The Cessation Claim

[DC2]

I wish I could make every vaper (and every smoker) understand that we are all different.
Too many vapers and smokers think that their experience has told them the truth of the matter.

The truth of the matter is that your personal experience is just that, and nothing more.

If we all got the same thing from smoking and vaping a personal experience might be very enlightening.
But we don't all get the same things from vaping or smoking.

Yeah, I know, you think it's the nicotine, because you've been severely brainwashed for decades.

It's not always the nicotine.
In fact, more often than not it may not be the nicotine at all.

Not everyone that has quit smoking has done so because of the same exact magic bullet.
Nor are people that keep smoking doing it for the exact same reasons.

 

[LMS62]

^^^^^^^This!

 

[pamdis]

I believe:
For those who really wish to stop smoking cessation rate for "cold turkey" method is about 100%.
For those who really wish to stop smoking while vaping cessation rate is about 100%.
For those who hope to stop smoking cessation rate is pretty low with any method.
.

My personal experience as 1.5pad for 38 years:

Really wanted to stop smoking countless times with cold turkey method - fail.
Really wanted to stop smoking using gum - fail
Really wanted to stop smoking using hypnosis - fail

Had no hope that e-cigs would work, but did it anyway as a favor for my son - stopped smoking same day. Surprised and amazed!

Six weeks later, something wrong. My mind fighting with itself - "I need a cigarette!", "No, I don't want to smoke!" going back and forth in my mind. I couldn't figure it out and it was literally making me crazy. Discovered WTA, and problem solved.

Still amazed that I'm a non-smoker 1.5 years later.

ETA: I have introduced 4 people to e-cigs. 2 still vape with no smoking, and 2 returned to smoking only. I do realize that everyone is different, but I am like Jman8 and am amazed how well it seems to work for long time heavy smokers, and less well for others.

Although like Alien Traveler states, ECF is probably skewed. How many long term heavy smokers who failed with e-cigs are here stating that they returned to smoking?

 

[R. Scott Kennan]

Although like Alien Traveler states, ECF is probably skewed. How many long term heavy smokers who failed with e-cigs are here stating that they returned to smoking?

I know I was afraid to show my face for most of the year I was dual using. Only when I had hope that I'd really be able to quit did I come back. I did follow advances in technology, and the industry in general, but I wasn't really taking part.

 

[amoret]

After 42 years of anywhere from one to three PAD I absolutely did not want to quit. But I have a medical problem that caused serious nerve damage, to the point that I couldn't hold onto a cigarette. Dropping lit cigarettes multiple times a day is a whole different category of health risk.

So I figured I'd try electronic cigarettes, not really expecting it to work. I was lucky enough to find ECF before I bought anything, so I started out with VV/VW and Kanger clearomizers (I can't rebuild, obviously) and gave it a try. The first week I got down to four or five smokes a day. Couldn't get rid of those last few for a couple of weeks, until I went from 18 mg/ml to 26 mg/ml. And it worked. And it is still working after more than a year.

So, no, you don't have to actually want to quit smoking if you have enough reason to have to quit. I had tried all of the standard approved methods before, including actually wanting to quit. But I was just so miserable that I gave up on quitting. I liked smoking. I had no health problems caused by smoking.


ps: the really funny thing is that three months after I quit we had a chimney fire and burned the house down anyhow.

 

[philoshop]

Here, wear my shoes. They're my favorite shoes and you're gonna love 'em. They don't fit right? Just wear 'em, they're the best.

 

[R. Scott Kennan]

Here, wear my shoes. They're my favorite shoes and you're gonna love 'em. They don't fit right? Just wear 'em, they're the best.

I know this is probably a general statement about the thread, but I did advocate a tactic, so I'll comment on this.

I want to be clear that I wasn't trying to claim that what is working for me would work for anyone. I just wanted to make sure that anyone who it might work for knew about WTA. I've found ECF threads via Google, so you never know who might find these threads in the long run.

The more tactics for possible success available, the better a person's chances are. All I'm saying is this one thing is working for me, so a person might want to explore it before giving up on vaping. There are other strategies out there as well, and if someone wants to quit, we should all help to inform them so that they're able to try as many of them as possible before they give up on vaping.

 

[samturdo]

for some reason its not about the cigarette for me, its how it made me feel. i have cravings all the time but theyre not for cigarettes, theyre for nicotine. after i decided to vape and not smoke (which ive broken that several times for several reasons) ive never craved a cigarette specifically, it was just the satisfaction from the cigarette that i wanted. the first two setups i tried did not give me that satisfaction at all (blu and ego + cheap clearo that tasted like burnt plastic) and i wasnt absorbing the nicotine (or didnt feel like i was). now i vape tobacco flavor with high nicotine (24 or 36mg) on a much more powerful setup (vv ego and aerotank) and have a mech mod coming in the mail so im pretty sure i found the right way to handle those cravings. thats all its about for me.

 

[AndriaD]

It's not always the nicotine.
In fact, more often than not it may not be the nicotine at all.

Not everyone that has quit smoking has done so because of the same exact magic bullet.
Nor are people that keep smoking doing it for the exact same reasons.

This is wonderful, DC. Although I smoked for 39 yrs, almost 4 decades, I'm actually very slightly addicted to nicotine, for several reasons. I switched from Lights to Ultra-Lights more than 20 yrs ago, and even with ultra-lights, I had to learn a method of inhaling that actually turns out to be rather similar to the suggested method for vaping: inhaling slowly, and shallowly. I had to switch, and change my inhalation method, because of my asthma; I could no longer tolerate even a Light, and I could not tolerate the traditional smoker's deep inhale. Yes, I definitely should have probably just quit smoking entirely at the time I switched and changed my inhalation, because of my asthma, but I did try, and fail, twice -- so I had to find a way to accommodate my asthma with my continuing smoking habit.

Many people find that when they go from full to lights, or lights to ultra-lights, they begin to smoke more, and that probably happened with me as well -- but 16 or 17 yrs ago, I was forced to stop smoking indoors, by my son's health problems; taking my smoking outdoors meant my habit went immediately from 3+ pks a day, to 2 pks a day. And as the prices of cigarettes continued to rise, I continued to cut down, until I was smoking just one pk a day.

When I first got here in January and learned what I needed to know to find a decent cigalike (an eRoll), I had ZERO intention of quitting; what I sought was a way to "smoke" indoors without stinking up the place, because it's damn cold in January, and last winter was our coldest winter in over 30 yrs. But when I got here and started reading of all those who "accidentally" quit because e-cigs were just that good, I began thinking of all the reasons why I really did need to quit, and recalling that I had wanted to be a non-smoker for quite a while, but could not find a way to get there, without such suffering that I gave up the effort -- I wanted to be a non-smoker without having to suffer to get there.

So, when I got my eRoll, I began using it as I had originally intended -- mainly at night, when it was cold, but even that was somewhat hampered by not being able, at first, to find an ejuice that really "did it" for me. That took a few weeks. When I finally got an ejuice that many had said tasted a great deal like VA Slims, I wasn't really expecting much, I had been so disappointed by the other tobacco flavors I had tried -- but my very first puff was so astonishing, I remember FEELING my eyes get wide, because in a great many ways, it really did taste like the cigarettes I had smoked for more than 30 yrs. At that point, I began a campaign to just SEE how many cigarettes I could replace with vaping. That was about the end of the first week of Feb. By the last week in Feb, my "tally" was down to less than 5 cigarettes a day; the last 3 days I smoked, I smoked just one cigarette that day, the right-after-waking smoke, and I realized -- if I could get by with just 1 cigarette a day, I could most likely get by just fine without it, and on Feb 28, I did exactly that. Nobody was more surprised than I.

So, I was not a heavy smoker, nor did I smoke very strong cigarettes, nor was I really interested in quitting -- but I was a very long-term smoker who had tried many times to quit, without success -- yet I succeeded in quitting smoking without trying terribly hard to do so. Yes, there was some effort involved, but mainly of the "let's see if this really works" variety. It did.

This summer, after my appendectomy, I returned to smoking -- but by using pretty much the same technique, increasing vaping while decreasing smoking, I was able to do it a 2nd time, in just about the same amount of time, about a month. There was more effort required, because it was no longer a novelty, but I put the cigarettes down completely while still smoking 5 per day, simply because I KNEW it was possible. When cravings came back around my 10th day smoke-free, rather than go back to smoking AGAIN, I began adding WTA -- and I echo whoever said it above, that WTA took the place of strenuous willpower, because the cravings departed and have not returned.

Andria

 

[chopdoc]

I wish I could make every vaper (and every smoker) understand that we are all different.
Too many vapers and smokers think that their experience has told them the truth of the matter.

The truth of the matter is that your personal experience is just that, and nothing more.

If we all got the same thing from smoking and vaping a personal experience might be very enlightening.
But we don't all get the same things from vaping or smoking.

Yeah, I know, you think it's the nicotine, because you've been severely brainwashed for decades.

It's not always the nicotine.
In fact, more often than not it may not be the nicotine at all.

Not everyone that has quit smoking has done so because of the same exact magic bullet.
Nor are people that keep smoking doing it for the exact same reasons.

Im trying to understand here DC2, I dont see anywhere here where anyone believes we are all alike. So what gives. Do people sharing their experiences upset you or am I just taking this wrong.

 

[Jman8]

Im trying to understand here DC2, I dont see anywhere here where anyone believes we are all alike. So what gives. Do people sharing their experiences upset you or am I just taking this wrong.

We are all alike in believing that none of us are exactly like each other.

 

[Piak]

I was a 1PAD smoker on normal days, and probably 2PAD on weekends, and was a smoker for 10 years.

From the day I picked up my starter kit I never smoked a single cigarette.

This amazes my wife because she has seen me quit smoking (with the help of NRTs) for about 6 months just to go right back into 1PAD. Even when I did quit, I did smoke on occasion, maybe after a night out drinking, and only considered myself a social smoker.

But, as mentioned many times by others, everyone is different and the variables are just too many to come to any conclusion with any certainty. But to anyone willing to give vaping a good try as a method of smoking cessation, I would do everything I can to help. There were a few times where I was very tempted to pick up an analog, and a few things that I did really helped, and these are the things I would suggest to anyone, experienced in vaping or not.

1. Never run out of batteries, clearomizers, cartomizers, tanks or juices. I always have backups, enough to make sure that if a single component fails or runs out, I have another one stowed away that is can be made available to me immediately.

2. Have a bunch of different juices of different flavours & nic levels. We all know when we were smokers that not every cigarette we lit was out of a need for the nic hit some of it was purely out of habit, sometimes just because we could.

Whenever I miss having a cigarette, I swap out my juices, this gives me the novelty I need to not think of picking up a cigarette. On days where I get really stressed out, I swap out to a low nic level juice, so I can vape all I want without getting a headache.

3. If the above doesn't work, upgrade. Get something that CAN hit you like a freight train when you want it. I have combinations of juices, along with high wattages AND a lung inhale, where I get a harder hit from a single puff than I ever could with a cigarette.

I would really only consider someone fit to say they have given vaping a try and not like it after they have tried all of the above =D

 

[FlamingoTutu]

Im trying to understand here DC2, I dont see anywhere here where anyone believes we are all alike. So what gives. Do people sharing their experiences upset you or am I just taking this wrong.

Not going to speak for DC2, but I think, after reading his posts for over a year, what he means is that many people on here think vaping is an either/or proposition. I sure did since my goal had been so focused on getting off cigarettes for so many decades that I couldn’t comprehend that anybody would want to do both and be okay with that. It took me nearly a year to wrap my brain around that and only did after someone patiently (likely through clenched teeth) explained it to me. Boy did I feel stupid then.

If I'm dead wrong, I hope he at least agrees with the above.

 

[FlamingoTutu]

I smoked for 43 years and was up to 2+ PAD. Like Andria, I smoked ultra lights for at least 20 years. Need a bigger oomph, plug the holes and hit it harder. I hated smoking, hated what it was doing to me, hated being a slave to BT, hated having to go outside with the other smokers to feed my addiction, hated the smell of dirty ashtrays, hated exposing my husband and pets to it, hated being steeped in the smell of tobacco smoke, hated everything about it. Don’t get me wrong, there were times I loved it more than anything else, and I hated that too. I wanted to quit for at least 40 years.

Tried everything that I knew was available to quit and couldn’t. It’s just plain insulting to say that if somebody really wanted to quit they could just go cold turkey. There’s hundreds, thousands of people on ECF that have been over-the-moon thrilled that they could finally quit smoking by vaping. A few people can go cold turkey. Fewer people can do it without turning into an ogre. My hat is off to them, they are blessed.

I had a miserable time converting. Took me over five months. Had to bump up to 24mg to get over that initial hump. WTAs might have helped, I don’t know and never will I guess. Glad they are available for those that need them. They seem to be the magic ingredient for some people that are really struggling.

I’d already hit calm waters by the time I found ECF but my life would have been easier if I’d found it earlier. Certainly any lingering doubts and uneasiness were quelled by finding it.

Jman8, some weeks ago you asked someone why they hated the smell of smoke. It’s a good question and one that got me wondering. I’m in kind of the unique position of not smelling cigarette smoke for weeks to months at a time. I knew my sense of smell was back when my dog took a dump upwind of me. The smell was god-awful and nearly blew me off my feet. Shortly thereafter I got my first whiff of cigarette smoke since quitting. It was stunningly horrid, blabbed about it for a week, couldn’t get over it. Even smelled the stench of it from over 200 feet away once. This went on for over a year. Nonsmokers look at you kinda funny when you, an exsmoker, rant on about how awful cigarette smoke smells.

The last time I thought I smelled it was about a week before you asked. I thought I smelled smoke but wasn’t sure. It smelled the way I remembered it smelling when I smoked and not bad at all. Weird. A week or two later I was catching a flight and made a point of trying to smell the smoke in a non-biased way. At an airport where they go out of their way to paint lines on the ground (like a penalty box) to corral all the lepers together, it’s hard to miss the smell of smoke. I smelled three things; ashtray, stale smoke and fresh smoke. All three smelled the same as when I smoked but perhaps a bit stronger. Ashtray and stale smoke bad, fresh smoke not bad at all.

That smoking smelled so bad after I quit was a complete shock and ranked right up there with poo. Different smell but just about as rank. That it’s suddenly back to smelling “normal” again is baffling. There are numerous posts here about how bad people find smoke smells after they quit, how embarrassed they are that they once smelled like that, so I’m not the only one. It seems most folks that don’t find it offensive are dual users, live with someone that smokes or are around it all the time. No clue what mechanism flips that switch from smells okay to reeks like a septic tank but it’s an interesting phenomenon. Anyway, you asked and there’s my long winded answer.

 

[DroopyDogs]

31+ years of 1 1/2 packs of Marlboro Lights a day. I tried EVERYTHING including hypnosis - TWICE! Chantix (the devil), made me a lunatic. I was at the point I had completely given up quitting, figured I would smoke until I died and I was feeling the effects more and more every day. Finally bought a Halo Triton on a whim more as an easier way to smoke at work, by day #3 of having the Halo I had my last cigarette.

I am still absolutely amazed to this day, almost 1 month later. Now my time is consumed with shopping online for flavors and "stuff" instead of standing in the weather elements to suck down some burnt paper and chemicals. Haven't saved any money yet, but I sure am having fun and feeling much better already. My two cents.

 

[chopdoc]

That shows how different we really are. I still like the smell of fresh smoke, depending on the smoke. The missus smokes Marlboro reds and her smoking doesnt bother me yet because of life I seldom see her anymore. I am gone half the year at work and her mom is ailing so she had to move back in with her to take care of her mom. Yet when she does come to the house and smokes it doesnt bother me at all until she is gone. The stale smoke smell kind of sucks.
Her brother was riding with me over a month ago and I let him smoke in my truck and that really stunk bad enough I wished I didnt let him light up. When I am at work a smoker can walk into the room and I can smell it and thats usually not a good smell. But what really struck home for me that as a non smoker I could smell things a lot better is one night we worked right to quiting time and I was drenched in sweat. I got into my car and was driving to the apartments when the smell of my sweat hit me and I really stunk!

And DroopyDogs, congrats on quitting!!! Im just like you in that regard. Took me four days to quit a 40 year 3 PAD habit and I am still amazed at how easy it was with vaping.

 

[Dixie1954]

I am still somewhat of a newbie. I am trying to get used to the peppery taste of the nic base. I do not use it and never eat it so it sticks way out to me. So I am still a dual user. I understand, having quit numerous times, that it takes more than just will power to quit with vaping or not. I am not giving up even though it would be much easier and for me more cost effective. For the last few years I have been smoking 10 cigs a day I buy the pipe tobacco and use tubes and make them myself - cost me about $26 a month. I do not even want to think about how much I have spent trying to convert to vaping lol. But I am not giving up I will find a solution to my taste problems. I am here to say if I can keep trying even though the thought of pepper in my mouth is repugnant then there is hope for anyone

 

[chopdoc]

I was a 1PAD smoker on normal days, and probably 2PAD on weekends, and was a smoker for 10 years.

From the day I picked up my starter kit I never smoked a single cigarette.

This amazes my wife because she has seen me quit smoking (with the help of NRTs) for about 6 months just to go right back into 1PAD. Even when I did quit, I did smoke on occasion, maybe after a night out drinking, and only considered myself a social smoker.

But, as mentioned many times by others, everyone is different and the variables are just too many to come to any conclusion with any certainty. But to anyone willing to give vaping a good try as a method of smoking cessation, I would do everything I can to help. There were a few times where I was very tempted to pick up an analog, and a few things that I did really helped, and these are the things I would suggest to anyone, experienced in vaping or not.

1. Never run out of batteries, clearomizers, cartomizers, tanks or juices. I always have backups, enough to make sure that if a single component fails or runs out, I have another one stowed away that is can be made available to me immediately.

2. Have a bunch of different juices of different flavours & nic levels. We all know when we were smokers that not every cigarette we lit was out of a need for the nic hit some of it was purely out of habit, sometimes just because we could.

Whenever I miss having a cigarette, I swap out my juices, this gives me the novelty I need to not think of picking up a cigarette. On days where I get really stressed out, I swap out to a low nic level juice, so I can vape all I want without getting a headache.

3. If the above doesn't work, upgrade. Get something that CAN hit you like a freight train when you want it. I have combinations of juices, along with high wattages AND a lung inhale, where I get a harder hit from a single puff than I ever could with a cigarette.

I would really only consider someone fit to say they have given vaping a try and not like it after they have tried all of the above =D

Hiya Piak, how long its been since you quit smoking?

There is a few on this forum who vape for months and still struggle with putting the cigs down and then lots of people who started vaping and a few days later quit a multi decade long habit. Then there are a few who smoke and vape and have no intentions of quitting the smoking. Some are fine with low levels of nicotine and I seen a few who wants 50+ mg nicotine juice. To each there own i believe.
I am glad to hear you worked out a system that sounds like it will keep you from ever smoking again. For some vaping just isnt for them. My wife is like that. She will puff on the Blu's when she cant smoke a cigarette yet wants nothing to do with any of my vapes and commented before on how she doesnt like the smell of some of the juices i like. It doesnt work the same for everyone.

 

[chopdoc]

I am still somewhat of a newbie. I am trying to get used to the peppery taste of the nic base. I do not use it and never eat it so it sticks way out to me. So I am still a dual user. I understand, having quit numerous times, that it takes more than just will power to quit with vaping or not. I am not giving up even though it would be much easier and for me more cost effective. For the last few years I have been smoking 10 cigs a day I buy the pipe tobacco and use tubes and make them myself - cost me about $26 a month. I do not even want to think about how much I have spent trying to convert to vaping lol. But I am not giving up I will find a solution to my taste problems. I am here to say if I can keep trying even though the thought of pepper in my mouth is repugnant then there is hope for anyone

My last few years of smoking I did the same thing with the pound bags of tobacco and the tubes. I was averaging $100 a month for my smoking.

How many different brands of ejuice have you tried? I heard others who say they tasted peppery nicotine yet I haven't noticed it yet. I am making my own ejuice now and ITCvapes is the only vendor I still buy from.

 

[Oliver]

I don't have the data to hand, but in our last survey (April) we found that those who were dual using had cut back massively: 15 cigs per day, on average. 80-odd % had made the full transition.

It's worth noting that in other contexts (NRT specifically), dual use is almost always considered to be a transitional behaviour. When we do the survey again, we'll try to match on email addresses to see how many people who were dual using have since made the full transition.

As noted elsewhere in the thread, there's a huge amount of individual differences and ECF visitors are a somewhat self-selecting sample. Nevertheless, I think we can say confidently that the huge range of product choices (needs and wants) suggests reasons that the pharmaceutical industry never had a chance with the medical model of "treating smokers".

Was thinking yesterday about the cessation claim of smokers to vapers. I'm not one that has ceased smoking, but am one who has cut so far back that when anyone asks me "are you a smoker," I hesitate for a good 5 seconds and usually respond with, "I'm a happy moderate smoker. Haven't had a smoke in x amount of days."

Anyway, yesterday I was thinking about the many vapers on forums who are (or were):
A. heavy smokers (3+ packs a day)
B. long time smokers (30+ years)
C. having no intention to stop smoking
D. and went on to cease smoking within first week of vaping.

That, IMO, is amazing. I don't know of any other cessation method that could work that well. I was also thinking, yesterday, that I'm kinda surprised cessation isn't 100%. Then followed that up with idea that I'm not part of the cessation crowd, but am part of crowd that has reduced so greatly that I often wonder how any vaper (of open system devices) could continue on as heavy smoker. I honestly find that impossible unless one is trying to do both just to prove some, rather juvenile, point. About 3 weeks ago, I had all of 6 smokes in a day. Vaped normally after that, and it was another week before I had another smoke. As one who's quit cold turkey, I don't think it would be possible to have 6 smokes in a day, have one a week later, and not soon be back to smoking a pack a day or more.

Vaping takes heavy smoking and, rather quickly, reduces it to light smoker and as demonstrated by A, B, C and D above, can take very heavy smoker and reduce them to non-smoker in 7 days or less. I continue to be amazed by stories of people that smoked twice as much as me at my peak (of heavy smoking) and who when trying vaping cut down to zero smokes in a very short period of time.

I am honestly a little surprised that the cessation rate isn't at or very close to 100% for those who do wish to stop smoking. For those who don't, I would be a little amazed if it didn't reduce them to moderate smoker, though with stipulation that might take some time (like 90 days, maybe a little longer). And yet, there are plenty of stories around (online) where the heaviest of smokers with zero intention to quit, have quit smoking in less than a week via vaping. Again, that continues to amaze me.