I'm the opposite. When I was a smoker as soon as my eyes opened I would reach for my glasses and then my cigarettes. And would smoke one whilst waiting for the kettle to boil for my morning cuppa.
Now that I vape I don't start vaping as soon as my eyes are open. I often potter around doing other stuff while I wait for the kettle to boil, and don't vape for up to an hour after getting up. When I do start vaping I tend to chain vape though unless I'm busy on here and 'forget'.
There's another point - I never 'forgot' to stop for a cigarette. When I was smoking I could not go more than 25-30 mins without a cigarette. But I can easily go over an hour without a vape if my attention is on something else.
I currently identify as a smoker, and because we don't allow much stipulation on degree of smoking, I'm lumped in with all the other heavily addicted people like I was about a decade ago, or like most ex-smoking vapers claim to be, as your post represents.
But I had one cigarette yesterday. Zero the day before. 2 the day before that. My current pack is around half full, and was purchased around 2 weeks ago. Therefore, all the previous understandings of how heavily addictive smoking cigarettes are not true in my case, and I am one who has been heavy user, while also one who has gone cold turkey from smoking (for over a decade).
We toss around memes about smoking as if it is settled 'science' and not disputed. I find all of it, especially in last couple years, highly disputable. I recall finding some of it disputable when I went cold turkey and didn't develop an incessant hatred or regret for my past heavy use/abuse as a smoker. But now as a proud moderate smoker who feels well aware of the data around smoking, plus has experience on pretty much all types of uses as a smoker (non, ex, heavy, moderate), I find the so called 'knowledge' to be incredibly biased, based predominantly on emotional hype and very very easy to challenge through actual reasoning and actual science.
