Intro

[Nic-holio]

Hi everyone,

I'm a new vaper (~3 weeks now) along with my wife and just signed up on ECF a few days ago. Really glad to be here!

Quick "nicotine background" -- I had quit the analogs but have been having trouble staying quit lately (cravings, etc.). My wife was still smoking. A couple of the guys I work with have been vaping for a couple years, and between talking to them and doing some "general research" (getting past the biased FDA reports I had heard of, etc.), I decided to pick up an eGo mega dual coil carto kit from mad vapes.

Fast forwarding a bit, my wife hasn't had a cigarette since we picked up the kit. An unfortunate side effect is I am now entertaining my old nicotine habit again and have my own EMDCC kit, but at least I can satisfy the craving without all the other junk that comes with nicotine when you're smoking cigarettes. We can deal with the nicotine habit by gradually working our way down on the levels. My wife's breathing has already improved considerably.

Have to admit I do rather enjoy vaping and it's great to be around other vapers here who know the ropes etc.

So if nothing else, just wanted to say hello to everyone and not just "type out 5 posts with 10 characters in them" to pad my new members post count, and say thanks for having the forums up. Looking forward to participating!

cheers,
24junkie

 

[SCTony]

Hi 24junkie and Welcome to ECF! Congratulations to you and your wife for getting off the analogs Good job!

 

[bigtiime]

Welcome to ECF 24junkie! Good to hear that both you and your wife have quit the stinkies.

 

[dearme]

Welcome to ECF. Enjoy your stay and your vaping journey.

 

[shannahan]

Are you using 24 mg strength? We found at 18 mg we were still taking a few hits here and there of analogs but don't need them at all with 24 mg. Also, my husband needs a juice that has a good throat hit. He uses MLB or 555 from altsmoke.com. Congrats to your wife and you too - sounds like you are on your way to becoming free of cigarettes.

 

[tidegirl]

Welcome junkie! I don't know why anyone would fall for those crap FDA reports. "Oh, they say these food products may be bad for me, so I guess I'll keep putting these 4000 carcinogens in my lungs all day every day instead." Just makes no sense, does it?

How long have you been off the smokes? Play with flavors, play with nic strengths and you will find your perfect vape.

I'm glad you and your wife found a good alternative, and the forums.

 

[whitepony]

congrats and keep it up in a week you won't even like analogs

 

[Nic-holio]

Welcome to ECF 24junkie! Good to hear that both you and your wife have quit the stinkies.

Haha, I have already seen so many funny names for cigarettes here - this is another good one though. "the stinkies"

It's a good name for them. One of the first things that always comes to mind about why vaping is better when I talk to someone about it is because you don't have that stink of burned tobacco. Even as a smoker I really didn't like it. Not to mention the second hand smoke stink.

24junkie

 

[SCTony]

Lol yea- i got some juice yesterday and the enclosed invoice must have been handled by a smoker- I could smell it on the paper. I am not complaining, just sayin..

 

[Nic-holio]

Welcome to ECF. Enjoy your stay and your vaping journey.

Thanks for the welcomes and encouragements everyone. Really neat being involved here.

I can see it IS a journey ahead. We've been fairly happy with the Smoktech EMDCC's - the guys at work that vape recommended them, having been through a lot of the various other equipment etc. since they started their journey a couple years ago. That saved us some hassle/experimentation (and bad money) right off the bat. (I'd been looking at some of the more widely advertised brands, "free trial" offers etc. when I first started looking into this, etc.)

So in the process of trying to educate myself on proper maintenance etc. of our cartos I found the big EMDCC thread (the 141 page one) - there was some really good info in there and I'm really grateful everyone shared what they did. So I know now that the chances are >0 we may end up with a few bad EMDCC's, and also have some pretty good info about how to get the best life out of them. Heh, I've already successfully cleaned out 4 cartos in my trying flavors.

Speaking of journey, I do have to say it's great to have great vendors for our needs that care about their customers. I was on vacation at the time we got our first kit, so not really pressed for time, and decided to take a road trip if we could get everything we needed. The guys at work really like dealing with Mad Vapes, and Charlotte is about a 3 hour drive. I called ahead to make sure the retail store was open -- and while they advised me the retail store doesn't honor the website prices, they DID encourage me to stop by the warehouse if I wanted to, we could put an order through at website prices for whatever we wanted and we could pick it up right there. Considering I had 6 different liquid flavors I wanted to try smaller (10ml) bottles of, and as I understand now they very likely mixed them up for me ON THE SPOT, it is extremely impressive. Everyone there was really friendly and helpful - they made sure I knew how to properly fill up the carto and walked me through my first vape. They also shared other good advice, and even offered to swap out the clear cartos the kit came with - at the time they only had kits in stock with the clear EMDCC cartos in them, and I'd read here that the clear ones had problems cracking etc. so I had planned to buy some regular EMDCC's as extras and just use the clear ones first. I didn't want to ask them to "break up the kit" for me (I figured, heck, these are more or less disposable cartos anyway), but when Paul noticed I had bought some of the regular ones he just asked me if I wanted to trade out the clear ones in the kit. They even gave my wife one of the disposable e-cig kits so she could try it out. We weren't sure if she would get along with PG-based liquid or not.

Can't say enough good things about Mad Vapes, they were really friendly and helpful. We've made 3 orders total with them now and everything has been spot on and shipped extremely fast. The liquids from Mad Vapes thus far have been great.

LOL, I'm already looking at "the next steps" for equipment. Not that I am dissatisfied overall with the EMDCC's, but they do have their limitations/annoyances and as I understand it after finishing the whole forum topic, I'll probably run into bad cartos at some point due to manufacturing QA/QC. So I've already been in contact with some other folks - Stormy at Stormy's Vapor Cellar for info on ACTv3's - and he replied almost immediately to my email.

Exciting and adventurous, this journey is.

24junkie

 

[Bervin]

Congrats! I'm super excited about all of this too!!

 

[Nic-holio]

Are you using 24 mg strength? We found at 18 mg we were still taking a few hits here and there of analogs but don't need them at all with 24 mg. Also, my husband needs a juice that has a good throat hit. He uses MLB or 555 from altsmoke.com. Congrats to your wife and you too - sounds like you are on your way to becoming free of cigarettes.

Hi shannahan!

Oh I should probably clarify my nickname (pun: nic-name?). It's kind of an older nickname I've used before - I used to really like the Fox TV series "24". Well at least for the first 3 or so seasons.... but I digress.

We started off using 16mg liquids, except the sample liquid in the first kit we got - MV usually puts a 10ml bottle of their custom mix 24mg Dekang Tobacco in their starter kits. (NOTE: You CAN ask them to substitute a different liquid in a kit in the comments section of the order - they did this for us when we ordered our 2nd EMDCC kit - by then my wife had picked the flavor of the ones I'd gotten that she liked).

My wife seems to be doing pretty good with the 16mg. Me, well, I find that I am really enjoying vaping and with the amount of vaping I'm doing, 16mg is really more than I need. I'm going to need to cut my nic level down, so I'm already looking into a little DIY action with liquids so I can dilute the 16mg liquid I've bought already. I'll probably mix the 24mg Dekang Tobacco with one or more of the menthol-type liquids so I can get the nic level down and get a flavor I like a little better too. It's really the only flavor of the ones I got to try out that I don't care for much.

The flavors I've tried so far are (all madvapes/Top Vapor):

Menthol Tobacco (16mg)
Mad Torro (16mg)
Dekang USA Mix (16mg) (Mad Vapes custom china liquid)
Minthol (16mg)
Spearmint (16mg)
Dekang Tobacco (24mg)

I really like the Top Vapor Menthol Tobacco liquid - it has a very smooth menthol flavor with a (non-burnt) tobacco undertone. Not really a cigarette tobacco flavor so much as an aromatic tobacco flavor (maybe even a little like pipe tobacco). I'd really like to get this flavor when I start DIY'ing. The Mad Torro, I wasn't sure what it was supposed to be like (no reviews) - it's not bad at all - if you like Juicy Fruit chewing gum it reminds me a lot of it and you'd probably like it. Evidently it's supposed to be a Red Bull flavor (I've never drank Red Bull before). The Dekang USA mix is a nice flavor I bought more of. Minthol is a decent "punchy" kind of menthol flavor, reminds me (and more importantly my wife) of the Salems we used to smoke. Spearmint, well, they nailed the flavor name. It's just like a Spearmint Life Savers.

I also ordered a small bottle of black licorice @16mg. Haven't tried that one yet but as soon as the last 2 cartos I cleaned out are done drying I plan to try it with one of them.

I'm not sure if my wife will want to drop her nic level just yet, we've been talking about it. She hasn't been vaping as much as I have so far. But we have enough different liquids that she can stay at 16 if she wants/needs to.

I've noticed some flavors have more throat hit than others. haha and then there is "lung hit" - the spearmint liquid really does just about take your breath away (it's probably real spearmint flavor).

555 is one of the tobacco-type flavors, right?

24junkie

 

[Nikkita6]

Hello and Welcome to vaping and ECF .... have fun with this new and exciting journey ;-)

 

[Nic-holio]

Welcome junkie! I don't know why anyone would fall for those crap FDA reports. "Oh, they say these food products may be bad for me, so I guess I'll keep putting these 4000 carcinogens in my lungs all day every day instead." Just makes no sense, does it?

Hi tidegirl!

Yeah, it's sad that the FDA would resort to what looks an awful lot like a smear campaign and especially with little or no factual basis for their "reports". Considering their official responsibility I would expect a lot more scientific method and a lot less.... uh.... "good old American money-driven politics" behind their actions, reports, etc. I had looked into e-cigarettes probably about 2 years ago and hit lots of google results about how the FDA was saying they were unsafe because they contain ethylene glycol / DEG / etc. But, think of the millions if not billions of dollars of annual tax revenues that are at stake if people quit consuming regular tobacco products....

I'm sure they're already planning how to take over and regulate the e-liquids industry and tax the crud out of it (and keep certain interests in business in the process).

How long have you been off the smokes? Play with flavors, play with nic strengths and you will find your perfect vape.

I'm glad you and your wife found a good alternative, and the forums.

I had managed to "quit" with patches etc., but with my wife still smoking and most of the guys I work with smoking (or vaping) too, I was struggling with the cravings, especially in more hectic moments at work (which seems to go with the territory in the IT field). But I smoked for over 25 years. My wife hasn't had a cigarette in almost 3 weeks now.

Thanks! Glad to be here.

24junkie