Great, great story, and PLEASE tell me that the Provari was your first PV ever, which would put you in a very special class of people who had the good sense to start at the top, and skip all of the mucking about with lesser devices. (And no, I am not one of them).
Variable voltage is really the only way to go to get maximum enjoyment from all of your atomizers and all of your juices. The don't all want the same exact number of volts to provide x amount of watts, it's just that simple. Some juices will probably even taste better at a different wattage after they've steeped a while than when they were new. And with a VV device, you can power any resistance atomizer, including ones that you might have bought in error, or that people who did the same give to you because they can't power them. And I'm still looking into it, but it seems to me that it's possible that 10 watts arrived at by powering a 2.5 ohm carto at 5 volts makes a juice taste better than 10 watts from 3.6 volts at 1.25 ohms.
Anyway, Yoda has taught you well, and I'm so glad you're off the stinkies. Vaping is amazing, and I have little patience for the fools who look down on it because it's relatively new, and foreign to them. Is it 100% harmless, especially at high nicotine levels? No. Is it infinitely better than smoking cigarettes? Absolutely.
I haven't had a cigarette in about 8 months, and don't want one. For about 7 of those months I vaped zero nicotine, so-so tasting juices, and even that was plenty enjoyable for me to not want a ciggie. For about the last month or so I've been dabbling at between 18-24 mg, and I've been feeling like Bradly Cooper in "Limitless". I'm convinced that per scientific studies, nicotine does boost your memory, and my mind has been sharper than it has been in a long time. Sharper even than when smoking, because with cigarettes, along with nicotine comes copious amounts of carbon monoxide, reducing the supply of oxygen to evry single cell in your body, including brain cells.
Of course, nicotine also brings pleasure by raising dopamine levels, and I had decided after 7 months that I wanted to see what that felt like again. Pretty good, as it turns out. Fortunately, nicotine by itself is not nearly as addictive as it is when accompanied by the MAOI's (monoamine oxidase inhibitors) in tobacco smoke, so a vaper is more able to take or leave nicotine. Accordingly, I'm in the process of dialing it down from 18 or so to lower levels, and I'll eventually find a sweet spot of throat hit, memory enhancement, and blood pressure. On the latter: My BP has always been about perfect; 120/80, give or take, even while smoking ciggies. Lately, I've been vaping like a fiend, and when I finally got around to checking my BP it was in the high 140's/90's, with a heart rate in the 90's. Looking back in my machine's memory, it's been as low as 120/62/50 and 105/64/57, although it did have the occasional reading in the 130's, and even a couple in the 140's. There's no doubt that it's consistently higher now though, so I need to reduce nic levels without a doubt.
My advice (that you didn't ask for) would be to make sure the nic level is high enough to keep you off ciggies, but as low as possible. And I think everyone who vapes should have a blood pressure monitor for optimum health, and for getting nicotine levels to where your heart would like them to be. I happen to have an Omron HEM-780, and that brand consistently gets good reviews. Well-made, easy to use, no problems, just under $100.
So, with that cautionary tale, I congratulate you on conquering the stinkies and starting a much better chapter in your life.
