so are we getting it or are we not.. nicotine

[trog100]

nicotine quitters and nicotine swappers.. which camp are you in...

i have been reading stuff lately that is suggesting e cigs are pretty useless nicotine delivery systems.. they are nothing much more than placebos..

does this make me happy.. no it bloody dosnt.. is it true.. i hope not..

have i been conning myself for the last eighteen months.. if so does this make me feel happy.. nope it just makes me feel pretty stupid.. i dont like being sold lies even when its me thats doing the selling..

nicotine is a mind altering drug.. i take the stuff with the deliberate intentions of altering my mind i think it makes me a better person..

it makes me kinder and more tolerant to others.. it calms me down when i need calling down.. it makes me concentrate and think better when i need to do this..

sooo are e cigs giving me the drug i want or are they not... assuming the liquid is really what it says it is and 36 mg really does contain 36 mg or thereabouts of the drug i need.. i know its going into my body in reasonable quantities.. But..

is it getting to the parts it needs to.. and if it isnt what the hell is happening to it..

it seems nicotine quitters are happy with the suggestions e cigs dont work only as placebos.. they are happy to be fooled or to fool themselves into whatever desired result they want to achieve.. it seems some people are pretty easy to fool.. are they happy with this.. it seems so..

am i... jeesh no i aint.. big style i aint.. he he he

just to finish off.. i dont want a "high" or a "buzz" from the mind altering drug we call nicotine.. what i want is a little more basic.. i want something that improves my thinking ability and tempers the less pleasant parts of my personality.. in short i want (need) something that make me a better more tolerant clear thinking person..

trog

[Tetsab]

Trog, I'm firmly of the opinion that we ARE getting SOME nicotine from our e-liquid but it is pretty annoying that it doesn't seem to be as much as we originally thought it might be as newbies.

When I first started vaping just under a year ago, I carefully worked out that as I had formerly been smoking around 30 x 0.8mg cigarettes a day and found I was using around 1.5ml of liquid a day I should be perfectly happy using 18mg strength.

However, further experience after the novelty had worn off a bit did lead to my discovering that I found the higher strengths much more satisfying and using 18mg exclusively led to attempts to vape myself silly to get my nicotine gratification, constantly puffing away on it. Using higher strength meant that I would take a more reasonable number of puffs then put the e-cig down, quite happy. These days I vary quite a bit and may well use 18, 24 and 36mg liquid in the course of a single day.

While I'm not one of those fortunates who gets a true 'hit' from nicotine (in fact I rather envy those who claim they do) I can most definitely tell the difference between the lower and higher strengths, as above. And overdoing the 36mg WILL make me giddy!

I tend to agree with the notion that the absorption speed is less rapid - you have to give it a minute or two rather than expecting an effect in just a few seconds. The blood plasma concentration 'spike' we perceive as nicotine satisfaction will be a little slower in arriving.

In addition, without the toxic cocktail of compounds you receive from tobacco smoke along with your nicotine you are almost certainly NOT getting the benefit of some of the synergistic effects you would have been accustomed to from smoking. Personally I was very disappointed to learn I'd probably lost the MAOI effect I'd been used to from analogues.

As for the suggestion that nicotine in isolation is not in fact addictive - not so sure about that one. I tend to the opinion that I am still an addict and depriving me of access to nicotine will have unpleasant results... most particularly for whoever does the depriving!!

I do wonder if I had inadvertently reduced my nicotine tolerance/addiction in those first few heady weeks of enthusiasm with by first e-cig but over time this has returned more to my personal 'normal'. I never made any bones about it - I had (and have) no ambition to quit nicotine.

Overall this is a seriously complex issue, and one that is difficult to research without wading through complex medical and biochemical reports but sadly it doesn't seem likely that there IS a simple, easy-to-comprehend answer.

Whatever the answers may be, it is definitely necessary that we do have confidence that what it SAYS on the bottle is what's IN the bottle so we are able to monitor our own intake to some extent if we choose to do so. On which topic, do you have any insight as to the situation with TW's liquid strengths at present, Trog?

[frankwt]

I am with you, as an ultra light cig smoker, I have had to go to the 24mg juice to get anything at all....this makes me doubt the nic level in any juice let alone the e-cig actually delivering it to my senses! Any lab tests? any really reputable dealers selling actual nic juice? I have no idea, but I know you cannot take the word of the manufacturers without actual lab tests on the delivery of xxmg of nic.

[NightShadow]

My wife and I started using ecig's 3 weeks ago. I was able to stop after 25+ years of a 1-2 pack a day habbit the first use of my pv. If is it a trick, it is a darn good one and as long as it works it does not bother me.

I did all the reading and research etc, and my wife did not. Subsequently we ordered some capella's flavor drops, and she went around happily vaping the zero nic stuff for most of a day withought noticing a difference. Granted she started the day with a nic juice, and ended the day with some also. She was amazed that evening when she discovered it was zero nic! So yes there probably is a placebo effect with zero nic. Is this just replicating the calming act of smoking, probably. It is a ritual like morning coffe, can some switch to caffien free and be ok, yes, do others have trouble with caffien free, yes.

I for one feel if we can use zero and get the desired effect real or immagined it saves money/health and that is not a bad thing.

As far as the rest of the scientific questions go, I will leave it to the scientists to reaserch the absortion rates, comparisons to analogs etc. whilst I happily vape away in my flavorfull cloud.

Closing point, whatever work for you: do it

[trog100]

okay.. is whats in the liquid what it says on the bottle.. i think TW is sincere..

in fact i know they are.. i have had a puff on their neat 50 odd mg mixing stuff.. i know the nicotine is pharmacy grade stuff.. i know their intentions.. which basically is to make e smoking "respectable" to remove the slightly iffy chinese back street image.. i also know they think to be officially accepted which is the ultimate aim they think the delivery has to be accurately measurable..

so yes as far as TW are concerned the quoted mg levels can be trusted..

#####

just to throw some figure into this.. just rough ones..

liquid strength has always been based per 1 ml volumes.. just to take 36 mg as an example.. i get thru say 3 ml per day..

one reasonably strong real cig is say 1 mg.. so 1 ml of 36 mg liquid equates with 36 real cigs.. 3 ml would be 3 x this or over 100 real cigs.. or over 200 super lites..

okay the figures dont add up.. something isnt quite right..

so what can we rely on.. we can say i take in the same nicotine via e smoking as i would one hell of lot of real cigarettes.. i think we can assume it aint quite having the same effect on us as the real thing..

we can also safely assume e vapour nicotine dosnt hit the bloodstream or brain as quickly as real smoke nicotine does.. the speed of the aborption is what gives the high or buzz..

but i am more concerned with the overall absorption level than i am the speed..

100 real cigs worth goes in.. what happens to it.. does it reach the parts it needs to reach or dosnt it.. i dont know.. i think it does (enough) but low level blood nicotine level reports if true are making me rethink the whole thing..

even at a 30% efficiency level i should be still getting the equivalent of 30 real cigs.. i can live with this its well out of placebo land.. but i am still wondering.. he he

now for the humorous part... in a couple of weeks time when we meet with TW.. i will say go get the packet of Bensons jason just like i have the last couple of times.. the entire packet will be gone before we leave...this is a kind of ritualistic jokey thing with us but its true... he he

trog

[NightShadow]

There are several threads on absobtion rates, and some numbers posted as an estimate of absobtion/delivery etc, memory is flaky but its was somewhere around 2.5 x which from the replies of smoking levels of analogs to ammount and strength vaped seem to work out so I would say it is at least in the ballpark. ymmv

The general blog thread I mention is here: e-cigarette-forum.com • The place for electronic cigarette reviews, news and chat - DVap

The specific thread is here: http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/for...ght-model.html

[doots]

Very good points made Trog. I have often thought about the same things.

I do know that I was a smoker for 40 years and was able to quit the day my first little 510 came in. That's been many months ago.

I know I'm getting nic just how much is the question we all ask.

Seems to be enough to keep the cravings away though.

I'm like at 24mg and 3ml a day to stay happy.. ))

[RenaissancePuffer]

What really struck me when I first started was that I was getting a buzz off of Janty High strength liquid (16mg). If the absorbtion rate is as low as they say that it is, and if I only consumed maybe 0.1ml of liquid, it seems to me that was a very small amount of nicotine that produced that effect. I suppose the nicotine is delivered to our bodies differently, but it still strikes me as odd. I never caught a buzz of a cig since I was a young teenager.

So yes, I think we are getting it, the nicotine that is. The only way an average joe or jane vaper to know if our liquid is the right strength is to build a test kit at home, or send it off to a lab for testing.

Nicotine alone may not be what it is that you are looking for trog? I'm not sure.

[Tetsab]

Oh rats - this thread's started growing too fast for my typing to keep up! Thanks to NightShadow for the links, and now I'll have to try keeping up with Blogs as well as threads... oh nooooo....!!!

Backing up a little to Trog's comments about TW:

I'm totally happy that TW are sincere, and have little concern regarding the Platinum range now being produced in UK. But I AM still rather concerned that even so there may be issues with their red label liquids from reading this thread:
Has anybody read this at Totally Wicked?

If you weren't aware of it and don't have all afternoon to catch up on it, the crux of it is results being obtained by two separate independent chemist members, one in UK and one US, who have been testing various liquids for nicotine content. In the main their tests showed good correlation between stated content and actual content; Dekang for instance being virtually spot on. There was however one very surprising exception to this - and it was TW red label liquids, some of which were well under stated strength but others being well over.

This clearly isn't helpful if you are trying to keep control of your nicotine ingestion, and I was hoping that Trog's inside track might provide some insight into the current situation. The subject has been raised over in TW's own forum as well and last I heard Jason was 'onto it'; just hoped you might have something more?

[TWISTED VICTOR]

Very unscientific, sure, but my own experience has convinced me that the ecig is only an alternative, like they say, not a replacement. I enjoy that I am now officially a non-smoker, but I do miss my analogs, sometimes. Over 30 years of smoking the nastiest, harshest tobacco out there and I enjoyed it all. Yes, I still got a "buzz" every morning with the first of the day and anytime I went a longer than normal period without. Ecigs don't provide that. Like my tobacco, it didn't take me long to locate and buy the highest strength nic (75mg) I could find to reproduce the same effect. I found out I could get myself feeling oogy, but that's as far as it went, no "buzz", the feeling of calm, brain stimulus, not even a good bowel movement. I've described to my wife (a lifetime non-smoker) it's kind of like being in a mental desert. Just kind of a constant mood instead of the rewarding uplift, satisfying focus I got after having a smoke. Yes, there's no doubt alot more at play here than just the nic, but atleast I can quench the craving. I just wish I could have a good bowel movement, Ha.