Heya andria! Welcome. Chat with us for as long as you would like to. We are all friendly here.
As to your adv tasting off. Could it be from the sickness and your tastes have changed? When I was sick a while back I couldn't vape at all, and ended up smoking slightly more than before I started to cut down. After I was feeling better nothing tasted like it used to and I found my tastes had changed. Used to really like fruity flavors, now I only seem to like them as secondary flavors.
Hi, Andria, and welcome to our thread. I've seen you around a lot, especially on the Sigelei thread. I'm sorry to hear that you're having difficulty going back to vaping after your surgery. Smoking is so much easier than vaping...no thought required.
Like Top said, maybe your tastes have changed. Do you have any other type of juice you could try that's different from what you were using? Have you considered trying a NET juice? Many people swear by them as the extra kick they needed to get off the smokes.
This is a great support group here. Anytime you need to ask a question, get a suggestion, vent after a bad day or just talk to someone who is/was in the same boat, you can do it here. I never could have been able to quit without the support I got from these wonderful people.
Yes, I think the 115 days smoke free let my tastebuds change a *great* deal, just in recuperating; then, going for so long without vaping (4 or 5 days), I lost the "acclimation" (if that's a word) to the taste of vapor in general, and really everything tasted just horrible to me, everything tasted bitter as sin, and it took me almost 2 wks to be able to eat normally. Before I got sick, I was *just* beginning to turn slightly from my ADV Virginia to more fruit flavors, really enjoying Blueberry Muffin and Pineapple Express; now those 2 are the only ones that taste "right" to me, but they're fruity, which was great when I hadn't had a cigarette in so long, but now... well they just don't seem an adequate substitute. So, as I mentioned to Alisa, I've gone back to my old eRolls, because they mute the flavor a bit, make it not taste so odd to me, and the cigalike form factor also seems to help, since my urge to smoke has been reawakened.
Welcome to the thread Andria. You found a great group here. Just from my experience reading here on ECF and trying to quit smoking, period, I think the 2nd time and subsequent tries to quit are always harder than that first time. Probably has a lot to do with beating yourself up for picking up that cigarette after having stopped for a time.
Yes, I feel like a total idiot and a complete failure for doing such a stupid, stupid thing when I had it LICKED!, but at the time, I don't know what else I could have done; just the smell of vapor at that point made me feel ill.
Hang out here with us. Great people here. Some of us are still smoking, some of us have been quit for a while, and several more of us are at different points in our journey.
One thing I can tell you that I think everyone here will agree with is that you need to stop beating yourself up for smoking/still smoking. Keep vaping, try new flavors/vendors and maybe a new topper. And RELAX. Try to stop worrying about it. Just count the ones you do not smoke. Or do not count at all.
Vaping is a pretty personal thing in the end. Some things will work for some people and not for others. You will find what is right for you. And just because something worked for you the first time, it may need some tweaking this go around or a whole new approach.
Hang in there!!
Well one thing I'm glad about is that even the limited amount of vaping I'm doing is still acting as harm reduction; normally in the summer, I would be smoking 25-30 cigarettes daily, but I'm managing to hold it to half a pk a day. But I miss my clear lungs and clear sinuses, and also not having to carry that smell around with me all the time. I miss being able to do a little dance of joy, hollering "I don't smoke anymore!"
And even worse than beating up on myself, I can already hear what my mom will say, if/when she finds out that I'm smoking again -- some variation of "I knew you couldn't do it," or "I knew those things wouldn't work." She has always claimed the role of "devil's advocate," but what that means is that she's a negative, emotionally-abusive self-esteem destroyer, and I really hate that at the age of 53, and she's 73, she still treats me that way, but I guess some people don't change no matter how old or infirm they get. And her age and infirmity is a big part of the problem, too -- when I was younger, I moved right across the country -- all the way to Michigan! -- just to get away from her, but now, with her degree of ill health, it's very plain that her time on the planet is pretty sharply limited, and she is my only mom, even if she's kind of a crappy one. And I'm her only child, so at this point, just going away from her completely isn't an option. I have this week, till Thursday, to get free of cigarettes again, or she *is* going to find out, because when I see her next Saturday, she'll smell it on me. I picked Thursday because I'd like a full day of smoke-free before I see her, so hopefully I can get rid of the smell.
I feel like enough of a failure, I really don't need her rubbing it in. And she will. That's just who she is. And no, I really don't have a choice in seeing her next Saturday; we've had an arrangement with my folks for about a year to clean their house for them monthly, for which they pay us $75, which pays my Visa card payment; it was supposed to be today, but I begged off, claiming I still wasn't quite up to par for a full day's work, so it has to be next Saturday.
Andria
He's gotta be one of the most generous people around.
It took me many, many years to sort out her BS from reality; I was in my 40s before I finally could deal with it all, and realize exactly *why* I had been so angry, and had such low self-esteem, my entire life. Fortunately I think I turned out to be a pretty good mom, despite the poor example; anytime I was confused about anything, when my son was growing up, I'd just do whatever was completely opposite from whatever my own mom would have done. 
