In thinking back on my last year-plus-two-days of vaping I see that it's been rather eventful and a huge learning experience that I'm still learning about. Like, for example, last fall. After vaping only a couple of months at most I'd started experiencing some unpleasant symptoms -- specifically pain in my extremities and heart palpitations. I thought it was related to too much nicotine intake so I ordered lighter juice. But I couldn't vape it -- the stuff I ordered was not only a blend that reduced TH, but too low to provide much if any TH to begin with.
Now, it seemed to me at the time to be an all or nothing proposition. I needed my TH, but it seems like I needed to cut down my nic level, too. But I couldn't get TH if I cut down the nic. I felt like I had no choice: I went back to analogs.
I more or less covered this stuff in my success story, so clearly I came back to the fold. But this adventure is, as everyone else here knows, ongoing, and the learning never stops. Take my recent misadventure in senility from just 10 days ago. Besides teaching me the obvious lesson that I shouldn't have needed this lesson to realize that I should be keeping backup supplies at work, it also taught me a more subtle yet arguably more important lesson: That I can reduce my nicotine intake without wanting to jam a pen in someone's earhole for an infraction worthy only of a kick to the groin. It's important not to overreact in my line of work.
This bit of revelatory personal experience occurred simultaneously with the growing realization that what happened last fall wasn't necessarily -- or at least wasn't entirely -- the fault of bad juice. There was something more here -- something my first instincts were right about: I am consuming too much nicotine, and the symptoms I'm experiencing confirm that.
Except now, it's not all or nothing. Until I can formulate some juice with low nicotine while preserving the throat hit using something like FlavorArt's Flash, I can simply cut down by taking less frequent puffs and nobody has to walk around protectively covering their ears as they pass by me. I've already been experimenting with diluting some of my 24mg juices down to 18mg using 25% vodka and it's working rather well indeed. (We can't get Everclear or the like here in Canada so vodka is as potent as it gets.) Nonetheless I need to bring it down further so I'll be working on that.
In the mean time, however, wish me luck. I know that I've conquered the psychological fear of going without -- at least to some degree -- but years of smoking have left a lot of distant yet lingering doubts, so nothing is certain and the extent to which I can cut down is still in question. I don't want to quit entirely -- I like vaping -- but I do need to turn it way down, and I only have so many pens.
Now, it seemed to me at the time to be an all or nothing proposition. I needed my TH, but it seems like I needed to cut down my nic level, too. But I couldn't get TH if I cut down the nic. I felt like I had no choice: I went back to analogs.
I more or less covered this stuff in my success story, so clearly I came back to the fold. But this adventure is, as everyone else here knows, ongoing, and the learning never stops. Take my recent misadventure in senility from just 10 days ago. Besides teaching me the obvious lesson that I shouldn't have needed this lesson to realize that I should be keeping backup supplies at work, it also taught me a more subtle yet arguably more important lesson: That I can reduce my nicotine intake without wanting to jam a pen in someone's earhole for an infraction worthy only of a kick to the groin. It's important not to overreact in my line of work.
This bit of revelatory personal experience occurred simultaneously with the growing realization that what happened last fall wasn't necessarily -- or at least wasn't entirely -- the fault of bad juice. There was something more here -- something my first instincts were right about: I am consuming too much nicotine, and the symptoms I'm experiencing confirm that.
Except now, it's not all or nothing. Until I can formulate some juice with low nicotine while preserving the throat hit using something like FlavorArt's Flash, I can simply cut down by taking less frequent puffs and nobody has to walk around protectively covering their ears as they pass by me. I've already been experimenting with diluting some of my 24mg juices down to 18mg using 25% vodka and it's working rather well indeed. (We can't get Everclear or the like here in Canada so vodka is as potent as it gets.) Nonetheless I need to bring it down further so I'll be working on that.
In the mean time, however, wish me luck. I know that I've conquered the psychological fear of going without -- at least to some degree -- but years of smoking have left a lot of distant yet lingering doubts, so nothing is certain and the extent to which I can cut down is still in question. I don't want to quit entirely -- I like vaping -- but I do need to turn it way down, and I only have so many pens.
I'm officially...OLD! 
