It occurs to me that I never really posted my success story, so here goes.
I started smoking during a period of my life when most people tend to start smoking: The Young & Dumb phase. 17, to be specific. That started me down the road to 21 years of stupidity. For the first few years it wasn't so bad. It takes a while for the effects of smoking to creep up on you, but creep up they do. The frequent throat clearing. The reduced lung capacity. The reduced energy. Dealing with the smoking bans, increasing cost, and if you're unlucky, more serious complications. I was fortunate not to have reached that last point, but the rest? Yeah, all of that.
I first heard about E-cigs in early 2010 when someone pointed me to Blu Cigs. They looked intriguing, and by this point I had already done the progressive switch to lighter types/brands, tried cold turkey, tried the gum, tried the inhaler -- of course, nothing worked. Nothing even came remotely close. But these Blu Cigs looked to have promise; they simulated the act of smoking, contained nicotine, and seemed like they'd be a pretty good substitute that just might work.
But they wouldn't ship to Canada. Bummer.
For whatever reason it never dawned on me to Google alternatives to them. I really can't imagine why it didn't, but there it is. I'm a little slow sometimes. I blame cigarettes. For any of my past discrepancies, they're my go-to scapegoat these days anyway. I think it was just that I didn't quite latch on to the terminology, or maybe I just didn't think there were others out there. Nonetheless, and fortunately, the topic had at some point (mid-August) come up somewhere (I can't remember where) that referred to them in a more generic way, and that led me to start Googling up any and all information I could glean (which of course led me here, too). I learned the terminology, the different bits of the technology, and all of my available options to start me off. It was a good solid week of research -- when I get hold of an idea that intrigues me I tend to get a little voracious and single-minded about information gathering. The only real question that nobody could answer (because it was a personal experience thing) was how it felt. Whether it was like smoking a cigarette.
But I figured, what the heck. For under a hundred bucks I could get started with a good E-cig (or what was deemed good by popular consensus) and if it didn't work -- well, I spent $45 on a box of useless Nicorette inhalers that are still gathering dust in my desk's hutch. How much worse could this be? I decided to get an eGo starter kit and some juice from a couple of local vendors. I ordered Wednesday night. They both shipped Thursday. They arrived Friday. My wife told me while I was at work. I was oddly stoked. For some reason I had a really good feeling about them.
I had a cigarette on my way home from work, as I did, and walked in the door to my waiting package. Unpacked it and impatiently put my first E-cig together before even charging the battery -- I knew there would be at least some charge in it that would allow me to try it out. The juice I ordered was relatively low-end stuff -- I knew nothing about the differences between juices other than that there were different flavours -- but I tried it out.
And I coughed.
Not because it was harsh, but because it caught me off guard. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting there to be such a prominent yet smooth throat hit. Not only did it feel like smoking, it felt better than smoking. The flavour -- some generic tobacco flavour -- was kind of sweet, like fresh tobacco smells (I've always thought it smelled kind of like raisins). That was unexpected, too. For some reason I expected it to taste like ... I don't know. Cigarette smoke. Though I'm not even sure how you'd replicate something like that. But it was nice. Different, but nice.
So I took another puff. Less coughing. Another puff. No coughing. Another. And another. Before I know it, it's midnight and I haven't had a single cigarette all evening. I hadn't even wanted a cigarette. I didn't even think about it. I was enjoying the E-cig so much, and it was providing enough nicotine, that the thought of having an analog cigarette didn't even cross my mind. I went to bed kind of giddy.
The next morning -- Saturday -- I awoke. I didn't want a cigarette. I wanted to vape. So vape I did. And I still didn't want a cigarette. It was incredible. I couldn't ever have imagined going this long without a smoke. But I didn't need one. I didn't want one. That evening the wife suggested I finish the 9 I had left in my pack, just so I didn't waste them. I was thinking of keeping them as a kind of talisman, a reminder of what I was finally able to give up and proof that they had no more hold on me. But I agreed and had a cigarette. It didn't satisfy me. I couldn't yet put my finger on what it was exactly, but I finished it and was kind of "meh" about it. So I left the remaining 8 in the pack.
I went the whole next week without a cigarette, only vapor, and I was loving it. That Friday -- one week after switching -- I decided, deliberately, to have a cigarette, because I noticed my senses of taste and smell were really perking up. Also, I wanted to prove to myself that cigarettes had lost their hold on me. The cigarette was terrible. Seriously, you know that old saw that I've heard women use to describe what it's like to kiss a smoker? That it tastes like licking the bottom of an ash tray? That's what it tasted like. It took me right back to when I was 17 and first tried cigarettes. It was terrible and I couldn't even begin to comprehend how I was able to get past the taste enough to get hooked on them back then. I put the cigarette out halfway though -- and I only got that far because it was so freaky how quickly my taste buds woke up and realized burnt tobacco tasted like crap. I tried the same thing at the 3 week mark. Same result. Cigarettes were history.
Or so I thought.
I'd been ordering from a few different places to try different flavours and vendors. Around about October I started noticing circulation my feet was getting worse. Walking at my normal brisk pace for any length of time started making my feet hurt. This condition worsened over the next few weeks until it was getting quite bad. I was thinking it was that I was vaping liquid that was too strong (at the time, 18mg) and causing my veins to constrict too much. But I thought I'd give it a bit and see if it was something else. But then another symptom presented: Random but frequent heart palpitations. That was enough to scare me.
I tried lowering my nicotine content to 6 and 12mg, but I couldn't vape it. The throat hit was too little and it made me crave cigarettes. Plus, I ordered some stuff from Velvet Vapor with their "velvet blend" which seemed mostly to be VG and it was too thick and made me cough. I was terribly disappointed: I had to go back to cigarettes, having thought E-cigs had failed me.
I went back to smoking for several months. The pain and palpitations disappeared, which suggested it was indeed the E-cigs. I hated that. But around about February of this year I started vaping "part-time." I was sick of cigarettes and desperate to get back to vaping so I thought maybe I could at least cut down. That worked -- to a small degree. I discovered the eGo tanks had been released, tried them, they were terrible. I was beginning to despair that I'd never be able to go back to vaping full-time.
But then I read a post from someone. He complained of pain in his extremities and heart palpitations after vaping some kind of cheap Chinese liquid. The last liquid I was vaping was cheap Chinese liquid -- literally, $8 for 30ml. (I won't mention the vendor because I have absolutely no problem with them, they've done right by me, it's just whoever they get their juice from.) Somehow it just kind of clicked: There must have been some ingredients in that particular liquid that was causing health issues, and it wasn't just me.
This was about the time the B-type eGo tanks were released, so I found a vendor -- VapeRite -- and ordered a couple of B-type tanks, carts, and some juice. And just to conclusively prove that my problem wasn't that the liquid was too strong for me, I ordered some good strong juice. 26mg Toffle. It arrived in about a week. I tried it. The juice was, quite simple, incredible. Throat hit was awesome, flavour was fantastic. This despite the tanks that I'd learn quickly were just terrible. (Not VapeRite's fault, the tanks are just fail.)
And I kept vaping around that strength, just making sure to order quality juice from quality vendors. I discovered dual coil cartomizers. I've tried a number of different vendors. And I'm still vaping 24+mg without a single problem, and it's been 4 months since going back to vaping full-time. No health issues -- except once again much better health than I had when I was smoking.
It'll be a year since I first tried vaping next month around this time, and despite the perceived failure that turned out to be crap juice, I've kept at it and can quite confidently call it a complete and utter success. I am finally "in the pocket" as far as having found both hardware and vendors that I love and have no plans on ever touching another analog.
There are still two cigarettes left in the last pack I bought in April. I keep them with me on my daily commute. They are my talisman.
I started smoking during a period of my life when most people tend to start smoking: The Young & Dumb phase. 17, to be specific. That started me down the road to 21 years of stupidity. For the first few years it wasn't so bad. It takes a while for the effects of smoking to creep up on you, but creep up they do. The frequent throat clearing. The reduced lung capacity. The reduced energy. Dealing with the smoking bans, increasing cost, and if you're unlucky, more serious complications. I was fortunate not to have reached that last point, but the rest? Yeah, all of that.
I first heard about E-cigs in early 2010 when someone pointed me to Blu Cigs. They looked intriguing, and by this point I had already done the progressive switch to lighter types/brands, tried cold turkey, tried the gum, tried the inhaler -- of course, nothing worked. Nothing even came remotely close. But these Blu Cigs looked to have promise; they simulated the act of smoking, contained nicotine, and seemed like they'd be a pretty good substitute that just might work.
But they wouldn't ship to Canada. Bummer.
For whatever reason it never dawned on me to Google alternatives to them. I really can't imagine why it didn't, but there it is. I'm a little slow sometimes. I blame cigarettes. For any of my past discrepancies, they're my go-to scapegoat these days anyway. I think it was just that I didn't quite latch on to the terminology, or maybe I just didn't think there were others out there. Nonetheless, and fortunately, the topic had at some point (mid-August) come up somewhere (I can't remember where) that referred to them in a more generic way, and that led me to start Googling up any and all information I could glean (which of course led me here, too). I learned the terminology, the different bits of the technology, and all of my available options to start me off. It was a good solid week of research -- when I get hold of an idea that intrigues me I tend to get a little voracious and single-minded about information gathering. The only real question that nobody could answer (because it was a personal experience thing) was how it felt. Whether it was like smoking a cigarette.
But I figured, what the heck. For under a hundred bucks I could get started with a good E-cig (or what was deemed good by popular consensus) and if it didn't work -- well, I spent $45 on a box of useless Nicorette inhalers that are still gathering dust in my desk's hutch. How much worse could this be? I decided to get an eGo starter kit and some juice from a couple of local vendors. I ordered Wednesday night. They both shipped Thursday. They arrived Friday. My wife told me while I was at work. I was oddly stoked. For some reason I had a really good feeling about them.
I had a cigarette on my way home from work, as I did, and walked in the door to my waiting package. Unpacked it and impatiently put my first E-cig together before even charging the battery -- I knew there would be at least some charge in it that would allow me to try it out. The juice I ordered was relatively low-end stuff -- I knew nothing about the differences between juices other than that there were different flavours -- but I tried it out.
And I coughed.
Not because it was harsh, but because it caught me off guard. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting there to be such a prominent yet smooth throat hit. Not only did it feel like smoking, it felt better than smoking. The flavour -- some generic tobacco flavour -- was kind of sweet, like fresh tobacco smells (I've always thought it smelled kind of like raisins). That was unexpected, too. For some reason I expected it to taste like ... I don't know. Cigarette smoke. Though I'm not even sure how you'd replicate something like that. But it was nice. Different, but nice.
So I took another puff. Less coughing. Another puff. No coughing. Another. And another. Before I know it, it's midnight and I haven't had a single cigarette all evening. I hadn't even wanted a cigarette. I didn't even think about it. I was enjoying the E-cig so much, and it was providing enough nicotine, that the thought of having an analog cigarette didn't even cross my mind. I went to bed kind of giddy.
The next morning -- Saturday -- I awoke. I didn't want a cigarette. I wanted to vape. So vape I did. And I still didn't want a cigarette. It was incredible. I couldn't ever have imagined going this long without a smoke. But I didn't need one. I didn't want one. That evening the wife suggested I finish the 9 I had left in my pack, just so I didn't waste them. I was thinking of keeping them as a kind of talisman, a reminder of what I was finally able to give up and proof that they had no more hold on me. But I agreed and had a cigarette. It didn't satisfy me. I couldn't yet put my finger on what it was exactly, but I finished it and was kind of "meh" about it. So I left the remaining 8 in the pack.
I went the whole next week without a cigarette, only vapor, and I was loving it. That Friday -- one week after switching -- I decided, deliberately, to have a cigarette, because I noticed my senses of taste and smell were really perking up. Also, I wanted to prove to myself that cigarettes had lost their hold on me. The cigarette was terrible. Seriously, you know that old saw that I've heard women use to describe what it's like to kiss a smoker? That it tastes like licking the bottom of an ash tray? That's what it tasted like. It took me right back to when I was 17 and first tried cigarettes. It was terrible and I couldn't even begin to comprehend how I was able to get past the taste enough to get hooked on them back then. I put the cigarette out halfway though -- and I only got that far because it was so freaky how quickly my taste buds woke up and realized burnt tobacco tasted like crap. I tried the same thing at the 3 week mark. Same result. Cigarettes were history.
Or so I thought.
I'd been ordering from a few different places to try different flavours and vendors. Around about October I started noticing circulation my feet was getting worse. Walking at my normal brisk pace for any length of time started making my feet hurt. This condition worsened over the next few weeks until it was getting quite bad. I was thinking it was that I was vaping liquid that was too strong (at the time, 18mg) and causing my veins to constrict too much. But I thought I'd give it a bit and see if it was something else. But then another symptom presented: Random but frequent heart palpitations. That was enough to scare me.
I tried lowering my nicotine content to 6 and 12mg, but I couldn't vape it. The throat hit was too little and it made me crave cigarettes. Plus, I ordered some stuff from Velvet Vapor with their "velvet blend" which seemed mostly to be VG and it was too thick and made me cough. I was terribly disappointed: I had to go back to cigarettes, having thought E-cigs had failed me.
I went back to smoking for several months. The pain and palpitations disappeared, which suggested it was indeed the E-cigs. I hated that. But around about February of this year I started vaping "part-time." I was sick of cigarettes and desperate to get back to vaping so I thought maybe I could at least cut down. That worked -- to a small degree. I discovered the eGo tanks had been released, tried them, they were terrible. I was beginning to despair that I'd never be able to go back to vaping full-time.
But then I read a post from someone. He complained of pain in his extremities and heart palpitations after vaping some kind of cheap Chinese liquid. The last liquid I was vaping was cheap Chinese liquid -- literally, $8 for 30ml. (I won't mention the vendor because I have absolutely no problem with them, they've done right by me, it's just whoever they get their juice from.) Somehow it just kind of clicked: There must have been some ingredients in that particular liquid that was causing health issues, and it wasn't just me.
This was about the time the B-type eGo tanks were released, so I found a vendor -- VapeRite -- and ordered a couple of B-type tanks, carts, and some juice. And just to conclusively prove that my problem wasn't that the liquid was too strong for me, I ordered some good strong juice. 26mg Toffle. It arrived in about a week. I tried it. The juice was, quite simple, incredible. Throat hit was awesome, flavour was fantastic. This despite the tanks that I'd learn quickly were just terrible. (Not VapeRite's fault, the tanks are just fail.)
And I kept vaping around that strength, just making sure to order quality juice from quality vendors. I discovered dual coil cartomizers. I've tried a number of different vendors. And I'm still vaping 24+mg without a single problem, and it's been 4 months since going back to vaping full-time. No health issues -- except once again much better health than I had when I was smoking.
It'll be a year since I first tried vaping next month around this time, and despite the perceived failure that turned out to be crap juice, I've kept at it and can quite confidently call it a complete and utter success. I am finally "in the pocket" as far as having found both hardware and vendors that I love and have no plans on ever touching another analog.
There are still two cigarettes left in the last pack I bought in April. I keep them with me on my daily commute. They are my talisman.
