It seems strange to me that with all the talk about the importance of quitting smoking that Tabex is not well known. A course of treatment lasts 25 days, costed me €35 for the whole course, you can buy it online, you stop smoking on the 5th day, and it makes quitting a lot easier. Really.
It does still require motivation in certain situations when you used to smoke before (going out drinking, clubbing, etc.) but it's still much easier than with anything else we tried, and after the first couple of weeks your brain rewires itself. Five months in, going out with friends who still smoke, we were both not tempted to take a cigarette from them. This is huge for us.
If you really want to quit smoking and everything else failed so far, give it a try.
If you do buy online, just make sure it's not a counterfeit. I don't have any advice regarding that, we got ours at a pharmacy on a trip to Poland.
Combine with a dopamine booster for the first weeks (or masturbate a lot) and quitting suddenly feels easy.
I bought it online but directly from a Polish or Slovakian pharmacy.
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May I ask: The side effects listed under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varenicline#Side_effects
-> how hard did any of these hit you in your time?
Not available in the US. I quit smoking 8 years ago but can't wean myself off of vaping. Not that I really tried though and I can easily do a transatlantic flight. The problem with vapes is that they become 24x7 pacifiers, my nicotine intake must be a lot higher.
Edit: where do people get treatment? My searches aren't giving me anything useful to give to friends trying to quit
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- Gradually lower the strength of my liquid until it was at the minimum.
- Stop all vaping and switch to nicotine gum
- Gradually increase the time between each gum
- Stop the gum altogether
This process took probably 3 months and tbh it was pretty miserable the whole time. It's 100% worth it tho, You don't realize how much it controls your life until you stop. You will also still get random cravings for a year or two afterwards, Heck it's been 4 years and I still sometimes get dreams where I'm vaping.
I would have never thought that people would be stupid enough to try this for real, but here we are...
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
With vaping that limit is completely gone. A vaping addiction can keep escalating until you want a puff every 30 seconds, especially once you start breaking down mental barriers like "no vaping indoors" or "no vaping while on the computer", etc.
So in terms of pure addiction I would 100% argue that cigarettes are better than vaping.
Chilis. Nibble a Thai bird chili instead of facing a nicotine fit. Sip some Tabasco if you must.
I quit this way, and the point is not burning your mouth or the heat. It’s the endorphin complement.
Tobacco products out. Capsaicin products in.
Recently I got the urge to try vaping again, bought all the paraphernalia and started vaping like a chimney 24/7. Got light nicotine poisoning as well. After two days, I caught myself compulsively reaching for the vape.
So I threw everything away and I’m back to patches. Took me a week to forget the compulsive hand-to-mouth urge. I now believe intradermal nicotine is the superior method of administration. At least with cigarettes the smoke is such an intense irritant you self-regulate pretty quickly compared to a cupcake flavoured vape you can just suck on all day long.
Cigarettes are ridiculously more addictive. I know this from experience, but also from a study that found that MAOIs (in cigarettes, but not found in vapes) "dramatically increase the motivation to self-administer nicotine in rats."[1]
I had a wickedly difficult time quitting cigarettes, many failed attempts over the course of years. Vaping made quitting tobacco comically easy, and quitting vaping was also comically easy compared to cold turkey. To quit my all-day vaping habit I just...got rid of the vapes and stopped doing it. I thought about it a few times a day for the first few days, and that was it.
People saying to avoid vapes as a cessation tool are committing actual harm, imo. It's like the difference in difficulty between just jumping off a roof versus using a ladder to descend. Yes, ladders are risky, but not as risky as jumping off a roof.
The interesting part I think is that physical nicotine addiction only lasts two weeks. It's the smoking ritual that is so potent. I have several ex-smokers in my family who even after decades still have situations where they associate certain cues with smoking.
They have three books that follow a similar method as Carr's book. All resources available free, in multiple translations:
The original, Never Take Another Puff: https://whyquit.com/joel/index-ebook.html
Freedom From Nicotine, a more modern take, with a lot of data and references: https://whyquit.com/ffn/
Smart Turkey, essentially a condensed, much shorter version of FFN: https://whyquit.com/smart/
Again at uni I found lots of people smoked cigs and mj and so I did it too a little bit, but decided after a year or 2 to stop and I've never really done it since. My dad was the same.
I've had the same realisation with certain foods recently and coffee, massively cutting down on sugar, salt and coffee.
Probably my only addiction at the moment is too much scrolling on my phone.
I totally accept this is a huge issue for many people, but no real idea why...
It's extremely effective at reducing nicotine cravings and withdrawal symptoms.
Moreover, European pharmacy formulations are available "OTC" from Amazon in the USA because its not a recognized drug there
The key is to break any brain connection between doing something and receiving nicotine, no other method can do this, you will simply keep dosing.
I'm at the point where I will often forget to put a patch on. I also cut the patches up to get the desired dose and save money as all box doses are the same price (try and convince me that this is wrong).
I will occasionally use a higher dose if I'm on a night out or feel the need but since it takes maybe an hour to have an effect I don't ever feel the need to re-dose it's just something I put on and forget. Best nicotine decision I ever made.
The real challenge is that the difference between one cigarette a day and zero is huge, at least for me. Once you are at one cigarette a day, and e.g. commit to it being after a workday, you start waiting for the end of workday. It's easy to start feeling that the day does not begin until that moment. Real withdrawal starts at around day 3 and takes roughly 21 days for me.
I think smoking cessation products like patches and gum is not really helping either. It's still nicotine. I have wanted to try Varenicline, but it requires a doctor's prescription and (seemingly) "strong enough" dependence. I have hated the idea of paying 100 euros for a doctor's appointment to maybe get a prescription that costs me another 100 euros.
I plan to quit nicotine for good next month, when I submit a dissertation. After roughly 7 years of using snus and nicotine pouches, I have noticed that my gums are retracting, and when I eat food, a lot of it gets stuck at my lower teeth, and there are gaps between my teeth. I would not be surprised if I need braces, and in part wish that would solve the problem -- the gum retraction itself is irrecoverable. I have been waiting for a doctor's appointment to have my teeth checked out for about 6 months now. I can't help but think that in the process of doing my dissertation, I have trashed my health, at least to an extent, and now I'm just waiting to get an assessment how badly. Moving on, I think that whatever I'm about to do next, it should be something that I feel like needs no nicotine for motivation.
Started smoking at age 11 (yeah Im French), gradually increasing to about a pack a day in my 20s. Reduced to about half a pack in my 30s. Did the vaping thing then, trying cold turkey a few times, without success. Then one day, I just didn't want to smoke anymore, stopped completely. (I was already smoking only half cigarettes for a while, cause I didn't like the feeling anymore). I didn't have urges to smoke at all for years, even when going out, getting drunk. Even with all my colleagues would go out for a cigarettes and I had to stay alone in a room.
Nowadays, I am in a situation where maybe once every two months I go to a party and I smoke a few cigarettes. Maybe over a weekend, I'd smoke a pack, then I don't smoke at all for another two months. If there is no party I don't smoke, if there's one, I may. I have zero urges the next days, I don't even think about it.
I think it's a question of age, maybe I don't go to that many parties anymore, maybe I don't feel the need to relax or to take a break anymore. I am 100% remote, live in the countryside, that might help compared to office work in a big city as I used to do.
I am not advising anyone to pick up smoking after years of stopping.
But I am writing this just to say that to me the usual things that people say about addiction weren't true at all:
- It wasn't difficult to stop (that last time, I'd already tried a few times before and failed). For some reason, it just happened that I didn't want to continue. I didn't have a date, I didn't have a "last cigarette then it's over" moment. I just didn't feel like smoking anymore. It also sort of happened gradually, first I didn't want to smoke entire cigarettes anymore, then I would stop smoking after half a cigarette.
- I smoked and vaped several times since, sometimes for several days in a row, sometimes at my house, I never felt I would go back to by a addicted smoker. My wife also does this, I can tell she's having a bit more of a hard time not smoking again, but she manages too, so I am not the only oddball here.
So if you have to do it, you might as well do the least harmful one, which is not cigarettes. You should also be able to kick the nicotine very easily. It will take a couple of weeks but it's not that hard. Kicking the inhaling and exhaling part is the hard bit.
https://www.volkskrant.nl/volkskrant-magazine/als-deze-moede... (https://archive.ph/O7dpL)
I love cigars for various reasons, but there's no true alternative that's worth while.
i consume roughly 50mg of nicotine a day through pouches and have no issues quitting cold turkey, often for weeks at a time. its nice to reset your tolerance. but i find it hard to believe others find it so addicting. same with caffeine. do people really get headaches because they miss a coffee?
alcohol is another story tho. it's a lot more enjoyable and thus harder to eliminate without actually replacing it with something else.
You might think, oh I should really quit smoking because it is bad for my health. But if you don't make a decision and change your core mentality that you really want to stop smoking, you'll just go back to it at some point, no matter what "trick" you use.
Here's what helped me the most; every time you try to quit it gets a bit easier next time.
So if you try and fail, try again. Then keep trying after that.
So many people try to quit and get disheartened when they're pulled back.
Instead just think of it as another step along the path. You are training yourself to tolerate the itch and to do without nicotine.
Decided to go cold turkey and started taking them a few weeks in advance - and even before the planned date I suddenly started losing the urge to smoke.
AFAIK recent research indicates it helps with addiction to multiple other substances including alcohol.
Worked swell...
I was motivated as well but it leveled the playing field - still had to do the work but the work was doable. Take care and fight for your health, it's worth it!
I quit smoking when it was more socially accepted, it's probably much easier to quit now that a pack costs so much and there are so few places you can do it.
Also just inhaling through an empty tube helps! Make the smoking motion with your hand, inhale and get a nice hit of oxygen.
I'm working on going back to the vape.
The next will be nicotine free tobacco. .. the leafs will be watered for a undisclosed amount of time to remove the nicotine as it's water soluble. It's like decaffeinated coffee - it's when you need this tastes but your heart can't take it anymore :)
I understand that this is not possible for everyone, as the brain works differently and some just have a harder push towards addiction by default (but also habit). But the most successful quitters I know of in reallife, more than half a dozen actually, were those who just decided to quit it. In theory lowering down to e. g. vapes and what not may help, but I know some who then just went back to their old habits, and kept on lying to themselves about it. The brain is great at finding excuses, so people may need to try different ways to handle the brain. It is not the cigarette as such nor vape or the addiction as the main problem - it is how the brain works and operates. What is also interesting is that many people do not even realise that, how they self-trick themselves into being addicts. (I am aware that it is very hard to break out of the cycle for many people too; not saying it may be easy for everyone. Often people have additional problems once in addiction, financial ones, physical problems, depression and so forth.)
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If I recall correctly the clinical studies put it at 50% success rate or higher depending on how many weeks you continue the regiment.
From the outside looking in it looked like it was way less effort and mental strain than other forms of quitting. They basically started taking the drug and by the end they just didn’t want cigarettes anymore.
For those of you looking to quit nicotine, I think looking toward medical solutions is the way to go. It’s too bad our medical system has incentivized shyness around finding medical solutions.
Aggressive laws and enforcement would do wonders, and also encourage potential quitters.
I use the patch.
Go get your all 3 step patches: 1 box of Step #1 1 box of Step #2 3 boxes of Step #3 You will start on a DAY OFF from work. I would HIGHLY not recommend trying to quit smoking on days you have to go into the office OR have to be around coworkers.
Day #1: before going to bed, get rid of all cigarettes, ash trays, lighters, everything that involves smokes or reminds you of smoking, both in your house and in any vehicles you drive. Take a shower BEFORE going to bed and scrub yourself so you don't have anything smoke smell on you. Put the Step #1 patch on and go to bed. Yes you read that right, put the the patch on BEFORE you go to bed.
Day #2: Morning. Get up, change your patch, get ready and GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!!! Go for a walk, go to work early, go get coffee somewhere, doesn't matter what, just GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! If you can get out of the house and start doing some sort of outside activity, you will have an 80% success rate.
Day #3 - WHENEVER: Follow the patch recommendation, go through Step #1 patches, then onto Step #2 patches. Remember that you are ALWAYS wearing patches even while you sleep. Once you are on Step #3, you will continue to wear the patches until you forgot to put them on (this is why I make you buy 3 boxes in the beginning), trust me on this. There will come a day where you will forget to put the patch on and it won't bother you.
When I quit, it was on a Thursday that I forgot to put my patch on and I just went the entire weekend without wearing my patch. I didn't realize it until Tuesday when someone asked me how the quitting was coming along and I touched my shoulder and realized I wasn't wearing it.
Now... that all said, I will say this and die on this hill, quitting smoking was this WORST thing I ever did. 11 years later and I STILL to this day crave a cigarette and absolutely LOVE IT when people smoke around me. I LOVE the taste of tobacco and wish to God that I could smoke again. I just remember how hard and how many times it took me to finally quit and I NEVER want to go through that again. I know for a fact that if I have ANY sort of cigarette, cigar, pipe, whatever I will be smoking 2-3 packs a day IMMEDIATELY.
Case in point, my wife vapes. She used to have those vapes where you had to fill them with liquid. Anyway she asked me to fill it one time and some of the liquid got on my fingers. I wipe it off thinking nothing of it and then for some reason, I rubbed my lips, why I did that, I haven't a clue. Within 5 seconds my lip started to tingle from the nicotine and that RUSH went immediately to my head (you know what I'm talking about). Let me tell you, it took WEEKS, WEEKS for my head to go back to normal. I was looking for cigarettes on the ground to smoke, it was HORRIBLE. I tell that story to warn you, you can NEVER touch any sort of nicotine product again after you quit. It will trigger you and God help you if it does. Once you quit, just stay quit.
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Vaping tastes great, can be done indoors, doesn’t need an ash tray, and others around you are mildly annoyed vs visibly upset. Cigarettes are the direct opposite of all of those. The added friction could put someone over the hump.
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For the first year I wanted a cigarette every fucking day.
Years later, I still had dreams where I would light up…
20+ years on, a distant memory.
Honestly, I didn't miss it once.
I smoked more than a pack a day for probably 7 or 8 years and quit a couple years after college, not quite cold turkey but basically just trying to wait a little longer between each cigarette. Eventually when the last half of the pack is stale and disgusting but you smoke them anyway because they're expensive, you just kind of stop one day. It was many, many years of no nicotine at all before I stopped thinking about it every day though.
For me, it was the requirement to be nicotine free for a few months around a surgery.
I went the patch route and it was a somewhat difficult 3 months, but it has been a blessing not have to clear-out my through every morning or anxiously anticipating stuff like a long flight or train ride.
I also got the "oh shit, I relapsed" dreams for about a year after I quit.
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- stop smoking in certain situations (no cigarette at the bus stop, no cigarette after lunch, …)
- allow myself to put out a cigarette halfway when I’m smoking. I lapsed and lit one, but that doesn’t mean I have to finish it.
- try to feel the downsides of the cigarette while smoking. The nicotine high mostly overrides this, but it’s possible to concentrate on the yucky feeling in your mouth, your lungs being burned etc.
- telling myself that I am sure I want to stop smoking at some point in my life so I might as well stop now.
That eventually faded after our careers took us in different directions, and landing remote roles or at places with fewer or no smokers.
I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to quit. Props to anyone who makes the attempt, successfully or otherwise.
It has been way more than four years for me, and I'll smell some cigarette smoke when I'm in a mood and be all like "Man, wouldn't it be nice if I got me one of those?".
But, I can say the same sort of thing about my reaction to the odor of coffee or caffeinated tea. Despite the fact that the very same place I get my coffee and tea from sells cigarettes -and wouldn't even card me because I'm so very obviously old- I've been able to quit nicotine. I've never been able to quit caffeine.
The first attempt, quite early on, I hadn't realised how dependent I'd become and thought it would be easy. Sure, I enjoyed vaping, but I didn't "have" to do it. Give it a couple days and I'll be back to normal. Predictably that went poorly.
Various other attempts I'd now look back on as thinking I could outsmart addiction and try to ease out of it, when in reality it was little more than procrastination.
Oh, I'll start to limit the times I vape. Only between certain hours. Or I'll go outside and do it, make it inconvenient and less appealing. I'll buy flavours I don't enjoy as much and change the association.
For me the only way to stop was to accept the unpleasantness of going cold-turkey. I knew going in that the first 48-72 hours would be brutal but that it would get significantly easier afterwards. There's always a reason to delay but everything I attempted short of actually stopping feels like self-deception.
I drew it out over several months. The thing I was really surprised by was that when I finally stopped, I still felt withdrawal symptoms, which is a testament to how addictive nicotine is, given what a tiny amount I had reached.
This was my setup: I mixed up 100ml of e-juice in a graduated bottle at whatever strength I was using at the time, somewhere between 15 and 20 mg/ml, can't remember exactly. From that bottle, I would fill a separate 10ml bottle, which I'd use to refill my tank. After refilling the 10ml bottle, I would top up the big bottle with VG/PG back up to 100ml, so diluting by 10%. I was vaping about half a 5ml tank per day at this point, so the 10ml one lasted about 4 days, and I'd top up the tank every morning. The theory being that the stuff in the tank would also get somewhat diluted every time I topped it up, since it would gradually get more of the stuff from the most recent filling of the 10ml bottle.
But somehow I just ended up unconsciously vaping more and with longer puff until I was at one tank per day, and then more than one tank per day.
It's been 9 years since I've quit smoking and still to this day out of nowhere I will have a thought, "ok, quick smoke and on to the next task"
Recently it happened to me and I was wondering if there are just some neural pathways that are permanently wired to that reward function
I didn't find the process especially miserable.
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(Feeling okay is addictive.)
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Vaping can be difficult to stop because:
- it's more accepted
- it's smoother on the throat, and there's plenty of tastes.
- there is no "dose", if you want to you can just vape non stop, and you can pace yourself. With a cigarette, you can't smoke slowly, or you'll loose half the cigarette.
All in all, it's just more convenient and cheaper to vape. If you're hooked, I can see it quite a challenge to stop. You can always say : "oh I am just taking x drags a day".
Personnally I didn't like vaping much, cause it was the beginning, the tastes were weird, the gear was not great battery-wise. So I kept going back to smoking. Eventually going cold turkey from cigarettes was way easier than through vaping.
Not saying it's the best way to stop, quitting cigarettes has been proven to be very diffult. But GP branding those people as stupid is a bit harsh imo.
When it became common knowledge that second hand smoke is bad restrictions came into place.
Step by step, I feel like it might actually stick for real this time. Every time I started up again in the past was contextual (eg a break up, out for drinks with friends, have a half drunk smoke and I’m hooked again). No longer have any smoker friends, no longer have significant drama in my life, hoping it’ll work out.
>Most people [...] need about an hour break in between smokes.
I've never seen anything like that. When there's a group of social smokers standing around, it's very common for something like "Oh, I just finished mine and you're only half-way through yours, I'll light up another one to keep you company" to happen. I've seen plenty of people who aren't chain smokers (yet), but can easily go through 2-4 cigarettes in a row if they're suddenly in a stressful situation and smoking "to relax".
>So in terms of pure addiction I would 100% argue that cigarettes are better than vaping.
But that's not a metric that's in any way helpful for a health decision. Nicotine in and of itself is not particularly physically harmful - it's toxic at high doses and elevates heart rate for a bit, but that's about it. The delivery method is what causes most of the harm, and smoking is 100% known to cause a lot of harm in a lot of different ways. And "With vaping that limit is completely gone" is also not accurate. Unlike the Navier-Stokes equations, dopamine receptors don't experience infinite blowup in finite time. So choosing a delivery method based on the amount of nicotine taken daily is not going to change much in terms of addiction (if you're already heavily addicted, you'll remain heavily addicted), but can have a huge impact on physical health.
Second, its much easier to take a puff than it is to find a suitable place to light up a cigarette and smoke for 5-10 minutes. You can very easily end up becoming psychologically conditioned to taking a puff litteraly once every 20 seconds, all day long from waking up to going to bed.
I too have considered picking up smoking to quit vaping. I remember of the times I did, I could smoke 3-4 a day and be fine. I don't know the long term effects of vaping physically, but just mentally the amount of nicotine is absolutely draining and at this point I rather do some damage to my lungs than keep this going.
Sure, and I'm not disagreeing with that. I disagree that "degree of addictiveness" is the metric that's wise to use when choosing a nicotine delivery method. Obviously the #1 choice should be NULL, not smoking at all, but if one is already addicted to nicotine and not ready to quit it at the moment, smoking cigarettes is, as far as we know, the worst option. Even intermittent smoking, or low-volume (like your 3-4 a day) causes non-linear harm. See this paper for example: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.109.9... .
Also nicotine itself is not without harm. I always thought these drugs only affect the brain, but they're metabolized by the whole body and have consequences on all your cells https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4363846/ Trading the terrible effects of burning tobacco versus the insane amount of nicotine from vaping seems like an unknown tradeoff to me
It took a few tries, but once I really decided to quit I was able to get past the worst cravings in a few days and now it's been almost a year.
They are also absolutely addictive as fuck, BUT I will say because they come in different strengths I found it relatively straight forward to quit them via tapering.
I was using 20 x 10mg per day and then bought strength 9mg, 6mg, 3mg, 1mg quit.
It was much much easier than trying to cold turkey which I also tried.
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What? 50mg/ml is the standard? Or am I miscalculating something here? When I switched from cigs to vaping (back in 2012, not really comparable to now, but still), I went with very high nicotine levels of 36mg/ml which was pretty harsh on the throat, and within a year I was at 3mg/ml. Nowadays I’m at zero.
Im not going to link you 500 products but heres a pretty standard vape sold. You can check the rest of the products, theyre almost all 5% with no other option https://vapordna.com/products/flum-melo-20000-puffs-disposab...
15ml at 50mg/ml is 750mg of nicotine. That thing would last me a week. A pack if cigs is ~25mg. Per week ~170mg versus 750. Insane
I used to vape the box mods 3mg. It was great, but now I cant go back to it after trying these damn things because the 3mg is almost a joke. Even cigarettes feel like nothing to me compared to these things
Smoking is addictive and was kinda hard to quit. Vaping is insanely, insanely addictive and about 100X as hard to quit (for me anyway). It took me about 3 tries to quit smoking. Its taken me about 100 attempts to quit vaping.
Also, you end up vaping all day and night since there is no reason you can't do it anywhere. In the toilet at work? Vaping. In bed at night, Vaping. Jerking off? Vaping.
It's just insanely bad.
deep cut
Also, I'm dubious about your claim that most people need breaks, or at least any more than vapers do. I was a smoker for over a decade. I don't remember ever feeling like "that's enough, my throat hurts". It's just that smoking was triggered by the onset of withdrawal, which begins after about an hour, and becomes urgent after maybe 2-3 hours. So I'd typically smoke at an interval of 1-3 hours depending on how convenient it was to do so. And cigarettes are expensive, so that factors into it too.
Sometimes though, especially when drinking, I could chain smoke for a couple hours straight while hanging out in a park with friends, especially in the summer.
After I switched to vaping though, I have at times ended up puffing so enthusiastically that I've made myself nauseous from the nicotine. So there's certainly a limit there too.
Edit: another interesting thing I've noticed. Nicotine withdrawal seems much less severe after I switched to vaping. It takes several hours longer to become noticeable, and also feels less intense. When smoking, it took me 1 hour to start craving a cigarette, by 3 hours I'm becoming irritable with strong craving, and by 5 hours I'm extremely irritable, light-headed, and the only thing on my mind is smoking, completely incapable of focusing on anything except how to get some cigarettes and how to get to somewhere I can smoke em.
For vaping, it takes me maybe 7-8 hours to get to the 3 hour mark for smoking. I certainly get cravings long before that, maybe starting at 2-3 hours, but I'm able to push it out of my mind much more easily, for much longer. I don't know why this is. My theory is something to do with the lack of MAO inhibitors. It's also possible that it's a pharmacokinetic phenomenon, but that seems counterintuitive. If I'm ingesting higher doses of nicotine compared to smoking, blood levels will take longer to go to zero. But then I should also have higher tolerance, and therefore a higher threshold for the onset of withdrawal, since tolerance and chemical dependence are more or less the same thing.
I noticed this too. I was a chain smoker. I became a chain vaper, managing to quit tobacco in the process.
Eventually, I was able to cold turkey vaping in a way I could never manage with tobacco.
It took being sick for about 2 weeks so I couldn't vape. Once I was better, I just didn't do it again, and it was... actually kind of easy.
Similar situations have happened to me over the years when I was on tobacco, but I could never just walk away like I did with vaping.
Maybe part of it was that, with tobacco, you really organize a lot of your day around it. Going to the store, going outside for breaks, driving a little extra so you can fit in a smoke in the car, etc - vaping can really scramble all that up so you have fewer situational triggers.
However, the vast majority of my nicotine usage after quitting was chewing nicotine gum -- for 11 years! It also has the qualities you mention. You can be chewing all the time, anywhere, everywhere, and without any of the vaping restrictions places have.
Nicotine gum isn't for everyone, but if you're one of the people for whom it really takes as an addiction of its own, it's that much more difficult to quit because it's discreet, there's essentially no stigma, and you can do chew absolutely anywhere, doing practically anything.
Major skill issue.
Those patches aren't cheap, albeit neither is the addiction either, but just like the jump from cigarettes to nicotine gum is a good jump, so is vape to cigarettes sometimes. It was a long and painful journey for my friend even with my help, so I don't envy anyone with it worse than her (or even less of the addiction)
That wildly contradicts the experience of every cigarette smoker I've known across several generations.
This thread (outside your statements) is such a bizarre conversation to me that somehow people have deluded themselves into the argument a cigarette is a better option than putting in work to quit. Heroin could probably help someone stop smoking pot…that doesn’t mean it is a better choice just because “it’s harder to afford when you’re a junkie and therefore takes longer to get a hit than finding a J”.
I get the capability to abuse is easier than a cigarette, no disagreement. It’s probably similar to when smoking was allowed everywhere including on planes and in restaurants. I don’t see how the solution to ease of use, ease of access, and manufacturers adding far too much nicotine is “start smoking a different product with proven worse health consequences, including cancer, rather than vaping too much and possibly having some negative health effects”. These days nearly all major vape companies are owned by tobacco companies. They have a lot of experience in pushing the addictiveness boundaries for significant profit from the past 100+ years, and they are doing it again with vapes.
I say all this as someone who smoked for 15+ years, up to a pack and a half to two packs a day, vaped increasingly more nicotine over 5 years, and quit vaping over the course of a year by mixing 0mg nicotine liquid -- almost every vape liquid manufacturer offers it -- in fractionally increasing ratios each week until I was only vaping zero nicotine. I continued vaping 0mg for years after because I actually enjoy the act of smoking, but I finally just decided not to anymore.
Choosing not to quit and choosing not take any responsibility or steps toward battling your addictions are vastly different from not being capable. Everyone has the capacity to battle their addictions when they choose to, and small counter-examples or lack of success do not negate that premise.
The only limiting factor was the nausea of nicotine overdose, which I remember occasionally from chain smoking indoors.
But also your comment of "pure addiction" is simply wrong, because nicotine is more addictive than what you have in a vape (at the least with regards to level of concentration). I don't know why you think cigarettes would be better anywhere than vaping. It's just wrong. And both should be avoided anyway; people should not fall for the lie that vaping is better, but even less so that cigarettes is better. Why promote damaging substances anyway? Damage to lung cells exist via vaping too. People seem to forget that. They did not even know that asbesto fibers are damaging for a long time.
Eh ...
I didn't know many smokers who smoke < 1 pack per day. For those < 1 pack per day, it's mostly b/c they just haven't gotten there yet, but that's where they're headed.
Smokers aren't really going to change their smoking rituals either, just b/c their throat is a little sore or they're short of breath. They just switch to lights and/or menthol, or otherwise find a brand that doesn't punch them in the throat like Marlboro Reds do.
Going longer than usual without a smoke, generally means chain smoking 2 or more to catch up
Once addicted, it really takes a lot of hurt to self-limit. That means being literally sick, realistically.
Personally, I found vaping far easier to quit than cigarettes.
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This is absolutely false and anyone who has or does smoke, or knows people that smokes, knows this. People should refrain from commenting on things they have zero idea about.
In my experience: no, you don't. You just arrange your life around the fact that you need to smoke all the time.
There is no human on earth that can smoke continuously the entire day for very long. A pack a day smoker means smoking one every ~30 minutes circa.
As a kid, I could not breathe in there. This would have been late 70s. No way they could have afforded that habit at today’s prices.
This is all pedantic. The point is that you can chain smoke quite a lot if you're dedicated. I've never met anyone who smoked more than two packs a day regularly or maybe three on a crazy night out of drinking and smoking. 4-5 is crazy.
He'd go through something like 80 Embassy back then, a day. He gave up in 1984ish and is still trundling along. His Dad died at age 60 of lung cancer.
I gave up about eight years ago after 30 odd years at roughly 20 a day. I definitely did some damage and will eventually have to find out how much. I don't have a near permanent cough and at least five major bouts of 'flu per year anymore. I did have a short bout of Covid in 2021 and I suspect it might have been really nasty if I was still a smoker then.
Out of curiosity how old are you? I remember plenty of places in my younger days where it was commonplace for people to light up their next cig off of their current one pretty much nonstop
if anything, the strong smell and taste sensations makes it even more addictive
The patches are different, not just because it lacks that same connection to compulsive and ritualistic activity, but it simply doesn't provide the same quick "hit" that makes smoking far more addictive.
On the other hand, someone prone to addictive tendencies probably shouldn't even use the patches. Even the patches can be a gateway to vaping and smoking for such a person. I have simply never been the type to become addicted to any drug or substance, other than the occasional overeating. This isn't to say that I don't have the potential to get hooked on more powerful drugs, but my innate desire to use them is a lot less than I think is average. Even during times where I've habitually drunk copious amounts of alcohol, I've always been able to realize "this kinda sucks so I think I'm gonna stop" and then I just do without really much struggle other than some brain fog for a few days. Similarly, I sometimes use phenibut, and people talk about how easy it is to become dependent on it and how hard it is to get off it, and that hasn't been my experience in the slightest. Someone without a clear objective around how they use substances like that will be much more likely to end up suffering.
That said, the patches are great for focus and anxiety when used in low doses in moderation. I don't necessarily advise that everyone use them as I have, but I also don't think they're anywhere near as harmful as one might assume. I don't feel the need to ever switch to smoking or vapes, or even gums and pouches.
There is almost no good evidence of this. Effect sizes are tiny, if any. Just placebo and anecdotal. The effect is so small it's not even worth it from
The problem is that nicotine is not the only addictive substance involved. If it was then you could chew gum, wear patches or whatever and off you go. There is an extremely complicated set of chemicals involved in fag smoke. There is also the habit effect and other complications.
In the end I think that boring old will power is the only way and any trick or tool or whatever that you can deploy to bolster that is how you give up.
My initial plan was to vape but I soon found that unsatisfying and it looked to me like trying to substitute one habit with another.
Once I started stopping, I didn't want to stop! It was extremely hard but I always reminded myself that I had got so far and that that time would be wasted if I had to start again. I followed doubled up time periods - one day, two days, 1/2 a week, a week, a fortnight, a month, two months ("cripes, this might work") and so on.
A mental tool I developed was a couple of mantras: "I don't want to smell" and "I don't want to die". Whenever I felt the cravings I repeated those to myself and I have no idea why but it did work for a while at a time. Gradually the need tailed off (say around two years)
I remember having quite vivid dreams where I would "crack" and start smoking again. I had to do quite a lot of mental verification to prove to myself that it was just a dream. At one point I even smelt my clothes to prove to myself it was all a dream.
We are all different and there is no right or wrong way to quit. One thing we can all agree on is it is hard, very hard but not impossible. Pick a strategy that might work for you and be prepared to change it but please do have a go. It really is worth it.
They tell you not to cut them, because that cuts into their profits. It's a sticker. The amount of nicotine you get is directly proportional to the surface area. A step 3 patch is exactly 1/3 the size of a step 1. This makes it extremely easy to control the exact amount to tapper off.
The hard part most people don't get is the addiction is only about 50% physical to the nicotine. Your brain craves the habit regardless of the chemical. Habits suck. People seek help to stop chewing their fingernails. I still go for walks with the regularity of smoking. I can feel it. It builds up. I need to go for a walk. Same as going for a cigarette before.
I’m ADHD boy for sure, and my dad and his younger sister are both very much not like my aunt, who is more like me. Shes in her 80s now, and was the only smoker - literally smoked cartons a week for about as long as I remember.
But I have had the hypothesis (as a layman) that growing around smokers affects the brain of a child, they self-medicate with tobacco, and the cycle continues, and it has for many generations until today when smoking is frowned upon and self-medication is no longer readily available. I don’t think smoking is the cause of all of ADHD, but we’ll eventually learn that dopamine dysfunction has a lot of different causes.
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My first thought was "That's a no brainer why didn't I think of that".
Then I remembered that I grew up during peak anti-smoking and so they made nicotine out to be some sort of borderline meth boogeyman rather than just extra addictive extra effective caffeine that comes in bad for your health form factors and that all that propaganda got sent straight to long term memory and I was indoctrinated by it at such a young age it didn't even occur to me to think outside the box like that.
Nicotine patches are expensive for what they are but they're basically free compared to meds.
The research seems to indicate it's a cancer accelerant -- it doesn't cause cancer directly, but it promotes the growth and spread of existing tumors.
Studies suggest it does this through several pathways including:
(a) preventing cancer cells from self-destructing (b) making tumor cells divide more quickly (c) stimulating the growth of new blood vessels in and around tumors, helping them grow; and (d) helping cancer cells metastasize more easily by increasing mobility via epithelial-mesenchymal transition.
It also lowers the effectiveness of chemo and radiotherapy.
Admittedly, most of these are animal/lab studies, in part because it's hard to design a good study in humans since so many patients also use/used cigarettes and vapes, which confounds the results. Still, there's enough evidence out there to be cautious.
That is a severe understatement. Nicotine is consistently ranked as one of the most addictive drugs, near cocaine and heroin.
Only about 6% nicotine users manage to quit every year.
https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-n...
Anyway, I told my psych about my plan, and he agreed there is research indicating nicotine works as a third-line stimulant medication for ADHD. In many modern, Western countries adult ADHD is not even recognized, let alone medicated, so one has to make do with what's available.
In my experience it is almost as effective as amphetamines, with fewer side effects, much longer lasting (a patch lasts 16+ hours), and very cheap - if you get them on ebay from China. Addiction potential is null: addiction is a function of how quickly the effect peaks, and it takes 3 hours. Not even lisdexamfetamine can compare with how unaddictive patches are.
That said, if I had access to prescription amphetamines, I'd go back to them, but I sure don't miss the days all it did was making me incredibly horny and focused scrolling social media all day long. It was a little too effective at keeping me engaged for my own good, so using a subpar medication means learning to live with ADHD, adjusting your life around your own quirk, rather than only relying on the medication to fix everything for you.
If you stuck with plain vapes bought through a legal channel, that risk factor would have been absent.
That is what is left if you ignore the big one, which is its addictiveness. By itself that is probably not directly harmful, but the ways of consuming nicotine mostly are. Nicotine pouches carry some health risks, but are obviously not nearly as bad as snus and other crap like that containing tobacco.
As for the nicotine: yes, it's not great for your cardiovascular system. One Juul pod per day probably twice as bad as drinking three Starbucks grande drip coffees. However, the harm reduction of vaping is profound. Smoked tobacco is just devastatingly worse: smoke has carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, acrolein, and these are on top of the radioactive polonium and lead isotopes.
It's crazy seeing a lot of fearmongering (not saying that's what you're doing, but it is certainly a prevailing narrative) about vaping when, per the data, it's the strongest smoking cessation tool available outside prescription drugs and a massive harm reduction even if it's just a permanent substitute.
While never a heavy smoker I absolutely loved vaping: it was the first thing my hand reached for in the morning and the last it let go falling asleep. I went into panics when I couldn't remember where I had left my vape.
I've now managed to further reduce my smoking to only very few cigarettes per day. This might well still be more harmful than vaping all day long, but at least I got rid of my sixth finger (as a friend used to call it) and I can forget about smoking or vaping for many hours a day.
All my friends have moved to vapes, and they vape harder than I smoke, and I was on 20 a day before moving to roll ups.
I need to quit, but don't see vaping as viable.
Btw, one thing that helped me a lot are nicotine patches. I've used them for years and helped me reduce smoking down to ~3 cigs/ day, and even stop it for some period.
I don't think I can find a better quote to describe this feeling.
It felt surreal to quit after 1 last smoke as book promised at the beginning. Hadn't had craving since then.
Recommended to many people. For some it helped for some it didn't though.
So as long as you have your own reasons for why you want to quit vaping (and if you're picking up the book, you probably already do) it can still be helpful. The books from whyquit.com I mentioned in a sibling comment mention some vaping-specific arguments, and they're framed as quitting nicotine in general, not just smoking specifically.
Yes this is and has always been an option. Find any real vape shop at any point in the past... _checks calendar_ 15 years at least, and they will sell you nearly any of their "e-juice" products with no nicotine.
Trick is, the companies making disposables vapes/pods/etc generally don't offer them because those are generally large tobacco and other companies and ... well, why would they manufacturer and sell a non-addictive cigarette when an addictive version exists.
0% nicotine was an option almost 20 years ago when I started vaping and is still available. The tobacco companies getting involved and polluting the streets with single use lithium ion batteries and shit have done nothing but made everything worse.
Worked well for me, might not work so well for others.
Personally I thought that was the whole deal with vapes, use them as a tool to beat the addiction to 'real' tobacco products, but it looks like the world proved me wrong on that one.
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Also, vaping is fucking obnoxious for non smokers, clouds of awful smelling residue, and plastic shit everywhere. I'd rather people smoked, ideally those e-cigs that burn tobacco but cut out most of the toxins.
Unless you have an incredibly defective vaporizer, that "smoke" you're talking about is as much smoke as the "steam" in a hot shower is. If your vaporizer is producing smoke, you need to dispose of it and get one that doesn't set things on fire.
> Our lungs are extremely sensitive receptors and are pretty much supposed to interact with absolutely nothing else other than the air we breathe.
You might be astounded at how much junk is in the air we breathe, even in "clean" natural locations. Because the natural environment is so incredibly filthy and because the natural environment contains so many things that want to eat us (because -as it turns out- we're made of food!) our bodies are built to interact with and neutralize all sorts of contaminants.
[0]: https://tryfum.com
That is a thing, but there's also the habits you formed over the years. And they can be worse than the chemical craving.
I've greatly reduced my smoking multiple times for days up to a week. And then I forgot one morning and went back to my usual intake. Once I even stopped smoking for 3 days but forgot the 4th and lit one.
You need a plan for the reflexes you've formed too.
Because dragons are cool
The misery of quitting comes from wanting something you cannot have. The trick to avoiding that misery is to truly not want it. Then the only remaining struggle is a few days of noticeable physical symptoms (like having a mild flu, at worst) and the long struggle of trying to not forget why you don't want to smoke or vape or snus.
Anyone wishing to quit should read Alan Carr's book. Don't worry about whether everything in the book is literally true; the point of the book is not to be a list of pedantically true statements; the point of the book is to get you to quit smoking.
Apparently, though, you can figure out pipes well enough to just have no trouble. I've known a few old men that always seemed to have one going.
To be clear, it's 100%, definitely not good for you - but the level of harm doesn't seem to be even close to cigarettes or chewing tobacco.
The amount consumed is much less, the smoke shouldn't be entering your lungs, and if there are tons of good, "all-natural" tobacco out there without all the additives put in by cigarette companies.
I actually prefer and enjoy the slower nicotine delivery of pouches. If the oral fixation is a problem for anyone, they can just leave the pouch in long after it's dead. They're easy to stop using because there's no chasing a "rush". I think it's a superior product design.
I also go long periods of time without pouches, but I will say 50mg a day is quite a lot. I average about four of the 6mg pouches in a day when I even use them at all.
I tapered off alcohol when the anxiety during hangovers and compulsive overeating started to get out of hand. It was a good run. I'll have the occasional seltzer during holidays or events. That genuinely is just one or two to get a slight buzz. I can't feel any euphoria from it anymore, just mild relaxation that eventually progresses back into stress when I go over my limit. A big help in confirming it wasn't "all in my head" was my smartwatch showing my elevated heart rate, low HRV, and bad sleep. I feel much stronger euphoric feelings from working out now than I ever did from drinking.
In the end, moderation is key as it's ever been. It's a lot easier when the top (or sometimes only) options are not just beer and cigarettes.
Did you watch too many Marlboro ads? Smokers look like bozo either way.
The best part of it is that it is not that hard to stop smoking.
I once successfully quit smoking by buying a pack of cigarettes made with tobacco that had been cleansed of its nicotine. I bought them one evening on the way home from work.
That first night was rough because nicotine withdraw be like that. The second day was still not great, but it was easier. By the third day, I'd had enough. On about the fourth day, I threw the rest away because they were just tiresome.
They were lousy. They tasted terrible compared to my usual brand. And smoking them did nothing to quench my addiction-driven craving for nicotine -- the reward for my brain and my body simply wasn't being delivered.
And it worked.
---
My theory for the method of operation goes something like this:
My brain was used to pushing the button and receiving candy, and it needed that candy (or at least it thought that it did).
But this was disruptive of that: The button was still there and I could push it freely. But no matter how many times I pushed it, no candy was received. This went on just long enough that I no longer felt compelled to need candy (because nicotine addiction had enough time to fade out).
There are side effects; it can cause stomach bleeding if you don't carefully take it with meals, so if your breakfast is just a cup of coffee you'll need to adjust to consuming food; and it's associated with intensely vivid dreams which can disrupt your sleep. I experienced both but did not find it that bad, I blame myself for playing a bit fast and loose with the mealtime warnings. idk what it costs now but I paid $400 for the full course out of pocket, probably like $750 today with inflation. So, less than 6 months of moderate cigarette use.
It doesn't fix the psychological desire for a 'smoke break'; for about 6 months I chewed gum (ordinary gum, not nicotine) to get past the mental habit of wanting to consume something. Some people reported using a fidget toy to give their hands something to do. My theory is that if you have a severe smoking addition it is probably because nicotine slotted neatly into some pre-existing somatic need, so once you get past the cravings stage it's worth exploring why smoking or vaping became such a big deal for you in the first place.
What was really incredible though was right from the start I felt fantastic, like I spent all day in a flow state.
The doctor stopped the prescription after (I think) 8 weeks and I didn't start smoking again. Many years later I learned it is prescribed for ADHD and also as an antidepressant.
Worth keeping in mind as a generality that drugs disclose all their side effects even when those side effects are very rare or temporary.
And then one day they were awesome and relaxing.
Now recreational marijuana (ideally through bong) is way way more appealing than dumb tobacco cigarettes which do nothing, had it during my teenage years and also during my 20s on different ocassions with colleagues/friends (one of them used it during cancer treatment) and I can see myself having some even now in 40s if I could buy it legally.
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Even myself tested his firsts cigarettes.
It was so painful. The body reacts violently when you try to poison it. Severe coughs that people try to hide, trying to appear strong while they could not help it making impulsive movements. It tastes like sh*ht, it burns your lungs. You stink, your clothing and breath stinks.
It takes a lot of concious and painful work in order to force your body into accepting that.
For me it was pure stupidity to make a deliberate effort to get hooked into an addiction, so I just did not continue.
I couldn't help but see that this way. I read a lot so I knew what was coming next. It is like casinos not inviting mathematicians or physicist to conferences, as because of their training, they can see the probabilities inside out and never fall in the emotional trap.
If you grew up in a house with smokers, you would not find the smell unusual.
Only the first 2-3 in your life are any kind of challenge to get through, after that it's smooth sailing, unfortunately. For most people.
Count yourself lucky I guess.
There wouldn't be a trillion-dollar market for tobacco if it was "not pleasurable at all". Your personal experience isn't universal, man.
> It takes a lot of concious and painful work in order to force your body into accepting that.
Of course it does! But guess what? It feels sooo goood that people get addicted to it!
Smoking seems gross and stupid and self-destructive to me.
Alcohol does nothing for me, I don't understand why people drink alcohol when it's clear they will get a hangover. Sometimes I drink wine or beer but there's nothing appealing about it.
Gambling (casinos, online, sports betting) seems stupid and pointless - it's pretty much guaranteed that you'll lose, it's the whole point of a casino.
Caffeine - I drink tea and coffee, but most of it without caffeine. Sometimes I drink caffeine every morning for a couple of weeks (mountain biking vacation), and then I stop it and feel bad for a day and then I'm back to normal.
I guess I'm just lucky.
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Not that I know of, and I grant that this is an unknown, and we could end up learning about extremely bad 20-/30-/40-year effects in the future. That said, there are very clear, very significant, and very well studied harms of cigarette smoking. Research is being done on vaping, and so far all harms identified are significantly lower than smoking.
>Also nicotine itself is not without harm.
Sure, and thanks for the paper. I'm not well versed in bio enough to tell the significance of everything in there, but, correct me if I'm wrong, for the most part this is showing there exist harms, but they're not particularly well quantified yet, especially in terms of human subjects? For this to really matter, you'd need to quantify the surplus of nicotine you get from vaping vs. smoking, and then compare the relative harms of those two doses. Could be that 5x the dose causes 5x the harm, or could be that the smoking dose passes some threshold, and 5x the dose from vaping is just marginal additional harm on top of that. And then still compare that to the other differences between smoking and vaping in terms of harm.
Then there is the negative effects of I dunno how many multiples of volume of vape in your throat and lungs, which I assume is non-zero even though I personally believe its 100x better than burning tobacco.
Then there is the question of what that much nicotine does to you mentally, which is equally, if not more important. To put it in perspective, I usually wake up feeling pretty good, with some hopes and dreams of what Ill be doing that day, and Ill take a puff and immediately want to go back to bed for another hour. I cant sit in meetings for more than 5 mins or have conversations with people if it means I cant be vaping. Its like basing your whole life based on whether you get your fix of nicotine or not. Work from office? I don't think so buddy...every ten minutes Id have to go to the bathroom/outside. I seriously wonder where my life would have been if I never picked up this habit.
We'll see in another 10-20 years I suppose.
Even when we don't have the numbers for everyday long-term use we already know the chemical and biological mechanisms that make smoking so harmful and carcinogen and we can measure that these substances are almost entirely absent in vapor during normal use of a vape because almost all of the problems with smoking come from burning tabacco and inhaling the fumes and vaping is simply way cooler and there is no fume but vapor (hence the name) and we know that the potential of vapor to do harm is way lower than fume. We never have any long-term data for anything new. But to make an argument for not consuming something you would at least have some reasonable mechanism through which it could be harmful and a lot of those known to be harmful mechanisms are present when smoking but absent when vaping. Even the British National Health Service agrees that vaping is at least 95% less harmful than smoking and this is a reasonable position.
> Trading the terrible effects of burning tobacco versus the insane amount of nicotine from vaping seems like an unknown tradeoff to me
This is just black rhetoric that is not evidence-based. How do you know the amount of nicotine is "insane" during normal use?
All available evidence points to vaping being at least one magnitude less harmful than smoking and this is backed by what we know about chemical and biological processes of the chemicals involved and through medical reports about people who replaced smoking with vaping. It would be irresponsible to deny smokers who can't quit a way to harm reduction just by claiming we don't have any long-term data. We know enough about combustion, vapor and the chemical and biological implications to be quite confident that vaping is much less harmful than smoking.
That doesn't mean we should promote it to anybody who is not already a smoker. But as a means to reduce harm for someone who seems unable to quit smoking it should be considered.
I dont doubt given an equal amount of vaping to equal amount of smoking, vaping is far healthier. But to what end? Is smoking 1 cigarette a day worse than vaping 2-3ml of 50mg/ml nicotine? How about 3-4?
Also I don't think that there are many people that overdose nicotine regularily because it causes nausea and dizziness so people are normally self-regulating the nicotine dose automatically. So the scenario you are proposing doesn't seem to be something we can actually observe as a common consumption pattern.
Too much nicotine is far closer to drinking too much coffee than to smoking and has similar acute effects which is why almost nobody does it on a regular basis.
And "not ready to quit it at the moment" is such a wildly inappropriate dichotomy I really wonder what experience you have which informs your decision to discuss this topic.
If smoking 3-4 a day is far worse on my body BUT it means Im not a nicotine fiend with a brain fog all day every day with zero motivation, Ill take it.
But in general I am saying, even for the quitting smoking/vaping ad campaigns there is not enough emphasis put on how dramatically it reduces your quality of life. Its always about dying of cancer or heart disease and living shorter amount of time 20-40 years down the line. I mean shit in a lot of cases I rather die at 70 than live to 80. Youll feel better EVERY day in a month is a muucch stronger motivation for me.
Anyway, one of those big 5% disposables lasts me about 6 weeks at the rate I use them. I deliberately seek out the high nic content because I don't want to ingest more glycol or whatever than is necessary. Nor do I want to sit there and chain vape all day like I used to back when freebase liquids were all you could get. I can limit my intake to 2-3 puffs every 1-2 hours and that's what works for me.
Instead of having to sell cigarettes with throat cancer on the label, they get to make all this colorful brands with an even more insane nicotine delivery system with the "health benefit" of quitting smoking...
Dont ever ever try this crap.
Vaping is equivalent to shooting heroin or doing crack, it's so much more intense and addictive than smoking. I found quitting smoking to be incredibly easy compared to quitting vaping.
That’s a feature of the juice the mainstream products come with, not of vaping in general.
If I smoke a cigarette now Ill usually regret it cause Ill be thinking about the terrible taste in my mouth the next 20 mins.
Vaping? Its like eating fucking candy with a million different flavors to try when youre bored of one
I stopped smoking and started vaping for a while (~1.5 years) and went back to smoking after some bad vape experiences. At some point, even the smell of the liquid would cause me nausea.
My health is surprisingly good despite the habit. I walk every day, and I can do longer cardio without loosing breath or feeling tired. I'm either lucky or sitting on some ticking time bomb that went unnoticed so far.
I definitely recommend not starting on either though.
Genetic lottery for sure. I’m still quitting but it’s not really because of acute or chronic health problems, mostly cost and being tired of stinking all the time.
Genetic variation probably has a bigger role than we'd like to admit. There are definitely outliers. I know smokers who lived into their 90s, and non-smokers who died much younger. The sibling comment says they lived into their 70s, which is probably average.
...and then there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Health_and_life...
Calment continued smoking in her elderly years until she was 117
> Her husband introduced her to smoking, offering cigarettes[5]: 4–21 after meals, but she did not smoke outside these post-meal occasions.
Having a cigarette after meals is less than ideal of course, but it's not like it's a pack-a-day habit.
I hate this anecdata. I do know these too.
But statistics don't lie. The odd outlier is not relevant. How many times can you roll the dice and win the saving throw? Smoking kills, and when it doesn't it destroys well-being.
Even without the health issues smokers becoming absolute pricks because they didn't get their fix. Or how much imposing their cloud of ash is invasive, even in open air. Did you know that parents going outside to smoke in front of the door thinking of their child is mostly a feel-good thing? The minimal distance to not impact the child is 10m from outside walls, and that's not counting the nicotine and ash that permeates the skin and clothing, which gets ingested in the next hug or three, leading to significant amounts of nicotine being found in children hair.
I know, I've been there, I've been that guy. Stressing out because I had only two left in the pack on a Sunday. Rushing to buy a pack before the shop closes like my life depended on it. Snapping out when the effect wears off. Leaving the table at restaurants to get my fix. Barely able to get through an entire movie at the cinema, and as soon as credits roll, get out and immediately swallow an entire cigarette in under a minute.
Now that I'm out of it I can see the absolutely disrespectful behaviour, and in a way I understand because I've been there, I've been the addict that can't see how I harm not just me but others too. I've been the addict that keeps the blindfold of denial so that I could continue satisfying my craving.
And now life is _so much_ better without it. Much better energy, focus, willpower, and freedom.
There is _nothing_ positive about smoking. It's death in a tube, plain and simple.
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But yes, it’s certainly less bad than getting the same amount of nicotine by smoking tobacco.
Only about 6% nicotine users manage to quit every year.
Yet, only about 6 percent of smokers are able to quit in a given year.
I also note that I was able to quit nicotine cold-turkey after smoking cigarettes for two years. I've never been able to quit caffeine... and -although it is notably shorter in duration- caffeine withdrawal is WAY worse than nicotine withdrawal.
If we're going by anecdote I know way more people who quit caffeine than nicotine.
Given how sloppy you were with the article you implicitly claimed to have read, I have zero confidence in the accuracy of your anecdotes.
> Thank you for checking the source.
Respectfully, why the hell didn't you check it? It's only a couple of pages long. Did you do something dreadfully silly like employ some LLM to "assist" you with your conversation?
On one hand, yes, nicotine in many ways does deserve the reputation it's received. Then again, a lot of the blame should go more towards smoking rather than nicotine the substance.
Nicotine is highly addictive, but as you mentioned, the delivery method plays a huge role in its addictive potential, and most people don't realize this. The chances that you'll become addicted to patches is incredibly low. If they were that addictive, then they'd likely be way more effective in helping people quit smoking; in reality, it's somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of patch users who successfully end up quitting smoking that way. Even with the highest dose patches, the addiction potential is still relatively low because the patches release the nicotine over a very long period of time and make it difficult or impossible to associate the use of the substance with a ritualistic activity like lighting and puffing on a cigarette.
And yeah, it's not a subject you can really bring up with anyone besides recreational drug users. Very few will be receptive to the idea that nicotine has legitimate uses and can be used without getting addicted.
As a former smoker and non-smoker for a long time now, I disagree.
> ...clouds of awful smelling residue...
IME, most of the time it smells far better than cigarette smoke.
> ...and plastic shit everywhere.
Litterbugs are gonna litter, man. I know this because I live in a place with a very high concentration of them. Is the litterbug done with his drink, takeout, or other item that came in some disposable packaging? Is the trash can that's clearly visible from his current location more than two feet away? Then that packaging ends up directly on the sidewalk or tossed into the street.
Worse than that are litterbugs who are also dog owners. Their creed is "Pick up my dog's dogshit and put it in a trashcan? Hell no, fuck that, and fuck you!".
Breathing air with more than ~12ug/m^3 of small particles is considered less than ideally healthy. (This is where PM2.5 comes from.)
Go check out the mass of fine particles per puff:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507187/#_sec_000047_
This is so many orders of magnitude above the “good” AQI threshold that it’s almost comical.
Now, sure, different particles have different health characteristics, but the stuff coming out of a vape isn’t water, and you’d better hope that it is many orders of magnitude less damaging than the fine particles that are found in the environment if you actually want to believe that your lungs are prepared to handle it.
(Okay, it’s obviously orders of magnitude less damaging than, say, wildfire smoke or brake dust or restaurant kitchen exhaust on a per-microgram basis, but the question is how many orders of magnitude less dangerous.)
P.S. I strongly suspect that there is one common dry aerosol that is genuinely harmless in moderate amounts: sodium chloride from sea spray. It’s highly soluble and found all over inside your body. I’m not sure to what extent air quality impact studies try to separate out the AQI impact from sea spray from everything else.
People make a big deal out additives and accelerants, but the carcinogens are 99% from smoke, burning plant matter. In that respect, pure tobacco isn't meaningfully safer. That said if you "puff", that's probably safer, though still risky (mouth cancer, and you're still going to inhale some amount of smoke).
Except they don't:
https://exposetobacco.org/wp-content/uploads/Cigarette-Filte...
There have been calls in the Netherlands (perhaps even at the EU level) to ban filtered cigarettes, for the simple reason that they are misleading and offer no protection, but are harmful to the environment because of the non-degradable micro-plastics.
If we won’t tax the bots for UBI, at least we can still have smoker-subsidized school lunches.
It's not really the nicotine that causes the obvious damage though. Studies have shown that the vape smoke stimulates the vagus nerve which causes changes in the cardiovascular system that could likely cause heart disease
On top of that it’s obvious that what goes into the lungs generally stays in the lungs, and vapes are full of all sorts of weird flavours and e numbers
But the truth is even if you were vaping water all day it would likely still damage your cardiovascular system
nobody claimed otherwise
> Studies have shown that the vape smoke stimulates the vagus nerve which causes changes in the cardiovascular system that could likely cause heart disease
Can you name this study? Are you talking about "E-cigarettes and their lone constituents induce cardiac arrhythmia and conduction defects in mice"? This study did not find what you claim. All it found is that in mice the heart rhythm during and right after exposure increased. This is far from claiming that it "could likely cause heart disease" in humans. Also human switching studies point the other way. smokers who move to vaping show improvements in blood vessel function within weeks. I don't know why people really need to twist study results to depict vaping more harmful than it is. Yes, it is not healthy and you shouldn't do it. But all scientific evidence conclusively points to vaping, even heavy vaping, still being way less harmful than smoking because we already know that basically all harm comes from inhaling the residues of combustion, not from the nicotine. Condeming vaping as being equally bad as smoking is irresponsible and unscientific and prevents proven harm reduction for heavy smokers.
I never said this did I.
Also you’re talking about smokers moving to vaping, whereas at the moment plenty of people are going straight to vaping due to people over arguing how harmless it is compared to smoking.