and the e-smoking replaces the nicotine.

I personally had no problems switching to e-smoking (did have some side effects like irritation and my muscles would be sore for a couple days after a minor work out which doesn't usually happen, and perhaps a minor haze but as I mentioned I've spent plenty of time wandering around in a haze, many of the substances I have used in the past were not illegal pleasure-inducing drugs but various psychoactives with far ranging effects, and all of those e-smoking side effects cleared up with time as have most people's), I didn't even think about cigarettes because the amount of nicotine was more than enough for me, certainly didn't feel like I was "missing" anything (nor did my grandmother, a stubborn smoker of 50ish years who quit a couple months ago after I convinced her to try it out). I switched on Nov 5th of last year, and have bought 3 packs of cigarettes since then and only smoked about half of them, and those were with friends and such at get-togethers, I never feel a desire to smoke an analog when I'm by myself even if I see someone smoking. In the words of Tropicalbob: "It keeps the demons at bay."

I wish I could confidently offer you an assurance of safety from the commercial e-liquids but they contain tons of crazy **** and only a few of them ever released lab reports detailing the chemical compositions of the liquids (a few months back there was a public demand for lab reports from the bigger USA suppliers but as the forum population exploded the suppliers eventually stopped even replying to them and it went by the wayside), so I can only assure you that the nicotine, PG, VG, and ethanol used in a basic formula are not going to be dangerous (really the only thing needed to make a working liquid is pg or vg, nic, and a little water and perhaps a hint of vodka or grain alcohol which seems to help it mix up and vap nicely, I've made it myself at home and it only took a couple hours with a hotplate and sep funnel to turn a bag of rolling tobacco in to nicotine hcl crystals which I dissolved in some glycerine with a bit of distilled water and a tiny amount of vodka and it worked great). However, if you don't want to make your own I would refer you to the "totally wicked" stuff from pillbox38, they seem to have their **** together and were one of the first to release the ingredient list as well as selling it in dark brown glass bottles with childproof caps and warning labels, and it definitely has the nicotine in it so you may want to give it a shot (plus 3 days from order till arrival, serves UK and USA, a class act all around).

Good luck to ya and if you do give it another shot be sure to be well-informed about what is in the liquid you are getting and what it does in the body, and keep in mind that the MAO levels in your body will be adjusting for a bit after you stop using tobacco and that alone can cause some strange effects because they affect tons of other processes in the body (this is why they usually wane people off prescription MAOI medications instead of just dropping it at once), so there will be a transition period but most everyone who has made it to the other side is glad that they made the journey.

[Wildsky]

Wow - thats never happened to me. I also smoked a pack of Winston lights a day. I continued to have a few analogs each day and vaped inbetween - and I vape med/high juice depending on maker - generally around 18mg.

I hope it all clears up for you!