In a way, it's just ignorance. Although vaping has been around a few years, people don't really understand the risks and/or benefits unless they are part of our community. People criticize what they don't/can't understand.
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In regards to the OP, I think you've hit the nail on the head with your second point. Jealousy has reared it's ugly green head more than a few times in encounters with ex-smokers. I have been belittled for my achievement by snooty holier-than-thou ex-smokers before. "That's cheating." seems to be the implied response.
As for me, I never EVER wanted to quit smoking or nicotine. I have no problem with my addiction. All I wanted to do was to stop actively killing myself, which I have done. So to all the people who imply that I have cheated, I proudly extend my middle finger and tell them to "BITE ME!"
As for me, I never EVER wanted to quit smoking or nicotine. I have no problem with my addiction. All I wanted to do was to stop actively killing myself, which I have done. So to all the people who imply that I have cheated, I proudly extend my middle finger and tell them to "BITE ME!"
no offense to the religious but i think part of it is believing/ feeling like vapers have found a way to cheat the sin system. where do you fit into the carefully built model of heaven and hell if you dance with god and the devil at the same time?
Yep.... I wanted to stop smoking. Mission accomplished. I wanted to not be a slave to the nicotine addiction getting cranky and irritable and having rages over it when I didn't get it. Mission accomplished. I can take a few hits off my PV and be fine for hours. I don't freak out if I go to the store without it. I'm not counting the time until I can have it. I don't think I ever really enjoyed smoking aside from those "social smoking" situations. I completely enjoy vaping.
Thank you for posting your thoughts. I'm not a clinician (nor terribly educated on the subject) but am really fascinated by the psychological effects of smoking cessation. This may sound like a silly observation, but many vapers (myself included) find themselves fascinated by the hardware. I've found that there are a disproportinate number of vapors who are like me.. magpies.. attracted to all things shiny and vape related.
Do you have any theories about the transference of the addiction to cigarettes (or the behavioral rituals associated with smoking?) to a quasi addiction to vape stuff?
Just curious. This question has just been niggling at me and would love to hear an educated response.
If this post makes absolutely no sense I apologize, but I swear that there is a point in there somewhere
I'm no clinician either!
Did all the schooling and have a solid amount of experience in the field....but I found business far more rewarding. 
So I consider myself an educated amateur.That's funny you mention that. And great question btw! I have put a lot of thought into this, and of course experienced it myself. Love the rituals around my PV.
Rituals are always a part of any addiction. I think rituals are always a part of life, really. Think about the morning routine. Or the cooking, bathing, exercise, ect. routines. The simple answer is that we are creatures of habit. (Just look at gov. and religion)
I think a more complex answer would combine something known as contextual tolerance with classical and operant conditioning.
Contextual tolerance is quite interesting. It basically states that the intake of a substance, (nicotine in this case) becomes linked with environmental stimuli. For example, if you only vape in one room, perceptual info from said room would not only remind you of the nicotine and vaping, but would actually prepare the body for administration. This effect is substantial. Many people have overdosed by using their regular dose of (insert dangerous other substance) in a foreign environment. In a familiar environment associated with usage, the brain actually prepares for administration by temporarily increasing tolerance. Additionally, the brain will begin to crave when in such an environment. By increasing one's 'wanting' of something, it becomes more pleasurable when it is administered. (This also explains to some extent why certain environments are major smoking triggers....for example, after meal or driving).
Part of the environmental context includes things like your PV or e-juice bottles. Probably even favorite vendor websites! (Imagine being out of e-liquid and browsing through your favorite vendors website? Not good.)
Then there is the conditioning. You preform your ritual, then you vape. This trains you to associate the expected reward of vaping with the ritual and hardware. Another example: imagine your PV breaks and you have no alternative. It surely wont help you to wait for a replacement with the PV in hand.
I own a Provari. It has a red LED. I love the red LED. But it's just an LED? Why would I like it so much? Because it means vapor is coming immediately!
aka, positive reinforcement. I even notice this with my remote control. It has a red LED that illuminates when I press a button. This often makes me want to pick up the PV and vape. Now lets say I were to use the PV with a dummy carto. The red light will illuminate, but I will get no vape. Eventually, that red LED will loose its significance (extinction).
The same thing happened to me with lighters. After 4+ months without smoking (yep, I'm an ex-smoker too), lighters are fairly benign, and are no real trigger for an analog.
You also do not get your nicotine from smoking anymore. If you were to not get any nicotine, they might still present a problem, as that association is very hard to break. However, we now get it from our PVs. The rituals and habits would then transfer to the new nicotine deliver method.
I also think this is one reason why vaping is so effective in terms of quitting the smokes. It allows for an almost complete transfer of associations with our nicotine. If other NRTs could deliver nicotine as quickly as vaping, they would probably work better (at the cost of being more addictive). However, there is virtually no ritual associated with NRTs. (Another reason I think they are not very effective). One is using the patch, but misses the ritual of smoking. This is because the ritual actually can increase the wanting and thus reward when ultimately satisfied.
That's my take anyways....sorry bout the length! And thank you for allowing me to procrastinate my work for 20 min!!
HELL NO!!!!!! You know how difficult and dangerous it is to operate a rotary aircraft at 29,000ft? I'd take my chances climbing it. I can do some training for a year and pay to get lugged to the summit. I can't imagine how many thousands of hours logged in the helicopter I would need to even feel remotely comfortable doing this.
The Eurocopter AS350 that pulled this off has a rated service ceiling of 15,000 ft, and a hover out of ground effect ceiling of 9,500 ft (with ground effect, like above a surface, of 11,600 ft.)....... Not to mention the expense of the required modifications to even get the aircraft up that high. Or the gale force winds and whiteout conditions that can quickly engulf the summit...
Big risk of altitude flying, loss of tail rotor effectiveness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIWk88Gn9NM&feature=relmfu
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Love the concept of behavior psychology. Interesting! Operant conditioning (like Pavlov or Skinner) with an addictive substance as the reward.
I love your topic title and got a kick out of it, but I don't agree w/some of the perceptions you have.
I disagree. Over-eating appears to be a huge problem that has reached epidemic proportions. People are literally killing themselves with food. At least 80% of everyone i see where I live has a body mass index of about 4 times what it should be, really more like 6 times. I daresay, obesity / overweight and their contribution to metabolic disorders, heart disease, clogged arteries, etc. will likely approach cigarette use in terms of mowing down people with chronic illness later in life.
I also disagree with you about older people quitting smoking to avoid "dying". I don't know how old you are, so I don't know from where that perspective comes.
Plder people don't have the energy level they did when they were 20 and 30. They know cigarettes were a big contributor to that. The largest age demographic is aging baby boomers, and coupled with the fact that people are really living longer than ever before (thanks to technological and medical advances) they want to ENJOY their lives. They want energy to golf, travel, dance, keep up with their grandchildren, and what not.
I'm around a lot of elderly people, and they seem less afraid of dying than middle aged or even younger people. Perhaps because the closer you get to the marker the more resigned and accepting one becomes.
The first thing people talk about after being quit is how much more energy they have, how much less they ache, and how they don't need as much sleep. They also say they are more clear-headed (more oxygen getting into blood) so they can "think" better, which also feels younger.
If they are also staying fit, and slim, then they can really enjoy their mature years. I believe that is their motivation. Not necessarily avoidance of dying. Truth be told, I think every human being, whether 30 or 70, recognizes that they can die at any time, it's a real crapshoot, even if you never smoked.
As for "most people who quit are older", my perceptions just by being on ECF are that the younger out-number the older here. With the stop smoking campaigns of the last 3 decades, a whole lot of people already quit smoking. I meet very few older people who still do. If you sat outside the cigarette stores here, its an endless stream of 20-30-40 year olds.
Just my perceptions. Addicts, whether their addiction is, engage in justification behaviors. I don't care if it's food, alcohol, sex, drugs, cigarettes, whatever. I think the great thing about the vaping community is that very few are "in denial" about their addiction. They are very straight up honest with themselves and others about it, which is what has made them so successful with harm reduction alternatives.
As for damage---there are so many cases of spontaneous healing out there, it is poorly understood. People with cancer tumors and they just disappeared. It's not understood. However, I say: never underestimate the power of the body to restore itself. It is a truly amazing entity. There's this whole body/mind/spirit connection and it all works in tandem.
I disagree. Over-eating appears to be a huge problem that has reached epidemic proportions. People are literally killing themselves with food. At least 80% of everyone i see where I live has a body mass index of about 4 times what it should be, really more like 6 times. I daresay, obesity / overweight and their contribution to metabolic disorders, heart disease, clogged arteries, etc. will likely approach cigarette use in terms of mowing down people with chronic illness later in life.
I also disagree with you about older people quitting smoking to avoid "dying". I don't know how old you are, so I don't know from where that perspective comes.
Plder people don't have the energy level they did when they were 20 and 30. They know cigarettes were a big contributor to that. The largest age demographic is aging baby boomers, and coupled with the fact that people are really living longer than ever before (thanks to technological and medical advances) they want to ENJOY their lives. They want energy to golf, travel, dance, keep up with their grandchildren, and what not.
I'm around a lot of elderly people, and they seem less afraid of dying than middle aged or even younger people. Perhaps because the closer you get to the marker the more resigned and accepting one becomes.
The first thing people talk about after being quit is how much more energy they have, how much less they ache, and how they don't need as much sleep. They also say they are more clear-headed (more oxygen getting into blood) so they can "think" better, which also feels younger.
If they are also staying fit, and slim, then they can really enjoy their mature years. I believe that is their motivation. Not necessarily avoidance of dying. Truth be told, I think every human being, whether 30 or 70, recognizes that they can die at any time, it's a real crapshoot, even if you never smoked.
As for "most people who quit are older", my perceptions just by being on ECF are that the younger out-number the older here. With the stop smoking campaigns of the last 3 decades, a whole lot of people already quit smoking. I meet very few older people who still do. If you sat outside the cigarette stores here, its an endless stream of 20-30-40 year olds.
Just my perceptions. Addicts, whether their addiction is, engage in justification behaviors. I don't care if it's food, alcohol, sex, drugs, cigarettes, whatever. I think the great thing about the vaping community is that very few are "in denial" about their addiction. They are very straight up honest with themselves and others about it, which is what has made them so successful with harm reduction alternatives.
As for damage---there are so many cases of spontaneous healing out there, it is poorly understood. People with cancer tumors and they just disappeared. It's not understood. However, I say: never underestimate the power of the body to restore itself. It is a truly amazing entity. There's this whole body/mind/spirit connection and it all works in tandem.
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indeed, very true.
I dunno if we can "grade" addictions" this simply. I would say that ANY addiction which causes certain behaviors that are life-affecting, in a negative way, are probably not beneficial. I love horse racing, but have never developed a gambling addiction. If I did, that would be destructive. And maybe people with gambling addictions would rob somebody. Who is to say that a smoker with no money wouldn't rob someone to buy a few packs of smokes? I'm sure they have. In the meantime, wagering on the KY Derby is not hurting anyone, including myself, because it hasn't caused me to not pay my mortgage, or any other bad outcomes. That is simply not true for everyone though.
It's a slippery slope to hold ourselves out as higher or better off than 'those others'. I don't believe in that. I do believe that if you have an addiction, and it negatively affects your life, in ANY way, then it is something to be looked at thoughtfully.
If you think there aren't smokers who buy cigarettes before feeding their children, think again. It exists.
and, most importantly, I'm not gonna bust on uptight ex smokers. Even if they don't understand vaping. Doing that makes me no better than them, busting on us. Life is hard, all people struggle with demons, all human beings bleed, suffer, and feel pain. Its the human condition. There will always be forces and opinions to struggle against, but I don't believe in making enemies of everyone who doesn't "understand" me.
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It's an imperfect world and always will be. And life to most is not an easy proposition. I used to be and still am sometimes, very judgmental of people. I would think, how do those people get so fat? They eat too much and don't exercise. Well, when I was put on medications for a mental illness, I looked up 6 months later 50 pounds overweight. They change your metabolism and you are starving for bad food constantly. Even if people control their diet and exercise it vvery often doesn't help. Well it helps but they keep gaining weight. So when I see overweight people now, I think maybe they eat too much or maybe there are other factors at play. BTW, while looking at overweight people I was smoking two PAD. My problem now are smart phones. LOL Every time I see some idiot walking into walls, etc I want to hit them with a 2X4. If anyone ever hits my car because they don't have the ability to take their eyes off those POS and if they are smaller than me, hell hath no fury. I see a lot of doctors and in the old days people would read a magazine or sometimes we'd chat. Now I'm in a waiting room with 6 people and their heads are all looking straight down at those GD phones.
But if Apple could come out with a box mod i Phone I'd join those people in a second. Every human has shortcomings and I try to remember that and not criticize(not always successful obviously)because it's not the human condition, it's the lack of compassion.
And some of those really skinny times in my life, they were chemically induced. And as I puffed on my 90th cig of the day I would say to a friend, that person is so fat, why don't they stop eating?
Kinda funny when you think about it. I've known people who rise above what so many of us can't grasp...I hate those people.
But if Apple could come out with a box mod i Phone I'd join those people in a second. Every human has shortcomings and I try to remember that and not criticize(not always successful obviously)because it's not the human condition, it's the lack of compassion.
And some of those really skinny times in my life, they were chemically induced. And as I puffed on my 90th cig of the day I would say to a friend, that person is so fat, why don't they stop eating?
Kinda funny when you think about it. I've known people who rise above what so many of us can't grasp...I hate those people.
The last two days I was in a horrible mood and posted on this thread yesterday. While I stand by what I said I meant no offense to anyone. I'm sorry if anyone felt put down. It was me not you.
It is kind of funny, I have smoked about a PAD for 30 years. For about 20 of those years I wanted to quit. In fact I did quit, regularly. As Mark Twain said "Quiting smoking is easy! I have done it 100 times." However, each time I quit, I went back. One time, I had quit for about 9 months and on the way home from running a mini marathon, stopped and bought a pack.
I have tried patches, gum, cold turkey and while I could quit, I would always come back. After discovering vaping, that will never happen, I am sure. Day 1, I had one cig left. Over a month later the cig still sits there. No desire to light it.
Like I said, kind of funny.
I have tried patches, gum, cold turkey and while I could quit, I would always come back. After discovering vaping, that will never happen, I am sure. Day 1, I had one cig left. Over a month later the cig still sits there. No desire to light it.
Like I said, kind of funny.
What irks me is the coworker sitting there with a patch on her arm and struggling with her cravings all day trying to tell me that I'm still smoking. Erm... no. We've both replaced cigarettes with another delivery method, and we're both still using nicotine. I don't see one as any better than the other unless your goal is to not inhale anything. That's not my goal. Watching my vape cloud is one of the most enjoyable parts of the habit for me.
It's funny though. A year later and I still feel like a criminal when I carry my PV. People look at me like I'm doing something illegal. Smoking absolutely reaks and is a known killer. People understand what it is and accept it. Vaping? Your automatically classified as "other" than conservative or mainstream.
I am neither conservative nor mainstream, but resent that they can make this assumption
I am neither conservative nor mainstream, but resent that they can make this assumption
That's just my point. The topic creator said nicotine addiction was no worse than caffeine addiction. I'm not naive, I'm was simply posting an example that contrasts the idea that nicotine addiction isn't much harder to break than a caffeine addiction or alcohol addiction.
I apologize for not being more clear in my last post
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One addiction at a time. Work on the addiction that will ruin your life quicker, then move on to smoking. Worked for me.
I love your topic title and got a kick out of it, but I don't agree w/some of the perceptions you have.
I disagree. Over-eating appears to be a huge problem that has reached epidemic proportions. People are literally killing themselves with food. At least 80% of everyone i see where I live has a body mass index of about 4 times what it should be, really more like 6 times. I daresay, obesity / overweight and their contribution to metabolic disorders, heart disease, clogged arteries, etc. will likely approach cigarette use in terms of mowing down people with chronic illness later in life.
I think we're on the same page here. My point was nicotine addiction isn't as bad as many other addictions as far the addiction itself. You pointed out how eating addiction can be harmful.
I also didn't mean to imply that quitting when older cannot negate the harm from smoking. I suppose I meant that the relative health effects are more likely to be worse. My mistake! But yes I agree. Some can smoke till they die from a natural death.
As far as when people quit, those are my perceptions. I haven't looked at any statistic, so your guess is as good as mine
Same with the reasons for quitting. My perceptions. No statistical data = personal opinion
What I really meant was to compare nicotine with other drug addictions, as nicotine is a drug.
I worked in rehabs (and went through several when I was younger, so I am coming from a background of a serious serious addiction. Can't say what exactly as it's against the rules but PM me if you are curious.....but shhhh. Don't tell anyone
)But good points. Often when forming an argument, you have to pick a side. So I picked a side to explain certain people's hostility. I certainly didn't mean to lump EVERY ex-smoker into this. After all, I am an ex-smoker. And I certainly don't believe that my points do not have their counterpoints. I could also argue the other side, but this one made more sense personally.
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