Day 4 off cancer sticks! Curious about some things...

[ReikiHealer]

Hi everyone! I'm on day 4 of no cigarettes and I honestly feel so happy. My stepdaughter (7) came back home to our house yesterday (we split custody 50/50), and when she saw me use my vape (after being home for two hours, normally I would have smoked right away, not sure if that has anything to do with switching to the vaporizer, but I feel like I can go longer stretches now), she said, "heyyy I know what that is! My stepdad has one! It's not smoke! It's water foam or something!" ("water foam" lol) she was so excited when I told her I hadn't had a cigarette in three days. I remember being her age and wishing my parents would quit, begging them to, even. Don't ask me how I wound up smoking once I became a teenager. Now, I don't want her to wind up vaping nicotine when she gets older, so we tried to explain that to her but I think it's hard at that age to understand things like "addiction."

Anyway, I'm curious: for those of you that smoked cigarettes before making the switch: do you guys feel like using vaporizers reaps the same effects as cold turkey quitting? As in: will my sense of taste and smell be stronger soon? Did any of you cough up that gross stuff? I have noticed a few things: one, it is really nice not feeling self-conscious of the way I smell. two: guess who doesn't like energy drinks that much? I used to get two every morning: one for the drive to work and one for the way home. I can't drink them without a cigarette, though. I've just been picking up a mtn. dew instead because I genuinely like the taste (I know water or tea would be even better, but baby steps...). How soon did you guys feel better capacity in your lungs? I FEEL like I feel that way, but idk how much is just placebo because I know I haven't had a cigarette in a few days. Did you immediately stop wanting cigarettes? The first day/night I was totally good, the second, not going to lie, I wanted a cigarette, but figured if I'd already gone almost 48 hours, why break that? Last night wasn't an issue, though.

Only 4 days in and I'm feeling very good! I wish I made this switch years ago =). Better late than never.

 

[daleron]

I would say that vaping eliminates the cold turkey factor. Your sense of taste & smell will improve over time, probably start within a month or so
Almost all of us coughed up stuff, some for a day or two and some for months ... guess it kind of depends on how long & how much you've been smoking.
Personally I can't remember how long it took for my lungs to feel better

Congratulations on making the switch

 

[440BB]

Congratulations on making the move to ecigs and welcome to ECF!

Compared to going cold turkey, I found ecigs actually worked better than any other approach, including patches, gum, Zyban, Chantix and hypnosis. The hand to mouth ritual combined with pretty immediate nicotine delivery worked for me and continues to five years later.

Most of the health benefits started happening for me within the first 90 days. After about a month I stopped hacking stuff up and coughing in the morning. My sense of taste came around within the first two weeks. In terms of lung capacity and oxygen, there was pretty amazing improvement. Climbing stairs became much easier within about a month of switching, to the point I was surprised I wasn't out of breath. After vaping for three months I went to my doctor for another issue and while I was there, talked to him about this miracle I found. (2011 - most people were unaware of vaping yet!) He decided to test my blood oxygen level and found I had moved from 92 to 96 which he found amazing. That confirmed what I was feeling.

Cravings continue to crop up for me from time to time, particularly when having a couple drinks. I'm pretty pragmatic about vaping - it's about how many smokes you avoid, not whether you have one occasionally. I probably have had about a carton of smokes over the last five years and feel no guilt about it. I have avoided about 50,000 cigarettes over those five years.

I hope this helps and good luck staying off the smokes!

 

[cats5365]

Yay!!! for you!!!!

If you are using nicotine, you probably won't have the bad things from quitting cold turkey. For me, not having the stimulant effect from nic made the cold turkey a major fail. Depending on what level your juice is, you might need to bump it up if you feel foggy or need extra caffeine.

I did go through the coughing up hairballs for a while after I switched, but I was a long-term, heavy smoker and had a lot of hairballs to get rid of. I'm not sure I remember suddenly feeling better after quitting, but I do remember that the last few smokes before I completely quit made me feel really awful. I was more of the accidental quitter because I just decided I wanted the vape instead of a cig, and just never lit up another smoke. I had a few times of temptation, but got past them. I do still think about it, but it isn't nearly as bad as when I tried to quit before vaping. Remembering how bad I felt from those last few cigs, and how bad they smelled keeps me on track. I did go through a major cleaning binge after a few weeks when I realized how icky and sticky my stuff was from the tar deposits.

Yay for You!!!

 

[mattiem]

Congratulations on your 4 days. We are very proud of you

I was one of the fortunate ones, smoker one day and vaper the next. I smoked for 45+ years so I had a bit of residue to get out of my system. It has been almost 5 years ago so I don't actually remember the time line for feeling all the benefits of making the switch. I do remember (because it was so amazing to me) that my morning cough was gone within the very first week.

do you guys feel like using vaporizers reaps the same effects as cold turkey quitting?

Actually better effects....I no longer get the flu or even colds. Before vaping I would get at least 3 a year (some requiring a round of antibiotics). Now, not even the sniffles. I attribute that miracle to the anti-bacterial properties of the pg and/or vg. If I am remembering correctly though I did have an almost constant runny nose the first few months or possibly even as long as the first year of vaping. I chalked that up to the cleansing of my sinuses.

Hang in there and before you know it you will know for sure that this is truly a miracle for those that want to put the smokes behind themselves for good.

 

[whodat2112]

I would say that vaping eliminates the cold turkey factor. Your sense of taste & smell will improve over time, probably start within a month or so
Almost all of us coughed up stuff, some for a day or two and some for months ... guess it kind of depends on how long & how much you've been smoking.
Personally I can't remember how long it took for my lungs to feel better

Congratulations on making the switch

Ditto!!!!

 

[Ianperry]

Congrats, on getting rid of the tabs.
It will not happen over night, but you are already feeling the benefits. The look on your step daughters face will stay with you for a life time. That in its self should be enough to keep you going.
Enjoy the vape journey, it is well worth it.

 

[DavidOck]

All the above

In my case, about a week after becoming an ex-smoker I woke up withOUT my morning chest rattle. Granted, I didn't have that rattle for more than a few minutes each morning, but I was very pleasantly surprised it was gone! That was after 40+ years smoking.

Changes will come, timing is highly variable.

 

[Baditude]

I smoked for over 30 years. A pack a day of Marlboro Menthols. I was a deep, heavy inhaler -- I could smoke an entire cig in 3 minutes.

I never thought that I'd be able to quit. I loved smoking. (I knew it was affecting my health, and I hated how cigarettes controlled me.) I tried the nicotine gum/patches, stop smoking prescriptions, even hypnosis (twice); nothing helped me to quit.

About 5 years ago I bought my first e-cig (disposable NJOY) out of curiosity while stopping into my convenience store to buy a pack of cigs. It wasn't great, but wasn't bad either. I thought it might have possibilities, so I did research and found ECF.

I quit smoking within the first week of using my ciga-like starter kit. Once the last cig in my last pack was finished, so was I -- with smoking. I haven't touched or wanted a cigarette in nearly five years.
____________

There's more to the success of vaping than just nicotine replacement; that's why the nicotine gum/patches and prescription drugs didn't help me before.

Not only does vaping replace nicotine delivery in a healthier manner, but it replicates the hand-to-mouth and inhaling/exhaling behavior that smoking has. That's what I was missing earlier. Smoking addiction is more than just an addiction to nicotine, its a behavior addiction.

Over the last few years I've dropped my nicotine from 18mg down to 3mg, and probably could vape zero nicotine at this point. However, I am still addicted to the needy behavior of inhaling and exhaling (vapor).

____________

Once you stop smoking, your taste buds (which are damaged by tobacco smoke) begin to heal. Your sense of taste and smell improves over time.

There are tiny hair-like structures in the lungs called celia which are also damaged by smoke. Once you stop smoking, the celia reproduce again and do what they are supposed to do -- remove foreign material and toxins from your lungs. So yes, you may notice some sputum in your lungs which can be removed by coughing. It's your body reacting to remove the accumulated tars and other toxins that have built up over the years.

Glad that you have quit smoking. It's not how many cigarettes that you smoke that counts, its how many you DON'T SMOKE that counts.

 

[YKruss]

+1000 to all of the above!

 

[Dubminer]

I rolled my own cigarettes with no filter for about 35 years.For at least 20 years i was doing about 50 a day.I had no desire to quit at all.One day 5 months ago i for no apparent reason went to by my tobacco and after talking to the guy behind the counter who was vaping, instead bought a Nautilus and a IPOW 2 with some 18 mg juice.

I must be lucky because since that day i have never even thought about a cigarette.I now mainly use my Kayfun v5 with a SMY DNA 75 MTL at low watts. This last month dropped my nicotine to 10 mg and can't tell the difference.The strange thing is i never coughed when i smoked or when i switched to vaping.I feel way healthier now and my food tastes amazing.This truly is a miracle!

 

[Downgraded286]

Baditude is right, I think what most of it comes from is the physical actions involved with smoking. The hand-to-mouth, inhale and exhale, and, of course, the vapor. We still get that throat hit, the flavor, and the option of whatever nicotine strength depending on what we buy...

As for me when I made the switch I didn't notice a darn thing... but I wasn't smoking for very long, either. I guess I was one of the lucky ones to be able to get out early, before too much damage was done. I suppose I should be thankful for that, though I did enjoy my cigarettes when I smoked. Sometimes I still think about cigarettes, but I had two huge things that really picked me up and threw me way past what I needed to quit: affecting my fiancee's health--mine was good cause I'm invincible and I won't get sick from cigs... right? We've all been there... and we found out about e-cigs, which made putting the real cigarettes down easy.

 

[ReikiHealer]

ahhh I love reading all of these!! My parents have both been smokers for...ah, I don't even know how long. Probably 40 years for my mom and 50 for my dad. I told my mom today that I bought a vaporizer and hadn't had a cig in 4 days and she's thinking of trying it!

I can't wait for all of these to kick in!!

 

[RoseB]

Hello Great to read about the four days.

 

[Downgraded286]

ahhh I love reading all of these!! My parents have both been smokers for...ah, I don't even know how long. Probably 40 years for my mom and 50 for my dad. I told my mom today that I bought a vaporizer and hadn't had a cig in 4 days and she's thinking of trying it!

I can't wait for all of these to kick in!!

That's great. Good thing your parents are open to new things. The more people that vaping works for, hopefully the better our chances are in the upcoming battle against those that wish to remove it...

 

[DavidOck]

ahhh I love reading all of these!! My parents have both been smokers for...ah, I don't even know how long. Probably 40 years for my mom and 50 for my dad. I told my mom today that I bought a vaporizer and hadn't had a cig in 4 days and she's thinking of trying it!

I can't wait for all of these to kick in!!

Encourage her

I started vaping at 64, and, as Bad says, the replication of the process was, for me as well, vital to success. That and
1: the right nic level for the individual
2: the right flavor(s) for the individual
3: hardware that feels comfortable and is reliable
4: backups! Don't want to be left jonesing while a battery charges, or until new coils appear in the mailbox

 

[beckah54]

Congrats on the four days!! I think the hand-to-mouth action (and the nicotine) made is fairly easy for me to give up tobacco. Smelling better is also a huge plus. My lungs feel better than they have in years. I have been using ecigarettes exclusively since 2009 and I have suffered no ill effects to date. I wish you success!

 

[celticluvr]

I know my fiance quit cold turkey (for a week once)... That week was hell on earth for me. He started back smoking, but this tim went to a whole pack of tampa nugget panatellas (cigars) a day for about a year afterwards. When I put my foot down and got him a gas station cig a like, he was in utter awe. He was like, I can do this. We researched on the interwebz and got us our first pen style starter kits from SmokelessImage. We both started at 24mg nic (and still vape at 24 3 yrs later). For the first few weeks, fiance coughed up some nasty stuff, but within the first week he was able to walk around in the yard without wheezing. His sense of taste and smell came back as well.
The reason I am posting about him is although I smoked for 12 years, I never got addicted. I guess I'm one of those few people out there that can't get addicted to nic. I'm actually addicted to the flavors in my vape, lol. I do slightly rely on the nic during times of stress and emotional upheaval. Long story short, my neighbors (family on the same land) got on drugs real bad and caused fights for two years. We've had to go to court on them twice before scaring them bad enough to move. And we are not done yet because they took fiance's dad's truck with them. I have relied on my Mouth to Lung Gear (high ohm, high nic) to help calm me down. Now I have a sub tank and am down to 3mg nic but I still have my MTL gear for those times.

oops, didn't mean to give ya my life story, lol.

 

[ppeeble]

Congrats to you. You will notice the difference in a month or two. The process is gradual but one day a smoker will get near you and the stink will hit you like a ton of bricks. Then you'll know how much better youre sense of smell is. WARNING. At some point you'll also discover that certain *ahem* other smells have a pungency you may not have noticed before.

 

[Bea-FL]

Congrats on your four days off cigs. Having your vapes will make it so much easier not to go back. Me, the last time I quit a year and a half ago wouldnt have been successfull without vaping. The mere thought of not having my cigs would send me into a panic. Never mind I hated smoking, the expense, the coughing and hacking especially in the morning, the smelly hair and clothes, the yellow fingers. But then I saw this friend vaping on a Logic cig-like and decided to try it as soon as I finished my pack of cigs. It worked! The combo of nic and hand-to-mouth vaping afforded me kept me of cigs. I dont remember how long it was before walking a distance or going up stairs didnt cause me shortness of breath. But at my check-up about two months after I quit cigs my foctor didnt hear wheezing when she listened to my lungs.

I must confess I bummed one about 6 months ago and in my head it felt great to smoke it but it made me sick to my stomach and I hated the way I smelled. Yuck!

I see some of me in almost all the replies. We've all done good. You will too. Keep vaping!