The biggest thing I can't get over

[Soot]

You're quite right Phil - the smoking addiction is very complex but extremely successful. I guess we should be thankful that the world's greatest minds haven't figured it out. If they'd found the answer it'd be included in every marketing campaign and I'd be drinking Coke/Pepsi morning, noon and night.

God knows what it would mean for your Presidential election! It's crazy enough as it is .

All I'd advise is a little care in upping your juice's nic. level. If you're like me who inhaled deeply when smoking the absence of a hit can lead to OD'ing by nic. going through your bloodstream via your mouth. Without the hit you don't know how much nicotine has entered your system. I tried pipe smoking (real ones) and had the same outcome.

[phildo]

Soot...od'ing on nicotine is a concern..I'll take your advise into consideration.

TB...I'm gonna have to look into the stonewall things..they sound interesting. Not sure if I can find them locally...tobacco/liquor stores around here carry a pretty vanilla variety of stuff...they looked at me funny when I first asked them about rolling my own cigs a few years ago..now they all carry the stuff lol. its possible some have it though..I'll give it a try.

[TropicalBob]

I think KentSP and I have found something important -- what's missing! Check out our two posts near the end of the Blood in Saliva thread: blood in saliva..

Profoundly interesting, in my view. KentSP might have nailed it.

[sixstring]

TB,

I really like the analogy I found in one of your previous posts:

"It's like having sex with robot..."

It's sort of like that for me after 30 years on the real things. I'm 45 now and down to about 2-4 real cigs a day from about 30. Yesterday, in a 24 hour period I only had ONE.

Granted, I'm vaping puresmoker's 36 mg juice, but it's not like I'm stepping outside every 15 minutes to suck down 1 or 2 real ones. I have noticed that I take a few good hits, and then put the thing down for several minutes before picking it up again. The habit has kind of changed for me in that regard...Interesting and fascinating - at least to me.

[phildo]

very interesting, it makes sense. It says harmine is found in mostly plants...I wonder if there is any extraction method other than burning tobacco...one that would be practical and economical enough to implement so we can get a better fix...

[TropicalBob]

Oh yeh, harmine can be bought. But it's pretty dangerous stuff and might lead to hallucinations if overdosed. The relevant question is: How much harmine is there in each puff from a real cig? Then that has to be duplicated and halved for each e-cig puff. I don't want to be a guinea pig on this, but chemists should have a field day.

[Schroedinger's cat]

Does harmine play a role in addiction to cigarette smoking?

[cass]

I am not a totally happy e-camper and don't understand people who just sing praises of how wonderful and better it is than smoking. It's an alternative. An incomplete alternative for me.

This is true. It is incomplete. For me it's the best alternative available. I've been happily vaping to a point that I've cut down by a third on the real cigs. Last night I finally ran out of cigs. In my house, there's no such thing. I see 3-4 pks in my carton and go get three more cartons.

Last night, tho, I felt no stress of it. Woke up this AM, bummed a cig from my husband, got dressed and ran errands. Went to work. Still felt good. I vape at work, even in some meetings. Was feeling really proud.
Thoughts of cigs came to mind. I dismissed them. Did some old breathing techniques. Didn't help after a while. Then a distant voice of panick set it.
I KNOW I was getting nicotine....but I still started panicking about panicking. It's ridiculous! I knew it was in my head but didn't care. The whole chest tightening thing started up...and the inability to focus on anything but not smoking. This is the part that KILLS me. I KNOW IT'S IN MY HEAD!
I got a smoke from a buddy and practically ate it.
I bummed a few more during the day.
When I got home tonight, I bought a pack and in the last 4.5 hours have smoked 16 cigs.
I feel like I'm back at square one.
I need to remember that e-cigs ARE NOT the same as cigs. They're there to help.
I think I leapt to quickly. Maybe I got too excited.
I'll try again tomorrow...WITH a pack of cigs. Baby steps.

[m1sterlurk]

I think that what is happening is psychological. Don't get me wrong it still is a very powerful effect, but it is purely psychological.

I notice that I seem to feel a certain amount of "relief" from a cigarette as I'm taking the first puff after lighting it, and actually feel the relief before I've finished taking the drag. I think that over the time we've smoked normal cigarettes, we've associated the lighting and the first drag after lighting the cigarette with "incoming nicotine relief", because we know that when we light the cigarette we are almost always going to smoke all of it. Basically we know what's coming, so we feel relief despite the fact that the nicotine hasn't really arrived yet.

Electronic cigarettes deliver nicotine at a very similar rate and similar mechanism to regular cigarettes. However, when we first pick them up we don't light them, and I think the fact that you don't go through the "lighting ritual" on an e-cig means that your brain views smoking an e-cig as somehow "different", therefore doesn't give the instant relief that it associates with lighting a cigarette.

My advice is keep acoustic cigarettes around as long as you feel you need them, but just remember to use the e-cig when you can, and over time your brain will tie the same "incoming relief" feeling to the e-cig that it does to the old cigs.

[Grenage]

a distant voice of panick set it

It's definitely mostly in the mind; once you convince yourself that the e-cigs are not really inferior to normal cigs, you're nearly there. At least, that was the cause of my dependence on normal smokes when I was starting with my e-cig.

Even if you keep having the odd real smoke, you'll probably find yourself either smoking less and less, or doing what I did and smoke about half a cig before realising that it tastes foul and stubbing it out.