took me over a year, but I live with a smoker too! One that to this day continues to ask me if I need any cigs rolled... I think he wishes I still smoked WITH him....
I like the comments re we started gaping, NOT quitting smoking. It sure takes the pressure off!... I think I need to detach myself from
vaping being equal to quitting and just
vape!
Same thing happened to me. When I started vaping, I had no intention to completely quit the cigarettes. But after a month and a half with my ego twist, I found myself only smoking 1 or 2 a day. And I didn't even really need them... I still smoke a cigarette once in awhile when the urge strikes me, but the taste is so awful now that after I do it, I'm quickly reminded that I don't want them anymore.
I'm the type of person that obsesses about it whenever I try to deny myself cigarettes. So I have given myself "freedom to smoke" I have cigarettes in my house, and I keep a pack in my car. There is something about knowing that I can have one anytime I want that sets me at ease...
The best way I can describe changing over is wanting to vape while not wanting to smoke. Its so much easier when you actually enjoy Vaping!...
In the last three years, I've helped maybe 20 people start vaping.
Three of them still smoke.
Most of them approached me wanting to know "Does it really work?" They meant, of course, does it really help you quit smoking. Because quitting smoking is about the toughest thing a firmly addicted smoker can undertake. It's honestly kind of nightmarish.
But the thing is, none of them really understood what I meant when I said, "YES!" They thought, "Oh, good, it will be a little easier. Maybe it'll give me that shove that helps me succeed this time when I've failed in the past. Maybe it will be that extra 5% willpower I've needed all the other times one thing too many went wrong and I picked up a cigarette again after doing so well all day/week/month." They have no idea what I really mean.
The thing that sets apart the three who still smoke is this: they went into vaping
firmly committed to quitting. Which is good, yeah? It's Doing it Right. It's what all the literature tells smokers they need to do: Set a firm date. Make a firm commitment. Be firm.
I question the necessity of that with vaping. It seems like more people end up where my three smoker friends are -- with a vaping kit they never use, didn't use more than five or six times when it was new, because in their heads this had to Replace Cigarettes and they could tell right off the bat that it was just Not the Same, so it wasn't going to work and could go back in a drawer while they picked a new quit date and a new plan of attack, next year maybe. Meanwhile, the ones who made a point of just adding a vice, picking up a new hobby, not setting it up as a threat to smoking at all... they no longer smoke.
So partly I bring this up to encourage the new vapers who are saying "I still give myself permission to smoke," because that's awesome. I still give myself permission to smoke, any time I want to. I've had one pack of cigarettes, roughly, over the last three years. None of those have been since early 2011. So please, don't fear that the permissive approach can't work. I don't know if it
will work for any given individual, but I'm absolutely certain that it can.
For those of us who are just too outstanding at stubbornness and contrarianism, it's perhaps the best way.
That brings me to the other reason I mention it, though: the spouses and SOs in this thread who still smoke. I'm willing to bet that they -- like the people who ask me "Does it work?" -- have
no idea what an assist vaping is. When they hear that it helps, they think "extra 5%" help, not "Oops, I must have left my lighter in the pants I was wearing last week because I haven't seen it or even thought about it since that new sampler pack came in" help. So when your boyfriend or your wife sees that you've quit, or nearly quit, they may still think that's something that can't happen for them; they may think you quit because you're stronger, because you're more virtuous, because you have a stronger will, because you have less stress, because you weren't as addicted in the first place...
That goes double if it wasn't an easy quit for you! Someone close to you is going to have a sense for that, and know that you
did struggle or are struggling, and give you all the credit for that.
When I started vaping, some of my close friends resented it because I no longer smoked. I escaped the trap, and I didn't even seem to feel it. (I didn't; I was very lucky and it was very easy for me. It isn't always, for everyone.) They were, to be blunt, jealous. They still didn't think that vaping would help them all that much, so when I said that vaping made it effortless for me, what they heard was that not only had I done this thing that was likely still impossible for
them, I hadn't even suffered while doing it!
And none of them felt good about being jealous about that. I mean, they're my friends. They wish me well. It's just that my quitting added to their own internal pressure to quit themselves, without actually making it any easier for them to do it. So the net effect on them of seeing me quit, and quit easily, was negative: they felt more pressure to quit, felt just as hopeless about their chances of managing to do so, and felt ashamed of not being as happy for a friend as they ought to be.
I'm just glad I wasn't dating a smoker at the time! If you combine those -- the way that being determined to quit can actually undermine the process of replacing cigarettes with ecigs and the way that watching someone close to you quit can make you feel positively awful about your own habit, chances of quitting, and reactions to their success... Our poor loved ones, y'all! Take a minute to empathize. Every time you're watching them light a cigarette, they're watching you
not need a cigarette. That can't be pleasant.
Don't pressure them to quit. Don't tell them how much easier it will be! The only way to know that is to experience it firsthand, especially since it might be a different experience for them than it was for you and me. If you want them to join you in vaping, make it clear that they can borrow your gear any time, try out any flavor they like, without that being taken as a commitment that they'll quit. Let them know it's okay to do both. They can check out your DIY double-chocolate-stout-with-a-shot-of-espresso just to see what it tastes like and light up a cigarette right afterward, and you won't say a word or think a judgmental thought.
In my experience, that will be the last week you get to have your gear all to yourself.
