Considering to buy one for a family member.
Yes. I switched to vaping after smoking a pack a day for ten years. Then in about a year I was able to winnow my usage down and quit vaping too.
I had tried many times to quit before that. Have not smoked in 13 years now and after about 8 years I stopped liking the smell.
Crazy hearing vaping helped you stop 13 years ago. My brain tells me they only came out 2 years ago…
Naw there were vapes when i went to high school in the mid to late 2000s.
I quit not only because of vaping and tobacco-less nicotine pouches, but because I wanted it. If you are buying it for a family member, you can’t make them quit… Hopefully they are wanting to, because you can’t make that decision for them. Just like any other addict.
I agree with this sentiment. I vaped for years and years because I didn’t actually want to stop.
But once I did make the decision the vape made it considerably easier.
Yes.
Wife and I switched to vaping, then that eventually dropped off to nothing.
Yes. Switched to vaping and was vaping for multiple years before quitting completely. Biggest thing was the “safety” of always being able to have my fix without an actual smoke. The “never again” mentality made it so hard to ditch the cancer stick but the vape was always like “it’s ok, you can just have a little puff whenever you feel like it”. Slowly down the nicotine content. Puff less. Even less. At some point I just forgot. Still have the vape. Still have the liquid, albeit it’s dark red now and looks radioactive so utterly unusable. But point is that the vape eventually faded into irrelevance in a way that cigarettes never could.
Yup.
An older friend who smoke and drank a ton switched to vapes, and methodically lowered the nicotine content every two-there weeks for months, then stopper nicotine and vaped the flavours but as there was no more nicotine, the habit wasn’t addicting and he just forgot about it more or less.
Now he’s been alone free for years, and reduced his drinking as well. Looks fucking healthy now.
20 years smoking 10 to 15 cigarettes a day, switched to vaping for 4 years, then quit completely as I was fed up with the logistics of vaping.
My last cigarette was 9 years ago and I don’t miss it at all. I consider vaping was the biggest reason I quit, seconded with the avoidance of social situations where smoking is common.
Yes! I smoked for over 20 years. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to quit. I started vaping with the goal of quitting, and eventually quit! Then I quit vaping too, about six months later. It’s an excellent cessation method, with almost a 70% success rate. The next closest cessation method has a success rate of 3% and is owned by the tobacco companies.
Get a device that hits like a cigarette. This means mouth to lung, and not a big DTL cloud machine. It also ideally means a round mouthpiece. Make sure it’s good enough to give throat hit, but not so good that it produces massive clouds. Ideally you want a device that is not sub-ohm. Start with 18mg tobacco flavored juice. Then just vape. Sometimes you’ll smoke cigarettes, and sometimes you’ll vape. Don’t beat yourself up when you smoke, but try to vape more than you smoke. Before you know it, you’ll be reaching for the vape more than the cigarettes, until you don’t reach for cigarettes at all. Then you’re free!
Once you’re free, wait a month and then cut the juice down to 12mg, then 6, then 3, then a mix of 0 and 3, then 0! After a couple weeks of 0 you’ll just naturally quit, no discipline required.
Share this information with the person you know, and tell them that if I could do it, anyone can do it!
Edit: for such a device I recommend the Geekvape B coil series, in higher ohm ranges.
While it may not stop the nicotine addiction. It beats the tar and crap actual cigarettes…
Agreed. Although I struggle with vaping nicotine WAY too much and I feel like it has caused me some issues.
Still, way better than real cigs as far as my lungs are concerned - but the ease of being able to vape and constantly get a nicotine fix has been the real issue for me. Currently reading Alan Carr’s the Easy Way to get this monkey off my back once and for all.
Absolutely, there is no mistaking vaping is bad for you. But there are levels of bad.
Additionally, there has not been enough legit science data to indicate how bad it is.
Check out SmokeFree.gov! It has great free resources that are science based. Quitting smoking is the number thing someone who smokes can do for their health.
The most effective methods to quit smoking include varenicline (aka Chantix), FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapies (gum, patch, lozenge, inhaler, etc), and behavioral therapy. Combining all of these therapies in a clinical trials results in the most people quitting.
No vape is FDA-approved as a cessation therapy, because no company has applied. There have been some small academic run trials, which tend to show a decrease in smoking, but continued nicotine addiction. Probably because vapes have much higher nicotine content than FDA-approved therapies. While vapes expose people to a lot less carcinogens than smoke, there are some carcinogens and nicotine itself is harmful to vascular and mental health. So if the evidence-based methods don’t work, completely switching to vaping would be less harmful.
Agreed. There is a lot of new research on vaping. Could potentially cause a number of issues, but probably still better than actual smoking. I’ve heard the inhalers work sometimes because of the nicotine as well as the physical movements involved.
I’ve also seen exactly one ad (on YouTube) for some sort of flavour inhaler (no nicotine) if you’re having trouble with the physical aspect. Can’t say any more about that though, as I haven’t looked into it.
Those are bullshit. Look at the cessation success rate of those methods, and then look at vape. Vape is almost 70% success rate, and those other methods are like 3%. The tobacco companies own most of those methods. Don’t listen to some stupid sponsored study for this, listen to the people who have done it. Vaping is a successful cessation method, and all of the attempts to ban it have been driven by lobbying & dark money from the tobacco companies.
I look at independent randomized controlled trials, not anecdotal evidence. Here’s a recent trial from Finland that didn’t have industry funding. They compared low-nicotine vaping vs varenicline alone vs placebo. Both varenicline and vaping resulted in about 40% of people quitting at 12 weeks, and 20% of placebo group. So add nicotine replacement therapy and behavioral therapy on top of varenicline and the rates should go higher. Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies sell most of the FDA-approved cessation therapies, and in comparison the big tobacco companies sell vapes.
I switched to vape, not necessarily to drop nicotine, but so i could smoke in company vehicles. I haven’t stopped vaping for a few years now.
I’m in no way saying the habit is healthy or nice, but there’s still a net positive to switching even if you don’t end up stopping.
It’s cheaper overall. A little over a pack a day is basically $10/day. I probably spend $60 on juice and $10 for coils in a month, and that’s a high estimate. One coil can last a few months sometimes, other times they’re duds. The initial cost is what can look expensive. $100 for a good rig, but it can last years if you get the right one. (I save money by using a rig that takes 18650 batteries and scavenge them from dead electronics - they’re everywhere, power tool batteries, hoverboards, etc. Otherwise it’s an extra $10 every 6 months)
It also doesn’t dry me out like cigarettes. Cigarettes used to cause my sinuses to bleed in the morning and just clog my sinuses through the day. Vape keeps me a little more hydrated it feels like, like even the cough is more fluid and comes right up. No more dry coughing at all.
Don’t even get me started with the smell.
It’s worth mentioning too, there’s a difference between the nic salts and the juice. The salts are where you can experience OD and even seizures.
Took me years, but yes.
This was back in the day when you could easily source stuff to mix your own juice though. I was vaping 3ml and I stepped down 0.5ml every month until I was vaping just flavor. At that point I’d carry my vape around but use it WAY less. Eventually I’d get sick of bringing it with me and just stopped using it.
Then I’d cave again, and restart the process.
Took me a few years, but my vapes are gone and I only smoke when I’m shithoused and around a bunch of smokers, which is a maybe once every couple years event now?
I’m not sure how it would work these days. Everything is packaged, can you even mix your own nic content? Fucking big tobacco fucked up the market.
Even just switching to vaping full time is better than smoking, so get your family member one and hope for the best.
Vaping is safer than cigarettes, it’s still bad and we don’t know how bad it is long term but it is safer than smoking. It’s better to just stop completely using a stop smoking service to get alternative nicotine products if that’s available. If the person doesn’t want to stop then you’re unlikely to be able to make them however a vape might be able to replace it with something better. Other products to look at are patches, gum, lozenges and inhalators which can be useful in quitting.
In summary smoking and vaping are both bad but smoking is worse. Better off just quitting if possible, if not go for the vape.
No they just made my nicotine addiction worse.
The gum worked, though. Started with the 4mg dose, dropped down to two; by the time I worked my way down to an 8th of a piece of a time, I thought to myself, “wait, do I really need to be doing this?” and that was it.
Haven’t craved nicotine since 2018.
Many smokers don’t know that nicotine salt (or nicsalt) is horrendously addictive compared to freebase nicotine. And nicsalt is the primary form of nicotine in tobacco and some vapes. Cigarette companies sneakily add more to the rolling paper to make cigarettes more addictive.
It is orders of magnitude more difficult quitting nicsalt. It’s why many people who successfully quit recommend starting with stronger freebase nicotine vapes or lower nicsalt and then trying to scale back from there eventually moving to freebase.
Nicsalt is so addictive you can be going into withdrawal while vaping freebase nicotine.
Edit: gums use Nicotine polacrilex which was engineered to increase bioavailability over freebase. Most gums and patches are hard to quit because manufacturers offer no guidance on tapering dosage although you figured this out on your own. You’re smart.
I quit by vaping.
I smoked for 15 or 16 years. I tried vaping one time, around 13 or 14 years in, but it didn’t do it for me. After a few more years of smoking, i tried a sub ohm vape, which used a low nic salt content. It made massive clouds which whilst making me feel like a twat, actually helped to fuel the illusion that i was smoking. The feel on my throat was similar to the cigarettes i was used to, and overall, it felt like smoking, so i managed to stick to it and not smoke at the same time.
The kicker was that the low salt meant that initially i was vaping more often, but as time went on i was finding that i was having less time to vape so i was t getting as much nicotine. Eventually, after maybe 6 months to a year, i found that one day, i went all day at work without vaping once. And when i realised i just decided… i dont need it, so i left the vape at home the next day.
Its been over a year and a half now, and i dont think about them anymore.
I am really fucking happy.
I did, but I also wanted to quit. No one quits a substance they don’t want to quit.
That’s why I left Reddit and why I’m still on Lemmy!
