A lot of new vapers tend to believe that it's easy to switch. For some, it is. For others, it is very difficult. I was in the latter group and never figured I'd ever quit smoking, and stopped trying several decades ago. Whenever I would try to quit, quitting would be important to me, but after a few hours the only thing that mattered to me was smoking, so that side always won.
So when I started vaping, I tried many times to quit and I'd still get to that point where the smoking part would win out, and I never got past 5 hours. I eventually did succeed, much to my shock, and here's what I can tell you from the other side:
People will tell you that it's a matter of the right device or the right juice, and while that can help a little, the bottom line is that, at least with regular nicotine juice, it only replaces part of what you get from tobacco. Sure, we are addicted to nicotine, but to our chagrin, we soon find out that we are addicted to more than this.
So this is why nicotine replacement therapies are generally ineffective. We do have by far the best nicotine replacement device ever made, but even that will only take us so far. However, there are things we can do to increase our chances of success.
So things like having a quality PV, one you can set the power with, and some nice tasting juice do help. Higher power means more nic delivery, and juices do differ on not only how they taste but how they make you feel. Even more importantly, getting a large dose of nicotine definitely can help as well. For instance, it wasn't until I moved up to 36 mg that I was able to quit. Perhaps I needed to vape myself into a nicotine stupor, but after not being able to quit for 32 years, I was open to trying this, and it helped a great deal. In fact, the biggest mistake I made during the 14 months that I both vaped and smoked was not to try this higher level. I failed at 24, 28, and 30 mg, and succeeded at 36.
However, it also required a lot of will power and the willingness to pay the price. However what helped me wasn't to decide to quit forever, but to quit for a time and see how it went. So I approached this as an experiment of sorts, and when I would get the urge to smoke, I thought of having to start the experiment over again and how many hours that I already invested in it, and how that would all be wasted, and this helped me stay the course.
I also used natural supplements to help combat the lack of the antidepressant that is in tobacco. So I took things like St Johns Wort and SAMe, and that helped as well.
What you do need to realize is that during the detox phase there is a lot of crap that your body eliminates, toxins that have built up from smoking, and you need to see this for what it is, the body healing itself. So a lot of the discomfort isn't from your body telling you that a smoke will make you better, it is instead from it telling you that this is the garbage you have accumulated from smoking and pay attention to how bad it is while you rid yourself of it.
So I made it through almost a month of this, and got to the point where there definitely was something missing, as a lot of people feel. I made up my mind that I wasn't going to go back to smoking, and would use other forms of tobacco like snus if need be. I wasn't satisfied with just vaping though, and definitely needed something else.
So I went to the tobacco shops around town looking for snus, and it turns out none had ever heard of it, and I would have to then order it over the internet. Then I heard about WTA, whole tobacco alkaloids, and I found a place on here, Aroma E-Juice, that sold it. They are one of the suppliers in the suppliers forum.
So this juice ended up changing everything, it's expensive, $12 for 10 ml. but I've been mixing it half and half with my regular juice and I am now completely satisfied vaping that. I wish I had this when I first quit smoking, I'm sure there would have been pain but nowhere near as much. So if you are looking to quit I'd definitely recommend having some of this on hand at least to get you through the rough spots, the first few weeks in fact, if you are struggling, along with doing everything else you can to get off those damn things.
The upshot of all of this is that I can't believe I am not only a non smoker but someone who will definitely not smoke again, thanks to the wonders of vaping! It's a great time to be alive!