Tabex (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytisine) is what helped me (and my boyfriend) quit smoking after many years (~30) of smoking and several failed attempts to quit using nicotine gum and patches. We have now been smoke-free for over 5 months, which is still not long, but much longer than we have ever lasted before.
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.
The cravings do go away entirely eventually. It took me probably 2-3 years after I quit before the random cravings stopped, I used to want make the smoking motion with my hand and that finally went away as well. It’s a fairly linear drop off I think, you just get them with less and less frequency as time goes on.
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.
It depends where you are in the world. I bought mine at a pharmacy in Poland on a visit, but I've seen reports of people buying online from Poland, and even people buying it on Amazon. You can check out Reddit as well, as I've seen people sharing websites there.
Here's what I did to get rid of my nicotine addiction (vaping):
- 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.
My father did the same thing. He used to smoke a pack a day and the day that I was born he quit and never touched it again, and then when I was old enough to understand cigarettes, he taught me to never start smoking and I never have.
Though it took my dad a bit longer, he managed to quit for good when I was a kid. Still died of lung disease at 80, but I have to think it would likely have been much sooner if he'd never quit. Anyway, watching him struggle with it when I was young definitely make me repulsed by cigarettes (and most other addictive substances) such that I've certainly never been tempted to try them.
Not necessarily. I’m over 40 now and had a total of 3 cigarettes in my life, all of them in my twenties, parties, hanging out with people smoking etc.
Every time it was a terrible experience and I was amazed why people do this to themselves…
I don't think OP advice is wrong as a general advice though. I've also smoked very sporadically and never got really hooked (as opposed to my whole family), but plenty of regular smokers started with that first one. It's better to not take any chances.
No need to be drama queen. I am also 40+, had for sure 10-20 cigarettes in my teenage years to try it and on social ocassions with friends, never saw the appeal, found the taste disgusting (and remember being dizzy) and don't remember my 1st cigarette at all. For the record I dislike as well taste of beer or coffee, got used to wine, which I drink only when visiting father or him visiting me, so totally like twice a year (though it's then multiday affair). It's same with alcohol addiction, drank fairly enough during teenage years, then pretty much stopped completely during 20s (only rarely with colleagues), then around 30 while in China was drinking daily for lunch and dinner 40+ % spirit (baijiu) for months with colleagues, then completely stopped overnight after finding better (but less laid-back) job.
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.
Went cold turkey during the first covid lockdown. It was a combination of not being able to go out to buy cigarettes and also the fear of dying since I was a heavy chainsmoker.
I finally quit because of COVID. I got long COVID so bad and my lungs were so messed up that every time I tried to smoke it was a horrible experience. 6 months later when I finally felt good enough to try again the desire was pretty much gone. I genuinely tried to re addict myself and couldn’t do it
I don't know the movie or show but there is a scene where someone asks a woman who quick smoking a long time ago (10 years maybe?) if she ever thinks about smoking and she says "every time someone lights up next to me at the bar I want to suck the smoke out of their lungs."
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.
- 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.
In my late 20s and early 30s I would frequently join my coworkers outside while they took a smoke break. I would generally try to stay at the periphery or upwind when possible. Over time, I found myself having inexplicable cravings for a cigarette despite never having smoked one. Presumably this was due second hand exposure. (Acknowledging it would have been smarter to simply stay indoors.)
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.
> Heck it's been 4 years and I still sometimes get dreams where I'm vaping.
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.
Genetic lottery, I think. There are some "addictions" I've been able to give up incredibly easily, and others I still struggle with. Other people have the opposite problem, others still don't have any at all. The older I get, the more I think willpower is a made up concept.
Sadly true, I think. My grandparents gave up smoking at the same time after grandad contracted emphysema. They were the generation that believed smoking was good for them and smoked for 50+ years. My grandma was shocked that she had physical withdrawal symptoms, something she associated with "druggies". But it went away after two weeks. After that my grandma never thought of smoking again and actually became repulsed by smoke. But my grandad never got over it, he craved a cigarette every day for the rest of his life.
Because it is not pleasurable at all? When I was a kid, I saw a couple of friends get addicted to smoking, from the first cigarette. I have seen dozens of acquaintances as well because I was interested in the process.
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.
That's funny, as I was reading the comments on this page I was thinking the opposite: I don't understand people who get addicted to things.
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 am very prone to (mostly digital) addictions, but on nicotine, despite having been smoking 7 years, I’ve quit cold turkey without trouble, and since then, I can absolutely just borrow one to a friend, maybe 2 or 3 times per year, without any withdrawal symptoms. It does not have any effect. I don’t understand anything about that :|
I have never been addicted to nicotine so can't compare but it's quite easy to quit caffeine, I'll get headaches for a few days and then it's gone. But then what? Caffeine makes it easy to concentrate and work, enables me to get anything done at all. Other drugs that do that are illegal. Maybe one day, when I'm no longer working, I'll quit it for good. Not yet.
I vaped for around a year and each attempt to quit ended in failure.
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 did something similar but without the gum stage. Since I was buying concentrated nicotine liquid and diluting it with a PG/VG mix, I would just reduce the strength until I was literally putting a single drop of the strong nicotine liquid into my 10ml vial of PG/VG. Then to prevent just vaping more I would count the number of puffs per hour and reduce it until after one puff per hour I'd go to one puff every 2 hours etc.
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.
I actually tried something similar, but failed. I'm curious, how often did you dilute and by how much?
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.
Instead of a tank I was also using an open dripper head on the vape, so I could basically limit how many drops of liquid I was putting on the actual coil. And I would basically just look at the clock to see when it was time to add more.
Good job!! Would it have been less miserable if you did it more slowly? With antidepressants and other psychoactive meds the ride tends to be easier when it's drawn out longer.
Last time I managed to get addicted, the gum was a lifeline. I found it pretty easy to switch to, to be honest, and just told myself it was OK if I was on it forever. After about 4 months of as much gum as I wanted, whenever, I started working down through the dosages, eventually making little Franken-gums by using a pill-cutter and regular gum to split the dosage further.
I never got in to smoking, but even having done ZYNs a handful of times (e.g., with friends on trips, think I bought 2-3 tins maximum), I find myself craving them. Nicotine is insane.
A while back I saw this on reddit... in case you don't want to click the link, it's a picture of a cigarette with the caption "This plant-based alternative promises to help high schoolers stop vaping".
I would have never thought that people would be stupid enough to try this for real, but here we are...
You're being judgmental but I think you're just misinformed.
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.
Sure and maybe also cover why you wont add pure nicotine to your heroin instead of subjecting yourself and others to documented cancer risk from cigarette smoke.
Well, if smoking cigarettes is easier to quit, then it might be better overall for some people to take up cigarettes a few months and quit, than to keep vaping for the rest of their lives.
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.
while tobacco is indeed more viscerally addictive than vaporized nicotine, i still believe it is wrong to label the act of switching from vapes to cigs as blanket stupidity. a cigarette has a defined start and end point around which the brain may optimize, while vapes have no off switch. from the outside in, it may be difficult to see that this factor may weigh in significantly ... so ill bolster my point by suggesting tobacco is a valid method to control schizophrenia symptoms, i dont believe that high dose nic vapes have the same effect.
People used to smoke everywhere. Bars, restaurants, tiny offices without ventilation, cars, busses, aircraft, underground railway, literally everywhere.
When it became common knowledge that second hand smoke is bad restrictions came into place.
Smoking on public transit (and literally everywhere else too) was totally normal and common up until the 90s when regulations started to trickle in. When I was in elementary school teachers smoked in the teacher's lounge and would talk about when they used to be able to smoke in the classroom. My grandma would take about smoking while at work, and she worked as a seamstress.
Have you read gwern on nicotine? Particularly, in this case, regarding MAOIs in tobacco, so I suppose the hop through gwern isn't entirely necessary, but it's where I first heard of this, anyway.
Yeah, so I have smoked for 80% of the last 30 years… usually between 1/2-1 pack/day. I’ve been cutting back by switching to vape, knowing that it only has nicotine and not the MAOI and other substances. Right before Labour Day weekend I ran out and decided to try going the weekend. It’s been 20 days now and I am starting to feel like the effects of the MAOI are starting to wear off. I still have nicotine cravings, but it’s once I firmly feel like the MAOI withdrawal is gone (probably another week or two) I plan to start breaking the habit with patches and maybe gum.
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.
maois are what make tobacco more than just nicotine (in terms of both benefit potential and addiction potential). maios were the first ever anti depressant, cigarettes are therefore a valid anti depressant too. cigs are also correlated with testosterone. maybe there's an ulterior reason they are demonized?
People don't understand that cigarettes are self-limiting because they literally hurt your throat and lungs. Most people simply can't chain smoke and they need about an hour break in between smokes.
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.
>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.
Speaking from personal experience, vaping is far more addicting. For one the amount of nicotine, especially in the US where 5% is the standard, is easily 5-10x the amount from a pack of cigarettes a day.
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.
>Speaking from personal experience, vaping is far more addicting.
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... .
Do we have the numbers yet on the effects of vaping all day every day on cardiovascular health and lung cancer?
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
>Do we have the numbers yet on the effects of vaping all day every day on cardiovascular health and lung cancer?
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.
Keep in mind 5x the dose is relative to being a pack a day smoker. We're talking 20x if it means smoking 4-5x a day.
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.
> Do we have the numbers yet on the effects of vaping all day every day on cardiovascular health and lung cancer?
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 think you read my comments as some self assured statement or argument whereas I was genuinely asking questions.
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?
As far as I know the academic consensus is that taking in more nicotine, even a lot more, doesn't turn vaping into something as harmful as smoking. Addiction is the main established "harm". Nicotine, even very much of it, is not considered a carcinogen. There are studies that suggest it could promote tumour growth but it hasn't been shown in humans. There is also decades of data from nicotine replacement therapy and Swedish snus users and it shows little to no increase in heart attacks or strokes in otherwise healthy people. Another risk is accute poisoning, i.e. swallowing large quantities of liquid by children. As far as I know even the more alarming voices regarding nicotine do not regard it as harmful as inhaling fumes from combustion.
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.
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
> 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.
> 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.
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.
Also I want to mention, I feel like there is too much emphasis put on length of life and not enough on quality of life.
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 smoking cigarettes shortens life. Why would you want to promote vaping as improvement on the quality of life? Also, why do you write nicotine fiend - you are aware that tobacco plants contain nicotine? Vaping may be less damaging than smoking. I fail to see how it is healthy anywhere at all. Why do people here on this sub promote either thing as an exclusive or? That makes no sense. People need to stop sugar-coating crap. I also noticed this with weed. Weed users always say how weed is no problem, but it ALSO is a problem. Their brain tricks them into becoming a promo-individual for weed suddenly. Weed changes the brain pattern too.
I think you misread. I am saying vaping 5x the amount of nicotine is far worse mentally. Even if smoking 3-4 a day is worse physically, if I am going to do one or the other, I rather smoke 3-4 a day.
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.
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.
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.
For the disposable vapes, yes it is. 5% salt nic, in the US youd be hard pressed to find lower. Most countries Ive been to limit to 2%, which the US absolutely should do. Its criminal 5% is sold with no alternative.
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
For context, I vape because nicotine helps me focus. There's a lot more to it than that but I'm not going to elaborate because if I do, I'll get about a zillion replies from preachy, argumentative people who don't know anything about me and I just don't have the time for that today.
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.
... Huh, I had no idea of this. Yeah, limit in Europe is 20mg/ml, and practical limit on what you can buy, at least in Ireland, is 18mg/ml (I suspect this is manufacturers giving themselves a safety margin, but seems to be pretty standard).
Good dude, good ole days. These modern vapes are all from the same tobacco companies, hence the craziness. Cant fight em? Join em.
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...
Vaping to smoking is like shooting heroin is to doing a line of coke. And I say this as someone who has smoked and vaped.
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.
Opposite here. Taken me hundreds of tries to quit smoking (none worked, vaping was the only thing that allowed me to), vaping I sometimes just don’t do, never had that with smoking, where I sometimes switched to menthol so I could keep smoking while sick…
I had a very different experience. I would start smoking again for various personal but uninteresting reasons and found that it was much easier if I went to vaping for a week or two before quitting completely.
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.
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