Time To Go On Offense

So this campus has basically shut me down vaping in any way.

Outside of the commons, there is a smoking area. First day I moved in I started vaping away, listening to music. Then a random guy tapped on my shoulder and told me "They don't like you doing that here." And I was like, uhm thanks for the warning. Did it a few more days without incident, and I had a RA approach me and tell me that "We don't allow that here." I asked why, and she just said that's what I've been told. Was vaping again, because I figured if I did get in trouble it'd be a chance to explain how ridiculous it is to not allow vaping in a smoking area. Head of student housing sees me, and says that I have to stop doing that or he'll write me up. I try to ask why and he simply says "We have no idea what could be in there" and walks away. ????

So I figured I'm not going to risk it, I'll just stealth vape on a little vv mod in my room while I work. My room mate is cool with it, obviously vapor doesn't damage the room in any way, no obvious smell. Its 2am, and of course after only about 5-10 hits a deafening BEEP BEEP BEEP and strobe lights. Apparently I somehow set off the fire alarm. So I quickly think to throw popcorn in the microwave, and as I'm doing it the sound stops. At this point I'm shaking because I could forfeit my security deposit, get everyone evacuated, and have the fire department come out. I wait for a couple hours, but nothing comes of it. No one has to leave the building or anything. I was never confronted about it.

At this point I'm really paranoid, so I pull my car into the far parking lot. Close the windows, and vape there. Listening to the radio, put my seat back and was enjoying myself. This is an area that technically isn't the property of the college so I think I'll be fine. NOPE, I hear sirens... Cop jumps out of his car, loudly knocks on my windows. I roll it down a bit and vapor starts billowing out. After a little bit of back and forth he explains that someone called him out for a "car fire" and that he was doing a wellness check. At this point I'm thinking I really just can't catch a break. He's nice enough about it and even laughs before leaving.

Now I'm way too paranoid to vape on campus at all. I was used to chain vaping at my desk, but now every time I have to drive out and spend an hour sitting in my car :/  

At my job, some times i have to spend time in close proximity, with people who still smoke analogs. And the analog smoke that they carry on them is plain offensive.

I just want to run in the apposite direction, so the smell (smoke BO) doesnt get on me.

Wish i could tell them to take anti radioactive bath before they interact with the rest of the none smokers in public.

I cant believe thats how i used to smell for so many years. If i knew this 10 years ago, i would have quit smoking 10 years ago.

The smell is is just efin toxic!!


end rant.  

Well, I just got back from a week in Orlando (Kids, theme parks) and I wanted to share what I saw.

Disney: What a pita! Vaping is restricted to smoking areas, and these are extremely rare and far out.
Universal: Awesome. Even though I (mostly) vaped in the smoking areas, they were all over the place, easily accessible.

I also have to say that we (both myself and the kids) were really disappointed in the Disney parks (Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios). Old, stale, lame. Universal was awesome (We went to the Islands of adventure park; wish I had done 2 days of universal and one of Disney, rather than the other way around!)

But that actually isn't the reason for my post. What impressed me is the number of vapers I ran into (in the smoking areas). And I didn't see a single cigalike! Several big-ego batts (usually with EVOD heads) but also some great gear! There was a guy blowing such beautiful vape that I had to go ask - he was using a Herkales (don't remember what his box mod was) and uses an Arctic for backup. And never heard of ECF! (Hopefully he's joined!)

But what stunned me was that:
a) Every smoking area I went to, 25 percent of the people there were vaping, not smoking.
b) Everyone I talked to (was only about 4 people) had just started within the last few months
c) Nobody was using crap gear, or gas-station cigalikes.

Icing on the cake: While I was on vacation, a tree fell on my house. Met the adjuster today, and guess what? While we were walking around the outside of the house, he pulled out his vape! (And he also started just 2 months ago!)

Maybe I don't get out enough, but I was amazed, and encouraged. I think, when the end-of-year numbers come out on vaping some politicians are going to be unpleasantly shocked.  

I remember when I started vaping 3 years ago, the transition was hard and I had many relapses. I started with stick style batteries which were far and different than smoking a cigarette. It was like sucking through a straw for 7+ seconds, with little vapor and throat hit/satisfaction at the end. It worked for a while then I relapsed back to cigarettes. I tried Ego-Batteries with 1.0-1.5ohm cartos/tanks, it came close but so many dry hits, and it still wasnt much like a cigarette so I relapsed again, then towards the end of last year, I picked up a vaporshark and started vaping <1.0ohm coils in tanks/RDA's and it got me hooked, it was very much like smoking a cigarette. 2-4second drags, throat hit, and nicotine delivery.

which comes to my second question, I know there is this whole thing of 'cloud chasers' and 'tootle puffers', but what kept you on vaping and didnt make you relapse? For the cloud chasers, was it the visual aspect? The hobby of vaping, the want to get more and bigger visuals out of clouds, or more throat hit and similarity to smoking with clouds just as a side effect? And for the tootle puffers, did you just get used to taking longer drags compared to smoking, have you tried subohming at high wattage and just found longer less direct throathit was more satisfying to you when compared to smoking?

it makes me wonder how people come to their desired vaping setups, if they came by them by trying to find something similar to smoking, or just fell into something completely new that they enjoy even more.

when I think of how I ended up at subohming on mechs, from starting on egos/30-40w devices. I believe it has to do with me chasing that way i used to smoke, 2-4second drags on newports. For those of you that subohm or low watt vape, what type of cigarettes did you use to smoke before you switched? this could be helpful information for people reccomending setups to those who want to make the switch to vaping.  

I've been thinking on why vaping with flavored eliquid is so effective at tobacco smoking cessation.

Smoking cigarettes was more than just a physical dependence for me, it also consisted of breaking the bad habits. I wanted to stop using tobacco, but there was more to quitting, and staying quit, than I first thought.

I tried nicotine gum, patches, chantix, etc. Nothing worked until I took up vaping. Here are my thoughts on why I think it worked, when nothing else did.

Physical needs

Tobacco contains several alkaloids and chemicals, in addition to nicotine, that change the effect nicotine has on our body and brain. Some of these alkaloids and chemicals likely have effects on their own. When changing from tobacco use to ecigarettes, I know that I initially experienced cravings that nicotine did not curb. If it was only nicotine I craved, vaping would have eliminated my cravings. This wouldn't happen for me until a little later on in vaping.

Behavior, eg. Habit

Repeating an action long enough creates a habit. Some habits can reinforce an addiction, or be a part of that addiction. Breaking those habits, in my experience, is more than half the battle when quitting.

One of the hardest habits for me to break was the ritual of smoking. It went something like this; Walk into the convenience store, buy a pack of smokes, pack them on my palm, open the cellophane, remove the top of the liner, smell that fresh pack of smokes. Take a cigarette out, light it up, smoke it, put it out. Repeat part two until your almost out, then go to the store and buy another pack.

In the beginning I had to avoid going in the store and just pay with a card at the pump. Over time this impulse has disappeared.

The act of smoking itself was the other major habit I had to change. I did this by replacement.

When I quit I found that mimicking the act of inhaling smoke, by inhaling vapor instead, helped me to satisfy the hand-to-mouth habit part of smoking. Raising my pv to my lips, taking a drag, then lowering it to my side is very similar to the way I used to smoke a cigarette. The feeling of drawing warm vapor into my mouth, then lungs, substituted for taking puffs on a cigarette.

So why are flavors so important then?

Even with the habit side of smoking more or less dealt with, I still felt I was missing something. The gnawing pull of a cigarette was still there. It only abated when I was actually vaping (and shortly after), even though I knew I had enough nic in my system.

What's going on then?

Flavors

I believe that adding flavors has a twofold benefit in successfully switching from tobacco to vaping.

When I enjoy a flavor, and I mean really enjoy it, my tastebuds and scent receptors light up in a flavorgasm. The thought of cigarettes gets pushed to the back of my mind, if only temporarily, as I focus on the sensations I'm experiencing with this vapor. That moment, and for a short time afterwards, I experience true relief from my cravings. When vaping a flavor I dislike, I don't feel as satisfied and vape more trying to fill that craving.

The two main processes that I believe are occuring to provide that relief are a shifting of focus (distraction), and pleasure.

Distraction & pleasure

Replacing an unpleasant stimulus with a pleasant one is a widely accepted method of behavior modification. Pleasure releases endorphins, sex & drugs release alot of endorphins for example. Taste & smell do this as well in smaller amounts.

I stated earlier that repeating an action long enough creates a habit. After vaping for a period of time, the association that vaping=pleasure became hardwired into my brain, and the longer that I vaped, the stronger the association grew. On the flip side the longer I avoided tobacco, the greater dissociation with the pleasure response became.

Today I don't even want to smoke, it's nasty.

Sometime later on my vape journey, heavily flavored vapor became unpleasant. I think that was after my tastebuds grew back more. I found that I used less and less flavor as time went by. Oversaturation of my tastebuds is unpleasant now.

I still enjoy flavors, but the percentages I use have been cut drastically. I regularly used 15-20% when I started, now I use from 1-5% on average. Also I started on 18-24 mg per mL of nicotine, and now use 6 mg.

I know that this stuff is common knowledge to most of y'all, same as me, but I haven't seen it presented this way in the same place before. Hopefully someone can get some good use out of this somehow.  

Today was follow up #2 to my cardiologist. A bit over a year ago my heart got all outta whack from years of bad habits.
Dude blamed it on smoking. So my next logical step was to start vaping.

A follow visit later I showed him my Aspire Rover X30 (w/D22 tank) and he high fived me. Next visit everything was good to go. So he put me on a bi-yearly schedule. This was visit #2.

He came in the room all happy at what an ekg, and other tests showed good signs. He asked if I still smoke and I said yes but while pulling out my vape pod and showed him. "I smoke a lot less now" I said.

He said "keep on vaping and some day you'll stop smoking". Agreed. He said come back in a year and if I'm not smoking anymore he'll pay for the visit. (about $500 total with tests).

Ironically on the way into the facility I had to put out a fire from a cigarette in a landscaped area where the mulch was smoldering.

Anybody else have a doctor who approves of vaping?  

I am happy,

1. I Still CAN enjoy the throat hits... but with the SAFER alternative.
2. I CAN still smoke (as my wife put it... and said I'm still smoking and she does not like it... still) I use cuban cigar flavor... but with safer alternative...
3. saves money. (I own ONLY 2 set ups) [VIvi Nova 3.5ml + Vamo6 and Aspire Nautilus 5ml + Cloupor 30W. I'm not planning to go Sub-Ohming and rebuildables... just a casual Vaper.
4. Not into too much clouds... just plain simple smoke (vapor) satisfies me.
5. No second hand smoke so my family ignores my Vaping even in doors while playing the computer.
6. back to one rinse and repeat.  

I had to take my roomie to the hospital for a persistent problem he's been having, so, while I was waiting, I went downstairs to vape on the bench outside. A security guard spotted me and told me, "You can't smoke", so I responded, "It's not smoke; it's vapor." That's when I spotted a young lady leaving the hospital and pulling out her PV, so I asked her which B&M she gets her stuff from...we struck up a brief conversation and then parted ways.

A few hours later, I had to take the very same roomie back to the hospital, this time to the ER--again! It was so busy it took him 3 hours to be called in and another 4 to be released. Meanwhile, when I stepped outside for a vape, I spotted another vaper in the wild: an EMT puffing on a Blu cigalike. He saw my MVP and commented, "Ooh, a vaporizer!" He told me he was thinking about upgrading to a mod. I suggested he did so.

 

I was born in 1990 so I have never seen anyone smoking indoors, but I have been watching some movies from the 80s and it seems like everyone was lighting up anywhere without even a bat of the eye.

Is it true that people would smoke casually in banks, airplanes, restaurants, etc - without any uproar? It blows my mind that this period in time existed. Like didnt anyone complain about the smell? About kids being around? Second hand?

Do any members who lived in that time have any stories to offer, I find this stuff kind of interesting.  

So I'm a 19 year old guy, started smoking when I was 14 and finally quit cigarettes 3 months ago. My parents like that I quit smoking but they think vaping some sort of gateway drug that will make me want to, and I quote, "smoke {OTHER STUFF}". What I don't understand is that both of my parents both smoke a pack a day. I even tried to convince them to switch to vaping but they said they don't want to smoke that "{OTHER STUFF} device". Even when I vape in my room, they come in and get pissed off because they're tired of smelling my "fruity {MODERATED}". How can I convince them to get a better understanding of vaping and potentially start them on it too?