Then when vaping appeared on the scene, I switched to vaping - HEAVY vaping, loads of nicotine (you could buy 100 mg/ml nicotine base by the gallon for a few bucks back when it was still free). For 10 years.
Then finally I quit vaping. It’s been 5 years.
I’m finally free from tobacco. And it’s entirely thanks to vaping for me. I tried a million times and only vaping finally peeled me off tobacco (and then it took me 10 years to peel myself off vaping, but that was easier).
That’s what it took and how long it took me to get off tobacco. I curse the everlasting shit out of the day I took my first drag on a cigarette…
I never tapered off. I replaced hard smoking with hard vaping almost overnight - and when I mean hard vaping, I mean big mods with big drippers, tons of power, tons of clouds, tons of nicotine.
I calmed down a bit with the vaping over the years because I didn’t feel I needed as much. Then one mornng, I simply left the mod at home and stopped vaping cold turkey.
Vaping had two functions for me:
Inject nicotine into my system in a safer way than tobacco
Reassure me that no matter what happened, as long as I had a mod nearby, I never needed to touch a cigarette again. And my most pressing source of anxiety was to want to smoke again.
After 10 years of vaping, I really felt like tobacco was well and truly alien to me at that point, so the “crutch” aspect of vaping disappeared. As for the nicotine, I figured I could always smear some nicotine base VG onto my gums. So I quit vaping but I left home with a bottle of nic that morning, but ended up never needing it.
That’s my tobacco cessation story. Everybody’s is different 🙂
How’d you manage cold turkey like that? I tried it as well and failed miserably, my head was spinning like crazy, I seriously couldn’t think or do pretty much anything. Scared me a bit. Luckily I got some medication that helps with the physical addiction and then it was a breeze (at least the physical symptoms), but the first cold turkey try was truly hell.
Like I said, I quit tobacco cold-turkey but I replaced it with the same dose of nicotine - if not more - only delivered differently.
I started vaping when vaping was new. I literally bought 10 liters of 100 mg nic VG online from a seller in Poland and diluted it to 35 mg. That’s what I started vaping with. This isn’t even legal anymore: the strongest nic base you can find these days is 20 mg.
Nicotine through vaping worked like a perfect replacement for me (of course helped by the heavy dosage). I know it doesn’t do that for everybody, and that’s the main reason a lot of people fail to quit smoking with vaping. But at least for me, the transition from heavy smoking to heavy vaping was totally seamless: I simply didn’t feel any difference.
Of course, all that is moot now that vaping has been as good as outlawed for all intents and purposes… What vaping did for me isn’t available to those who want to quit smoking anymore.
Well I did drop the nic content in my juice over the years. But when I quit, I was still doing 6 mg and vaping all day long non-stop.
But when I realized I didn’t need vaping as a psychological reassurance that would prevent me from falling back into tobacco addiction, I wondered if perhaps I really didn’t need nicotine either. And it turned out, I didn’t. I kind of craved a bit for a few days, but not really that much.
I think the delivery mode of vaping makes a huge difference: when you smoke, you get a spike of nicotine, then a low, then a spkie at the next cigarette, etc. When you vape, the nic level in your blood rises up slowly, and stays there, but never really spikes like with cigarettes. So when you smoke, you get hit after hit and you crave the next hit. When you vape, there really isn’t any hit. So my theory is that over time, despite pumping myself full of nicotine out of habit, my body just didn’t really crave it anymore, and I only realized when I stopped for good.
Yeah it was gnarly. That was my once every ~24 hours dose, with about 1/3 of the time not being able to afford it and having the equivalent of a severe flu from withdrawal. It was like that for years. Everyone that I ever hear about being prescribed any painkillers, I give them a very serious warning.
For anyone already struggling with opioid addiction, MAT (Suboxone) is a perfectly viable option to get off of that shit, it’s not perfect, and it’s expensive, but it’s no where near as expensive as your habit, and you’ll get your life back.
Tobacco. 10,000%.
I smoked 3 packs a day for 25 years.
Then when vaping appeared on the scene, I switched to vaping - HEAVY vaping, loads of nicotine (you could buy 100 mg/ml nicotine base by the gallon for a few bucks back when it was still free). For 10 years.
Then finally I quit vaping. It’s been 5 years.
I’m finally free from tobacco. And it’s entirely thanks to vaping for me. I tried a million times and only vaping finally peeled me off tobacco (and then it took me 10 years to peel myself off vaping, but that was easier).
That’s what it took and how long it took me to get off tobacco. I curse the everlasting shit out of the day I took my first drag on a cigarette…
did vaping make it easier to taper off?
I never tapered off. I replaced hard smoking with hard vaping almost overnight - and when I mean hard vaping, I mean big mods with big drippers, tons of power, tons of clouds, tons of nicotine.
I calmed down a bit with the vaping over the years because I didn’t feel I needed as much. Then one mornng, I simply left the mod at home and stopped vaping cold turkey.
Vaping had two functions for me:
After 10 years of vaping, I really felt like tobacco was well and truly alien to me at that point, so the “crutch” aspect of vaping disappeared. As for the nicotine, I figured I could always smear some nicotine base VG onto my gums. So I quit vaping but I left home with a bottle of nic that morning, but ended up never needing it.
That’s my tobacco cessation story. Everybody’s is different 🙂
How’d you manage cold turkey like that? I tried it as well and failed miserably, my head was spinning like crazy, I seriously couldn’t think or do pretty much anything. Scared me a bit. Luckily I got some medication that helps with the physical addiction and then it was a breeze (at least the physical symptoms), but the first cold turkey try was truly hell.
Like I said, I quit tobacco cold-turkey but I replaced it with the same dose of nicotine - if not more - only delivered differently.
I started vaping when vaping was new. I literally bought 10 liters of 100 mg nic VG online from a seller in Poland and diluted it to 35 mg. That’s what I started vaping with. This isn’t even legal anymore: the strongest nic base you can find these days is 20 mg.
Nicotine through vaping worked like a perfect replacement for me (of course helped by the heavy dosage). I know it doesn’t do that for everybody, and that’s the main reason a lot of people fail to quit smoking with vaping. But at least for me, the transition from heavy smoking to heavy vaping was totally seamless: I simply didn’t feel any difference.
Of course, all that is moot now that vaping has been as good as outlawed for all intents and purposes… What vaping did for me isn’t available to those who want to quit smoking anymore.
Well, I meant how you quit vaping, there’s no difference between quitting one way of getting nicotine and the other.
Ah right, sorry I misunderstood.
Well I did drop the nic content in my juice over the years. But when I quit, I was still doing 6 mg and vaping all day long non-stop.
But when I realized I didn’t need vaping as a psychological reassurance that would prevent me from falling back into tobacco addiction, I wondered if perhaps I really didn’t need nicotine either. And it turned out, I didn’t. I kind of craved a bit for a few days, but not really that much.
I think the delivery mode of vaping makes a huge difference: when you smoke, you get a spike of nicotine, then a low, then a spkie at the next cigarette, etc. When you vape, the nic level in your blood rises up slowly, and stays there, but never really spikes like with cigarettes. So when you smoke, you get hit after hit and you crave the next hit. When you vape, there really isn’t any hit. So my theory is that over time, despite pumping myself full of nicotine out of habit, my body just didn’t really crave it anymore, and I only realized when I stopped for good.
I quit a $240 dollar/day opioid habit, but they ain’t takin’ my damn nicotine
$240/day?! How much were you taking?
240mg oxycodone, unknown amount of fentanyl towards the end there
That amount of oxy alone is a LOT, good thing you were able to stop. Must’ve been hard.
Yeah it was gnarly. That was my once every ~24 hours dose, with about 1/3 of the time not being able to afford it and having the equivalent of a severe flu from withdrawal. It was like that for years. Everyone that I ever hear about being prescribed any painkillers, I give them a very serious warning.
For anyone already struggling with opioid addiction, MAT (Suboxone) is a perfectly viable option to get off of that shit, it’s not perfect, and it’s expensive, but it’s no where near as expensive as your habit, and you’ll get your life back.