I never had the intention of quitting smoking, ever, and as strange as it may sound, the money spent or the health consequences of smoking didn't bother me too much. I'm in great health anyway and while it's certainly a plus not to get extorted by the government here to pay over $13 for a pack of cigarettes, I can afford it. They say smoking reduces your life expectancy but I've figured that the $500 a month I spend on supplements at least puts me ahead of the curve, and I've never really been that concerned about quantity of life, although quality does matter to me.
So when I say quality I don't mean being in better physical shape or any other such objective factors, I mean feeling better subjectively. So when I started vaping over a year ago this certainly did add to my experience, where I would both vape and smoke, and smoke less for it, but the big thing was that the vaping both improved my mood and the quality of the "buzz" I got. Actually you might say that for me it's all about the quality of the buzz
So I've been thinking all this time that kicking the cigarettes and just vaping should be the ultimate buzz, I would smoke which wasn't that great, then I would vape and feel great, the problem though was that after a few hours away from smoking I would need another one.
So once I did figure out that the 30 mg of nic wasn't enough, and moved to 36 mg, that did the trick. You still need some resolve to go with it, but my belief is that if you are trying to switch and you aren't vaping 36 mg, and you are having trouble, then you definitely need to try 36 mg.
So as the days went on, I read things about how there are other components of smoking that vaping doesn't provide, and that's exactly how I felt, that something substantial was missing. I didn't go back to the analogs though, and from my experiences so far I never will, and I reasoned that while vaping alone may not be the full answer, vaping and smoking definitely is not. I have had way too much experience with that to know that kicking the smokes definitely the way to go, and I would have to look to add something else that doesn't involve inhaling smoke.
So I checked out getting some WTA juice, there are two sites that sell it, one doesn't have a shipping option to Canada and the other is down. I even went around to tobacco shops looking for snus, can't buy it here, you can order it through the mail but I'm really not sure I even want to do that.
What I ended up doing is getting some tobacco flavored juice, I never liked it as it doesn't taste anywhere near as good as the dessert juices I've been vaping all this time, and in fact I tried several tobacco flavors and really didn't like them. However I read somewhere that there may be a trace of some of these other substances in the tobacco flavoring and decided to give that a try.
I'm happy to say that this has helped, although I am sure that putting more time between me and that last cigarette has as well. I'm doing better now and in fact I think that may be the answer for me. It's day 11 now smoke free and the second day I'm vaping tobacco and I seem to have turned the corner. I do not want to be craving or even wanting something else, definitely not a cigarette and not even smokeless tobacco, not even WTA if I can help it only because it's so hard to get, because I want to say that vaping now makes me feel way better than I ever have in my life, and this may indeed come to pass on my current regimen.
One of the most interesting things I've found through all this is that higher voltage dries out the juice more, which not only kills the flavor somewhat, the drier vape dries out your lungs as well. I was vaping in the car and by accident my Darwin got turned down to 5.7 watts, way lower than I have ever tried. It ended up being a great vape, and then I noticed how less dry it was and my lungs are dry anyway, so vaping at this wattage has made a HUGE difference for me.
The expectation is that every day will get better, it's been hard to find out good info about how long it takes before your body adjusts to this fully, I hear a month or more from some people, that seems crazy but now that I think of it, if I have another 20 days or more of getting better and better, that's certainly nothing to be afraid of