Almost 7 Weeks Vaping, Sleep/Anxiety/Depression Issues

[Vapiing pet]

Yes, I think I will call him this afternoon.

I was about to respond when I saw this.

Best of luck to you. Hang in there

 

[deltadartaim4]

This is my first post and when it comes to anxiety and depression I feel somewhat like an expert. About 15 years ago I was hit with what doctors call severe intrusive tinnitus. Most people know it as ringing in the ears. To this day i'm still suffer from it. I will spare you the details but 3 things that come with it is the ability to sleep along with anxiety and depression. Doctors know very little about it and there is no cure. So it was up to me to find answers. I had to find a way to get my sleep pattern back.

Tried most everything(including vast amounts of 80 proof alcohol)but I was doing some reading and came across the drug Amitriptyline. That drug saved my life. It allows me to get 6-8 hours of sleep. To this day I still take it. Better than any sleeping pill. Also read where it's prescribed for people with insomnia. Was able to stop the intake of alcohol. For the anxiety i'm taking the drug Clonazepam(Klonopin) and it helps with the anxiety and also my sleep. I take .5mg of that. Take both drugs about 1 hour before bed. Both drugs been working for over 14 years now. But agree with everyone else you have to see a doctor. This is what works for me. Just my opinion and 2 cents worth.

 

[mountaingal]

Best of luck! Sleep issues are a terrible thing. I am glad you are going to a DR. I will check back and see how you are.

 

[BigBoyBlue]

Changing from smoking to vaporizing is a total mental game. I can completely understand how it would affect your current mental state. My wife has similar issues to yours. She quit smoking when she got pregnant with our first child. She didn't experience any compounded negative effects from it. She has been taking medication regularly to regulate her anxiety and moods. I would suspect that going to a doctor and getting medical treatment is the answer here. It works for my wife, to a certain extent. No solution is perfect but some medications do a great job at helping.

 

[noel18]

Good luck. I noticed that my sleep is not as good since I started vaping. I'm not sure if it's the nic level or something else, but I often only sleep for five hours or so while I used to be eight hours every night.

 

[larkcarol]

I am no doctor, and if things are as bad as you say, you might want to go see one.

That said, when I first read your subject line, I figured it was just going to be a case of someone over nic'ing themselves, but reading further and further into your OP, i saw that you had already done the reading and tried to adjust for that.

Definetly give the WTA route a look. I have no experience with them, but I have read enough stuff from people who did go that route to see it took care of a lot of their "issues"

One thing I will throw at you though, is that maybe you arent vaping "efficently" to get the nic into you, and that you arent absorbing enough nicotine, and things have just gotten worse as you went down in nic levels. Anecdotally, I know that when I quit cold turkey years ago, i was suffering sleep issues terribly. I wonder if maybe, in your anxeity to feed your "beast" you are hitting your ecig too hard and like a cig, and not getting the most out of your vapor device. Since vapor is absorbed differently than smoke from a cig. Ideally vapor is better absorbed into the body (albeit slower than smoke is) through the soft tissues (mucus membranes) of the mouth, nose and throat. What you want to do, is slowly suck into your mouth, hold it for a bit, (optionally take a shallow 'hit' of it to your lungs) and then a slow exhale through your nose. Not only will this help you absorb the nic better, but in a way for me it is a bit calming, sort of like a meditative breathing exercise.



p.s. go see a doctor

Interesting link you provided. I'm not sure if I've been doing it "right" or not - one thing I noticed within the first week or so was that my heart would start racing in the evenings. I smoked the majority of my daily cigarettes after work and have been vaping on the same schedule, roughly. The tank holds 2 mL, I believe, and regardless of what strength juice I've used, I've never vaped more than half of a tank in a single day. Usually, it's more like a third. And yet, there was the racing pulse and sense of doom that made me think I was possibly 'overdosing' (not really, but you know what I mean) on nicotine which was why I quickly reduced it to 12 and then to 3 mg about 2 weeks ago.


I appreciate your reply. I quit cold turkey once for 6 months and around month 3 was when I first went on antidepressants. I guess that wasn't a coincidence after all. I was hoping that maybe all this was 'normal' and would sort itself out and perhaps was being complicated by vaping (which I really really want to work for me since I enjoy it).

 

[four2109]

There was an almost identical thread in the Health section a couple of years ago. Don't be surprised if yours gets moved there. They closed it and it died. Nothing was ever resolved but there was validation that you weren't the only one experiencing it.
I've been back on analogs a couple of times and am always shocked at how my brain starts firing and i can think straight.
I just ordered some WTA from Whole Cigs. I haven't tried it in a couple of years so I'm going to give it another shot.
I don't really think it's anything in tobacco, but rather the crap BT added to make analogs more addictive.
I wish we knew more, but we just don't.

 

[Grimwald]

I was a very heavy 40 year smoker and started with 24mg. I had quite a lot of "balance" problems at about the 2 month mark. Like you mentioned it was sleeplessness, anxiety, general running around like a headless chicken followed by wooziness. The worst periods were mid-morning and early afternoon. These time periods seemed to coincide with times I would be hyped up on coffee and hungry. I started using more decaf and eating less sugar while slowly cutting the nicotine level of my liquids. Also tried to hydrate with flavored club sodas and lemon in water. Some of the sleeplessness was because I was breathing better and just had more energy...so tried to get more exercise.

Today, after 2 years, I'm down to 6mg nic, drinking coffee again, and sleeping like a baby...but it was difficult for a couple of months.

 

[larkcarol]

Just wanted to give a quick update. I saw my family doctor today and he suggested addressing the sleep issue might be the best place to start. He prescribed a sleeping pill and told me to come back in two weeks if there's no change and we'll take it from there. Thanks again to everyone who commented!

 

[k0k0s]

If you were vaping one-third to one-half of a 2ml tank of even 24mg liquid, then this most probably has to do with nicotine withdrawal...

Best of luck, and please come back to let us know how things are working for you!

 

[Treborsmug]

Try your local Herb Store for Valerian Extract and add about 6 drops to 1.6ml tank and vape that. Works great.

 

[four2109]

Larkcarol, here is an current thread about WTA's.
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...r-whole-tobacco-alkaloid-success-stories.html

 

[Maiar]

I'm not going to read through all the comments to see what's been mentioned. But I've gone through this sort of thing a few times now. It's withdrawal. Any time you change the dose of a medication your body will start to freak out. The more addictive the substance the more and varied the symptoms will be. I've been through it three times now. Once when I had to switch anti depressants. Once when I came off of Fentanyl(100x stronger than morphine) and Hydromorphone I was prescribed for a condition i have that i'll spare you all the details of. And once when I switched from cigarettes to vaping. Now there is nicotine in both, but the delivery mechanism is different. So you're body is getting the drug its used to, but not in the way its used to. So it has to adapt. And the human body always fights that. And i've found that people predisposed to mental issues, like myself, have more mental symptoms than most. There we're nights where I could not sleep at all. Nights where I did sleep but i'd sweat so much that the bed would be drenched. Nights where i'd wake up halfway through and my mind wouldn't stop just like you. Now withdrawal is a funny thing. It can last for a couple days or a couple months depending on the person. It does get progressively better as you go, but you may find symptoms that hang around or are only occasionally bothersome. Hell, it took me a couple months to stop having weird dreams after switching.
Sorry to ramble, but the only things you can really do yourself are give it time and make sure you're adequately hydrated and eating well, even if you don't feel like eating. The doctors can give you something to help too. I had another medication I took during everything but the last one, and honestly, i think i'd be dead if i didn't have it. And if it's really bad and you just can't deal then i recommend the doctor approach. They've got an arsenal of medications that can ease the transition.