Firstly, you are a first-class gentleman of high quality for your humility, your empathy, and your prostration. I salute you, sir.
Secondly, you raise an interesting point. The
vaping world tends to bring out obsessive behaviors. To borrow a line from "The Italian Job", there are some who acquire
vaping gear to enrich their lives. Others, to define it. It sounds like you were the latter, but have decided to become the former.
Years ago I played Everquest, a mmorpg where players were treated as rats hitting buttons for rewards. In early play the rewards were frequent -- easy to gain levels and new abilities, and equipment was easy to acquire. As play progressed to higher levels, gradually more effort was required to produce similar rewards. Eventually, gaining a level required a week of coordinated grinding; learning a new spell meant weeks of camping the same dungeons, and the most desirable equipment was exceedingly rare, proudly displayed by players who camped for dozens of hours for weeks of days and won a lucky dice roll, owned by few, coveted by all.
See any similarities with acquiring vape gear?
The whole thing with mmorpg's is designed to get people addicted. And addicted I was. I stopped going out with friends to spend more time grinding. I stopped begging for hours at work, my paychecks declined, I fell behind on my rent, and I spent an embarrassing number of days at home in my pajamas in front of the computer from wake til sleep. Eventually I lost my job and got kicked out of my house. When I think back on the opportunities I skipped to feed my addiction, I'm mortified.
To say the least, I'm well acquainted now with my tendency for obsession, and I give it a wide berth.
When I started vaping, I started on the ubiquitous ego-t. It was good enough to get me off smokes, but ever since I've been on a quest for better. Better throat hit, easier maintenance, cheaper consumable parts... But very early on when I began to covet higher end equipment such as the FOG and the AFS and similar, I discovered the correlation between rarity and desirability. It reminded me too much of Everquest.
I decided not to become a collector. I get my vape gear for its utility, not its rarity. Aside from my ego stuff I keep for vapeageddon, I really don't own any vape gear I don't use. I'm not sure whether my motivation is the same as COM76's, but I think it's at least a cousin.
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