After 50 yr of smoking I turned into a chain smoker @ about 3/5 pad. Great advice in this thread. Lighten up on yourself & have a cig with the mindset of quitting. I have been vaping for 2 months now. From the beginning I never told myself I 'couldn't' have a cig thereby relieving the pressure on myself. As they say on ECF,its not the cig you have that matters,but rather the one you didn't have. If you just cut down one cig a day you will be ahead. Good luck & don't give up! BTW,the WTA works.
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Yea for the first week, i didn't stop myself from not smoking analogs but i constantly reminded myself that i will stop buying analogs. Whenever i felt the need to, i would just go and smoke an analog. I used to do 1 PAD but that first week, i only went through a Pack. On my 2nd week, i had only 3-4 cigarette that was because i went out with some friends and they're all still on analogs. This is basically my 3rd week and i have no desire to go buy cigs or smoke one. Maybe you can try upping the nicotine level in your setup to kill your nicotine craving.
Hello fellow Austinite brekehan! I feel for you, this is my second go around with ecigs and while the first time I was able to quit analogs for some reason this time I am having a harder go of it. Can be very frustrating! I think the advice given is pretty solid here. Don't force yourself to quit analogs all together. Layout some realistic goals and transition.... Like right now I am shooting for a cig in the morning, one after lunch, then one after dinner. Get yourself in a routine like that for a few weeks then set a new goal and follow it for a couple of weeks.
Best of luck!
Best of luck!
I started vaping in January 2012 and just gradually cut down the cigs. I didn't stop smoking completely until June 2012. Don't be so hard on yourself. Congratulations on trying to quit smoking, to me that was the hardest step.
this sounds like a solid idea/plans. Achieving short term goals makes you feel good and gives you the confidence to achieve longer lasting goals.
I'm a newcomer, but if you don't mind, I'd like to offer a few words of advice.
First off, if you're prone to anxiety, then you need to stop stressing yourself out by visiting web sites and reading materials that are intended to scare you. Smoking's bad for you; you know that, so move on.
Secondly, stop treating vaping like some sort of pass or fail proposition. Remember that most people who switched to vaping quickly did so because they hit a sweet spot with flavor, nicotine level, etc., and wound up enjoying it just as much, if not more, than smoking. Instead of getting upset, explore a bit and do some experimenting.
Thirdly, be kind to yourself. Keep your view positive. You're doing something enjoyable that is helping you move away from a habit that is harmful. Why do you want to quit smoking? Because your scared? You feel like something's wrong with you? Focus more on how you are improving yourself, rather than trying to wrench yourself away from a habit that's notoriously difficult to break. I absolutely refuse to suffer, and I know how I react to "quitting" - it's not pretty, and it always fails.
Fourth, set reasonable goals. A million years ago in a land far away, I read an article that said if you can keep your cigarette intake below six a day, it's almost harmless. I wish I could find a link to that article, but it was pre-internet, and I have no idea if that idea's been debunked since I read it. However, six is a nice, round number, so once I felt comfy with the idea of replacing cigarettes with vaping, I set an allowance of six cigarettes a day for myself. However, instead of focusing on that, I made it my mission to find the juice flavor & strength I like. I haven't hit my daily allowance for a week; in fact, I've only had one today, and feel no cravings. Why? Because I'm vaping a tasty French Vanilla 18mg juice, and I take a hit whenever I want.
I refuse to treat that one cigarette I had with my coffee this morning as a failure. It isn't. I used to smoke at least a pack a day. Having six or less cigarettes in one day without chasing my husband with a cleaver, beating my kids or kicking the dogs is nothing short of miraculous for me, so I've been high-fiving myself like I just won a silver medal.
If the day comes when I go an entire day without an analog, I will go on this forum and crow! And I know that these good folks will cheer me on. They're wonderful like that.
Anyway, that's my long-winded opinion, and it's worth what you paid for it.
Have a foggy day!
First off, if you're prone to anxiety, then you need to stop stressing yourself out by visiting web sites and reading materials that are intended to scare you. Smoking's bad for you; you know that, so move on.
Secondly, stop treating vaping like some sort of pass or fail proposition. Remember that most people who switched to vaping quickly did so because they hit a sweet spot with flavor, nicotine level, etc., and wound up enjoying it just as much, if not more, than smoking. Instead of getting upset, explore a bit and do some experimenting.
Thirdly, be kind to yourself. Keep your view positive. You're doing something enjoyable that is helping you move away from a habit that is harmful. Why do you want to quit smoking? Because your scared? You feel like something's wrong with you? Focus more on how you are improving yourself, rather than trying to wrench yourself away from a habit that's notoriously difficult to break. I absolutely refuse to suffer, and I know how I react to "quitting" - it's not pretty, and it always fails.
Fourth, set reasonable goals. A million years ago in a land far away, I read an article that said if you can keep your cigarette intake below six a day, it's almost harmless. I wish I could find a link to that article, but it was pre-internet, and I have no idea if that idea's been debunked since I read it. However, six is a nice, round number, so once I felt comfy with the idea of replacing cigarettes with vaping, I set an allowance of six cigarettes a day for myself. However, instead of focusing on that, I made it my mission to find the juice flavor & strength I like. I haven't hit my daily allowance for a week; in fact, I've only had one today, and feel no cravings. Why? Because I'm vaping a tasty French Vanilla 18mg juice, and I take a hit whenever I want.
I refuse to treat that one cigarette I had with my coffee this morning as a failure. It isn't. I used to smoke at least a pack a day. Having six or less cigarettes in one day without chasing my husband with a cleaver, beating my kids or kicking the dogs is nothing short of miraculous for me, so I've been high-fiving myself like I just won a silver medal.
If the day comes when I go an entire day without an analog, I will go on this forum and crow! And I know that these good folks will cheer me on. They're wonderful like that.
Anyway, that's my long-winded opinion, and it's worth what you paid for it.
Have a foggy day!
if you can't make the transition?, try upping your dosage. for me in the beginning i tried the 18 MG, and it didn't quite do it for me. bought two different flavors of 36 MG. very harsh. i understand everyone's problems with tobacco flavor. as i neared my quit day the taste of analogs were starting to get nasty. used very little of the 36, and have leveled out at 24 now. loving milk chocolate from premium e juice. i keep a pen filled with the strong stuff for high stress situations at work. and vape the 24 as i would the analogs. when i get tightness in my chest, it feels to me that my body is telling me i have had enough nicotine, and to hydrate. fluids make all the difference in this process. planning on using 24 for three months while my body purges tobacco. after that hopefully 3 months to 0 nicotine. and don't forget to eat. put on some weight if you have too, but you have to feed the oral fixation. i am also supplementing with mints. if things work as i hope, now that i have a plan?, i want it to be a 6 month plan in total. with hopes of stopping vaping also. then if down the road i need to relapse on something?, will have a draw full of safe alternative to the gorilla i was carrying on my back. good luck with your journey.
i know i am proabably going to hear it from some of you and i want to qualify my response up front with the caveat that i have ZERO HARD DATA AND VERY LITTLE EXPERIENCE TO SUPPORT IT but...
buy a provari...
like dj tank i went big to begin with and forked over the dough. EVERYONE i've known who has tried to quit via ecig has gone through withdrawal symptoms. i had none. pack a day for 20 years...failed every other method...hardcore addiction. i haven't had even a puff from a real ciggy since picking up the provari 10 days ago and its been a breeze. coincidence? no clue, but i find the anecdotal evidence pretty compelling.
worse case scenario you sell it back to someone on the board as they are are in high demand...
That's the attitude I'm keeping. So if I crack and have a smoke (did last night) ok, but that was 1 compared to the 20 or 30 a day I was having. Life doesn't have to stop, just keep on rollin' with the flow and take it 1 day or even 1 hour at a time. You can do it
I am extremely new to vaping, and as I have posted elsewhere I "knew" I couldn't quit smoking so wasn't even trying (I got an e cig to get me through a weekly commitment where I couldn't smoke for a few hours).
The single change I did decide to make in order to justify the purchase (probably having something to do with me "needing" to buy all those different flavors when I ordered!) was to try to cut down on the times in the day when a cigarette burned itself to death in an ashtray while I got distracted and only ended having a few drags from it ... seemed to be quite wasteful and expensive (as opposed to smoking? Ha ha)
So I made one easy behaviour change - I could smoke as much as I wanted, including as much as or more than I was smoking before, but I was going to try to actually "have" a cigarette when I did.
That was not that hard a goal (although I certainly fail at times especially when the iphone jumps into my hand when I'm not looking) - I didn't always succeed but it was achievable and I wasn't expecting myself to even cut down on smoking.
I'm now down to a few cigarettes a day - some days only one in 24 hours, some days more. I'm not thinking of it as quitting as my first reaction to the idea of quitting smoking is to get really stressed, and my first reaction to getting really stressed is to want to stick about 10 cigarettes in my mouth and light them all at once. I actually "could" have survived without the one yesterday and chose to have it because I felt pretty certain that otherwise I would then immediately feel I should be able to not have one all day every day and put too much pressure on myself (weird I know but I am also one of those contrary people who was only able to take off a great deal of excess weight by NOT dieting ... as the very witty arrowsmit pointed out I am "uniquing up on it"!)
So I would agree with previous posters who have suggested that maybe you are putting too much pressure on yourself and thus increasing your anxiety and making it harder to stop. I also agree let yourself chain vape whenever you want at the nic strength you need ... you can always deal with that later. I was chain vaping the first few days just because it was so weird not to have that cigarette smouldering away beside me constantly - and that was just trying to change a behaviour pattern not even attempting to deal with the nicotine addiction.
Be kind to yourself - odds are if willpower alone was all it took for you to stop smoking you would have done it already, so there are probably a lot of other factors involved and making yourself more anxious is unlikely to help.
Thanks also to the posters who mentioned the WTAs - I had heard of snus but that was new to me and something to look into.
The single change I did decide to make in order to justify the purchase (probably having something to do with me "needing" to buy all those different flavors when I ordered!) was to try to cut down on the times in the day when a cigarette burned itself to death in an ashtray while I got distracted and only ended having a few drags from it ... seemed to be quite wasteful and expensive (as opposed to smoking? Ha ha)
So I made one easy behaviour change - I could smoke as much as I wanted, including as much as or more than I was smoking before, but I was going to try to actually "have" a cigarette when I did.
That was not that hard a goal (although I certainly fail at times especially when the iphone jumps into my hand when I'm not looking) - I didn't always succeed but it was achievable and I wasn't expecting myself to even cut down on smoking.
I'm now down to a few cigarettes a day - some days only one in 24 hours, some days more. I'm not thinking of it as quitting as my first reaction to the idea of quitting smoking is to get really stressed, and my first reaction to getting really stressed is to want to stick about 10 cigarettes in my mouth and light them all at once. I actually "could" have survived without the one yesterday and chose to have it because I felt pretty certain that otherwise I would then immediately feel I should be able to not have one all day every day and put too much pressure on myself (weird I know but I am also one of those contrary people who was only able to take off a great deal of excess weight by NOT dieting ... as the very witty arrowsmit pointed out I am "uniquing up on it"!)
So I would agree with previous posters who have suggested that maybe you are putting too much pressure on yourself and thus increasing your anxiety and making it harder to stop. I also agree let yourself chain vape whenever you want at the nic strength you need ... you can always deal with that later. I was chain vaping the first few days just because it was so weird not to have that cigarette smouldering away beside me constantly - and that was just trying to change a behaviour pattern not even attempting to deal with the nicotine addiction.
Be kind to yourself - odds are if willpower alone was all it took for you to stop smoking you would have done it already, so there are probably a lot of other factors involved and making yourself more anxious is unlikely to help.
Thanks also to the posters who mentioned the WTAs - I had heard of snus but that was new to me and something to look into.
I used to have a boss whose mantra during stressful periods was, "It's all mind over matter - if you don't mind, it don't matter."
I hated that guy.
I am going to throw out a bit of a counter to this, just based on how things have gone in this household.
My wife used cig a likes and Ego tank systems for around 2 years, still smoked maybe 2 or 3 analogs a day. When I started up another try at switching to Vaping I got us some Twists and Stardusts. That was enough to take her to a point where she quit analogs completely for the past 3 months.
I on the other-hand bought a Vamo, Provari, and Evic (well for her but she decided to take the Provari). Still smoking here!
Point is, it also takes some level of setting goals and self control. And I think the juice plays a bigger role than the battery holder.
If someone were to ask me what to start with I would suggest Twists and a couple clearos. Fairly cheap but effective. Well provided you put some level of commitment in too
Just my opinion. All that really matters is whatever gets you to quit, be it an Njoy or a Provari.
Before I even purchased the pv I used to read here and smoked like a fiend the whole time! I think I started feeling some anxiety about it even before I started. I tried pills, patches, ect so I never expected this to work.
Once I tried it, even though I had no intention of quitting I realized the possibility that I might be able to quit gave me so much hope. I didn't pressure myself. In fact it sat in the box for about 3 days before I even tried it. Once I did, I sorta liked it! As time went on, I liked it more and more. Finally I liked it better than cigarettes.
Find the right pv, the right e-liquid and hang around here for the support. The few people I know that weren't successful didn't go to forums. I'm not saying just this forum, but I think support is a huge part of it.
Once I tried it, even though I had no intention of quitting I realized the possibility that I might be able to quit gave me so much hope. I didn't pressure myself. In fact it sat in the box for about 3 days before I even tried it. Once I did, I sorta liked it! As time went on, I liked it more and more. Finally I liked it better than cigarettes.
Find the right pv, the right e-liquid and hang around here for the support. The few people I know that weren't successful didn't go to forums. I'm not saying just this forum, but I think support is a huge part of it.
I have been vaping for a week now, when I started I had planned on slowly cutting down.
Well after a few hours of vaping, I tossed my pack and lighter to my husband and decided I was done with analogues.
I still crave a 'real' smoke at times, especially after a meal but when I light one up, I get the gross taste and feeling of guilt and put it right out. The idea of never smoking again gets me really anxious, so I am trying to treat vaping exactly like smoking.
I go outside at work and in public places even though I could vape indoors, but I find if I keep the same habits I don't feel as much like I have quit, just changed a bit. I figure if I cave and have a smoke, well there are over 200 that I didn't have.
Just make sure your nicotine is high enough! I have an anxiety disorder and find that low to no nicotine ups my anxiety big time!
Good luck!
Well after a few hours of vaping, I tossed my pack and lighter to my husband and decided I was done with analogues.
I still crave a 'real' smoke at times, especially after a meal but when I light one up, I get the gross taste and feeling of guilt and put it right out. The idea of never smoking again gets me really anxious, so I am trying to treat vaping exactly like smoking.
I go outside at work and in public places even though I could vape indoors, but I find if I keep the same habits I don't feel as much like I have quit, just changed a bit. I figure if I cave and have a smoke, well there are over 200 that I didn't have.
Just make sure your nicotine is high enough! I have an anxiety disorder and find that low to no nicotine ups my anxiety big time!
Good luck!
Based on your information about the type of PV and juices you use as well as making it 4-5 hours before the craving kicks in, Id recommend something with regulated voltage.
Even a large capacity battery after 4-5 hours of constant use is going to lose voltage and that results in a progressively less satisfying vape over the course of a day.
People talk a LOT about variable volts and wattage but often skip over the importance of having either one consistent throughout the day. THAT was the turning point for me.
In the cig-alike category Volt V2s provide regulated voltage.
Slightly larger and perhaps more familiar to you would be Ego Twists or Vision Spinners.
And then there are larger mods like the Provari, Zmax and Vamo.
Sure I missed quite a few but am only telling you the ones Ive tried myself.
You might also want to look in WTA liquids if the regulated voltage isnt dong it for you.
Even a large capacity battery after 4-5 hours of constant use is going to lose voltage and that results in a progressively less satisfying vape over the course of a day.
People talk a LOT about variable volts and wattage but often skip over the importance of having either one consistent throughout the day. THAT was the turning point for me.
In the cig-alike category Volt V2s provide regulated voltage.
Slightly larger and perhaps more familiar to you would be Ego Twists or Vision Spinners.
And then there are larger mods like the Provari, Zmax and Vamo.
Sure I missed quite a few but am only telling you the ones Ive tried myself.
You might also want to look in WTA liquids if the regulated voltage isnt dong it for you.
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I'm a newcomer, but if you don't mind, I'd like to offer a few words of advice.
First off, if you're prone to anxiety, then you need to stop stressing yourself out by visiting web sites and reading materials that are intended to scare you. Smoking's bad for you; you know that, so move on.
Secondly, stop treating vaping like some sort of pass or fail proposition. Remember that most people who switched to vaping quickly did so because they hit a sweet spot with flavor, nicotine level, etc., and wound up enjoying it just as much, if not more, than smoking. Instead of getting upset, explore a bit and do some experimenting.
Thirdly, be kind to yourself. Keep your view positive. You're doing something enjoyable that is helping you move away from a habit that is harmful. Why do you want to quit smoking? Because your scared? You feel like something's wrong with you? Focus more on how you are improving yourself, rather than trying to wrench yourself away from a habit that's notoriously difficult to break. I absolutely refuse to suffer, and I know how I react to "quitting" - it's not pretty, and it always fails.
Fourth, set reasonable goals. A million years ago in a land far away, I read an article that said if you can keep your cigarette intake below six a day, it's almost harmless. I wish I could find a link to that article, but it was pre-internet, and I have no idea if that idea's been debunked since I read it. However, six is a nice, round number, so once I felt comfy with the idea of replacing cigarettes with vaping, I set an allowance of six cigarettes a day for myself. However, instead of focusing on that, I made it my mission to find the juice flavor & strength I like. I haven't hit my daily allowance for a week; in fact, I've only had one today, and feel no cravings. Why? Because I'm vaping a tasty French Vanilla 18mg juice, and I take a hit whenever I want.
I refuse to treat that one cigarette I had with my coffee this morning as a failure. It isn't. I used to smoke at least a pack a day. Having six or less cigarettes in one day without chasing my husband with a cleaver, beating my kids or kicking the dogs is nothing short of miraculous for me, so I've been high-fiving myself like I just won a silver medal.
If the day comes when I go an entire day without an analog, I will go on this forum and crow! And I know that these good folks will cheer me on. They're wonderful like that.
Anyway, that's my long-winded opinion, and it's worth what you paid for it.
Have a foggy day!
Now go for the gold medal and give up it completely!!
Just take things one day at a time. Even if you have the right device with the right juice and the right atties/cartos,sometime it still isn't enough.The hardest part for me personally has been the mental part of it as I really enjoyed smoking. For alot of us,its gonna be a life long struggle. Any cigarette you don't smoke is a victory.
this seems to me like excellent advice. the addiction, after all, is BOTH physical and psychological...so fight one at a time.
Provari, Zmax and Vamo look interesting. I'm not sure I am willing to drop $180 (provari) on a battery though. Seems awfully expensive. But don't get me wrong, I'd spend whatever if it works. I'm not poor. I've just spent a lot on stuff I ended up throwing out already.
If I used the same Tank Type A atomizers, wouldn't it burn them up? The website seems to imply you use whatever carts or atomizers you did before, but gives the disclaimer that it might destroy them. I sure could use more TH though.
I'll have to read more on these variable voltage and wattage systems. New to me.
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