Please Help Me Understand Addiction

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krazie_Kid

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www.vapor4life.com
V4L and vaporking.com in not the same thing. V4L is a 808 two piece and what you ordered is most likely a three piece unit like a 510.

the confusion is caused by the fact that the 2 piece model from vapor4life.com is *called* the vapor king. that's what your googling was pointing to. vaporkings.com is another model, they just use that name. ;)

hmm, so if i wana order off vapor4life for the carts how would i do that then? is there a way 2 find out my model? i can go and try 2 post a pic of it but idk lol and ya it baught me 2 vaporking.com
 

needtoknow

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not ready to give up the smokes yet, but have cut back in half or less than what I did smoke. I think it is the addiction route, however I did buy it with the purpose of cutting back at work and it seems as though I have more of a Want to smoke there than I do at home. So I to believe what was said about keeping up the vaping before you get the craving and the craving won't come as quick. Some times also even though I don't really need any nicotine, because I have vaped allot, I just want to SMOKE. So I do think it is a mental thing and that hopefully like I have heard some say one day I just forgot to smoke. Well anyway smoking less is still a win for me or anyone as far as I am concerned and I can't worry about how much I do or do not smoke right now or I will start feeling that I am failing and quit vaping and be right back where I started. And I am my own worst enemy and can be harder on myself than anyone else every could.
Just my thoughts, sorry for rambling.

P.S. Anyone now where to get the swiss snus I keep hearing about? and is it the same as snuff you can buy at the smoke shops?
 

impcat

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I have ZERO willpower. I went into vaping knowing this about myself.

Last year, I had tried the patches, failed at that, three months later I tried the inhalers and failed at that. Four months later, I tried Chantix and got scared when one day I had a sudden urge to smack the dickens out of my precious little granddaughter (I didn't follow through on that urge, thank God). I flushed the rest of the Chantix and had pretty much resigned myself to a life with analogs.

Then I started talking to an online friend of mine who told me that she had quit analogs by vaping after finding out that she had breast cancer. I figured I would give it a last-ditch try because I was truly sick of the smell of analogs.

I decided that the only way for me to quit smoking analogs was to literally force myself into it. Since I am on Social Security, I only get paid once a month and have a set amount of money set aside each month for smoking. I was a 2 pack a day smoker, and my January check was going to come a couple days earlier than normal due to the holidays, so I bought a carton of cigarettes on January 1st, even though I still had 2 packs in the freezer.

On the evening of January 1st, I placed my first order for an e-cig and some cartomizers--following the suggested usage amount on that company's website, my order included 6 boxes of 5 cartomizers each.

The company I had purchased my kit from sent me the wrong cartomizers so I called them and they sent new ones. However, they still sent me the wrong ones, so I called again. Finally, they got the order correct--leaving me with a stash of 90 cartomizers to get me through the first month--even though some of them were not only the wrong flavor, but also the wrong strength. By the time the second incorrect order had arrived, I was fairly perturbed with the company (not to mention going through nicotine withdrawals) I suggested that they send me an extra battery for the inconvenience they had put me through--a new battery arrived with my corrected order.

I did have some nicotine withdrawal due to the incorrect carto strengths, but mustered through it--I had no choice since I had already spent my monthly budget. I would have to wait til February to either buy more cartomizers/juice, or more analogs.

By the time February rolled around, I figured I had already been off the analogs for nearly a month, so I opted for more cartos and juice. I also found ECF and quickly realized that the company I bought my first kit from was not the best around (how I wish I had known that back then!).

I still have my monthly budget, but it is for vaping now instead of smoking. Because I wanted to feel as though I was actually saving money since quitting smoking, I have cut my smoking/vaping budget in half.

So, basically, I wanted to quit, but had to force myself into a corner to be able to succeed at it due to having ZERO willpower. Addiction is powerful, but my grandmother would be proud of me--"Where there is a will, there is a way," was her favorite motto.

Smoking is an addiction and until a person is ready to give it up--physically and psychologically--it isn't going to work.

I now have new batteries from V4L, some new juices, and no more nasty smoke in my lungs. And I am one very happy camper! :D
 

lonercom

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Krazy, Find your order and tell us the model number. We can probably tell more with that.

Whatever you got, i'm sure some of us started with it and will be gad to point you in the right driecion. Also check my reply in the welcome mat.

As far as quitting and helping others quit... I can remember when I wished I wanted to quit. Acualy, I still don't. I so enjoy the rituals and customs that come with the habit. MMMMM, smoke rings.

Speaking as a former guy, I can say with all certainty that he will vape around the house and smoke at work until someone else at work starts vaping. Until then, keep the batt charged and the cartos at the ready.

GLA
 
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yanks21

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Just my thoughts, sorry for rambling.

You weren't rambling and yes, a lot of it psychological NO DOUBT.

Just my thoughts, sorry for rambling.

P.S. Anyone now where to get the swiss snus I keep hearing about? and is it the same as snuff you can buy at the smoke shops?

getsnus.com I haven't been in an honest to goodness smoke shop in years so I don't know if they carry swedish snus but even if they do chances are they're a lot more $$$ than online.

If you're really interested you want to check out the "smokeless" subforum here they are VERY helpful.
 

cappuccina

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I think for a lot of people, myself and my husband included, there can be a "defining moment" where something happens that really scares you or "wakes you up" regarding what you are doing....For us, it was that smoking was making us feel.....very sick.....My husband had some scary heart rate increases, and I had some near lethal asthma attacks, so we made the decision to quit.

Now, while the events causing us to quit were quite simple, quitting was NOT easy. "Simple" and "easy" are NOT always the same thing....
 

aubergine

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This is actually an enormously complicated question, but maybe a simplistic answer will suffice.

Addiction (to anything) is all about mind, including the mind's ability/willingness to tolerate discomfort. (Change of any sort is perceived by the primitive functions of the brain as threatening - the acquisition of a longed-for new job measures as high for stress as does getting fired.) In evolutionary sequence, we're all hardwired to move toward survival and away from death, just like a plant that turns toward the sun; toward security and away from danger, toward pleasure and away from pain, and then toward the myriad forms of self-gratification and self-enhancement that this evolves into with the capacity for abstract thought, and away from anything perceived as a threat to the now quite complicated territory that we define as "me."

If you pay attention, an enormous amount of mental and physical energy every day is spent in myriad, often reflexive, adjustments toward what is perceived as positive and away from what is perceived as negative, from little bodily shifts to ease physical comfort to complex psychological and social gambits. It's what we do.

All of this is fine so long as there are no significant obstacles to getting what we want and keeping it, and avoiding what we don't want and keeping it away. That's optimal, or seems to be. Anger and/or depression develop, and all sorts of complicated mental suffering, when that fails, and we can't find a way to accommodate threatening feelings of helplessness by incorporating it into a new project for happiness.

This is where addiction comes in. Primitive mind confuses pleasure with survival (it just registers positive and negative) and abstract mind provides all sorts of tricky doublethink rationale (see "defense mechanisms", "delusion", etc) to hold onto an experience perceived as powerfully enhancing psychological, social and/or physical well-being.

But abstract language allows us to see contradiction as well. It's really easy to hook a rat on ......., and once hooked, they simply seek it blindly. Humans get all tangled in a huge variety of mental convolutions because an option is at once perceived as a threat and a haven of safety. We experience dilemma, and suffering ensues. The rest is painful mental gymnastics and efforts to have the cake and eat it too.

Resolution seems to happen when any one or combination of events occur. Sometimes the association around habitually turning to the perceived positive becomes increasingly dominated by negative associations (fear of death/illness, loss of social status and security, compromise of moral ideals, etc), and the mind decides to tolerate the discomfort of relinquishment as a lesser discomfort. (This involves the relinquishment of a whole set of incidental behaviors that have also become "addictions", some of them with their own rewards, in all spheres). Sometimes an option perceived as very rewarding appears that would be lost if the other isn't relinquished (a smoke-hating lover, the soul's salvation, whatever). Again, the mind becomes willing to tolerate discomfort. Depending upon the degree of rationale that the habit has been encrusted with (like, "I will become insane without ____", or "___ is an integral and valued part of my identity", etc.), suffering ensues, and is tolerated until the new "habit" of mind has provided adequate and predictably reliable reward ensues, or the project fails.

(This is why people take up old addictions again under stress - there's always that rather stupid primitive brain that gets activated then, and that says, "the feeling of safety generated by having a drink or binge eating or smoking or whatever will somehow protect you from the insecurity you experience by having just lost your job...").
Sometimes just the feeling of strength and self-mastery that extends into all spheres of life by the act of relinquishing a dangerous pleasure is a strong enough substitute. This is why ex-smokers are so ostentatiously obnoxious - they are reinforcing themselves.
Or one can substitute/compensate. Have you ever been to an AA meeting? Chain-smoking out the wazoo, and tons of other compulsions. Compulsion itself is a secondary addiction.
But finally, it's all in the mind - the same abstract mind that holds an addiction can work its way out of it. It can choose to minimalize the discomfort and maximize the satisfaction of quitting. It can abruptly disrupt the nagging and unproductive internal argument by refusing to engage in it (Like with a wheedling 2 year old - "no, and we're not going to discuss it. Would you like to color?") until that auxilliary mental habit dissipates. It can literally change the mental language associated with the habit, say "want" instead of "need", and all that, and deconstruct hyperbolic beliefs and assumptions that support the habit. The mind can change the mind.

Ecigs make people really happy for the simple reason that nicotine, though physically addictive, is not the aspect of smoking associated strongly with threat, being neither carcinogenic nor mutagenic. We enjoy it and are not so afraid of it. So we are suddenly, to various degrees, freed of the dilemma altogether, without even needing to relinquish harmless and pleasant peripheral attatchments like gestures and tactile experience. PILES of reward, socially, financially (eventually), and etc. If we want to quit nicotine, too, we can do so in a rather leisurely and much less stressful manner, by just lowering strength.

That's not bad, it's very, very good.
When my obese clients begin to stop talking about "cravings" and "triggers" and "resisting" and "being strong" and "struggling" and "denying themselves" and "hunger", or producing peons of anguish about being fat, usually alternating with defiant condemnations of various internal and external pressures that seem to ask them to change or reject "who they are", all of which refer to some aspect of unwanted feelings of helplessness to get what they really feel that they want and need, and start going on excitedly about the deliciousness of salmon and melons and couscous, that's when they start really losing weight.

Addiction is just wanting something so much that competing wants are outweighed. "Compulsion" is something of a lie.
 
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AllCoExPat

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P.S. Anyone now where to get the swiss snus I keep hearing about? and is it the same as snuff you can buy at the smoke shops?

I got my first order from getsnus.com. They have several good sampler packs at reasonable prices and quick shipping.

The Smokeless subforum here at ECF is full of helpful folks who are doing some combination of vape-snus-snuff to feed the beast. It's a different perspective that I found very helpful.
 

krazie_Kid

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www.vapor4life.com
Krazy, Find your order and tell us the model number. We can probably tell more with that.

Whatever you got, i'm sure some of us started with it and will be gad to point you in the right driecion. Also check my reply in the welcome mat.

As far as quitting and helping others quit... I can remember when I wished I wanted to quit. Acualy, I still don't. I so enjoy the rituals and customs that come with the habit. MMMMM, smoke rings.

Speaking as a former guy, I can say with all certainty that he will vape around the house and smoke at work until someone else at work starts vaping. Until then, keep the batt charged and the cartos at the ready.

GLA

well the site is www(DOT)vaporking.com and its the starter kit showen for 54.99, if anyone has ever used it can you guys tell me if its good or not please? please pm me because i am working to 9pm est 2nite and no offence but i dont wana use my blackberry 2 scroll thru 7 pages lol so if you guys can pm me with even just the page number for the reply that would b great! ty for all ur guys help
 

Majhano

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See, I don't feel as though I've given anything up. I was so relieved the day our vapes came - I didn't WANT to smoke anymore, but my brain and hands wouldn't rest without that comforting hand-mouth-puff thing. I don't even feel as though I've quit smoking, I just do it a different way now, no different than when I switched from menthol analog to regular analog.


I have to agree with Stephra. I never thought I could quit smoking I tried once and had such bad panic attacks that I ran back to my old friend. I really wanted to quit the bad stuff but not the smoking. I got my first e-cig just to help me cut down never had any intention of quitting. But after the first vap I have not been really interested in smoking again. Occasionally I think it might be nice to have a cig but not enough to do it. I am happy vaping 0 nic and have no plans to stop vaping. I really enjoy it and the not having to worry about all of the bad stuff it wonderful:).
 

krazie_Kid

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www.vapor4life.com
I have to agree with Stephra. I never thought I could quit smoking I tried once and had such bad panic attacks that I ran back to my old friend. I really wanted to quit the bad stuff but not the smoking. I got my first e-cig just to help me cut down never had any intention of quitting. But after the first vap I have not been really interested in smoking again. Occasionally I think it might be nice to have a cig but not enough to do it. I am happy vaping 0 nic and have no plans to stop vaping. I really enjoy it and the not having to worry about all of the bad stuff it wonderful:).

well im glad 2 see that this is helping people, because i tried the gum and i currently do dip, but the thing is what majhano said, my hands need 2 keep going by my mouth for myself to feel relaxed, thats y i usually have a bottle of water after i do the dip and take small sips.
 

krazie_Kid

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Addiction is just wanting something so much that competing wants are outweighed. "Compulsion" is something of a lie.

yes i do agree with you there lol, but if anyone needs tips on how 2 quit all 2gether and doesnt think vaping is good, just pm me, i have plenty of tips for u guys
 

TheBlueAdept

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well the site is www(DOT)vaporking.com and its the starter kit showen for 54.99, if anyone has ever used it can you guys tell me if its good or not please? please pm me because i am working to 9pm est 2nite and no offence but i dont wana use my blackberry 2 scroll thru 7 pages lol so if you guys can pm me with even just the page number for the reply that would b great! ty for all ur guys help

The site vaporking.com is selling a different model; this forum is for the site vapor4life.com, which sells the Vapor King that you see discussed in threads here.

The Vapor King at vaporking.com is a 510 model if I recall correctly, and many people here do like that model quite a bit. It does not however come with Cartomizers (though you can get adapters to use them).

Whether you'd prefer a 510-type model, or the Vapor King (KR808D-1) offered at vapor4life.com is a very individual thing, so I wouldn't presume to tell you what's 'best' for you.
 
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