The Scarlet V

I quit smoking to start vaping and have never once missed smoking. A little over a month ago I quit vaping all together after two years of slowly working my nicotine level down from 36mg to 0mg.

I quit vaping at zero milligrams of nicotine and never experienced nicotine withdrawal symptoms.

I guess these would all be good things except for the fact that I miss vaping. Multiple times a day since I quit the thought of having a vape pops in my head and just as soon as it does this weird feeling of loss follows as I realize I no longer vape. I would think by now these feeling would have subsided but they have not.

I wouldn't think much of it but since quitting I have gained 10lbs, have little to no energy, find myself easily frustrated and worst of all have found myself drinking a lot more than normal (which is probably why I gained 10lbs anyway). A huge part of me just wants to go back to vaping.

I guess my question is, Did anyone else quit vaping and experience weird side effects from quitting? If so, how long did it take you to feel normal again?  

Someone needs to produce a detailed documentary about the documented research about how safe vaping is. Hopefully that will give the general public as well as potential new vapers some education about what is safe and what isn't.

The contaminated products that are circulating on the black market are what's killing people.

Something of this magnitude needs to be put out in the media otherwise I'm afraid that this industry will die out and a lot of shops will go out of business. It's time to take action, the media has demonized vaping. It's come to a point where most folks can't vape in public in peace.

What are your thoughts on how to combat this issue? It's terrible what has happened to everyone that has been sickened or died as a result of vaping bad products. The CDC and FDA can't seem to get a handle on what's really the culprit and the media isn't giving us any details.

I feel perfectly fine as I've been vaping for almost 10 years now and I feel great in fact never better since I quit smoking cigarettes. Now I'm a bit paranoid and wonder if I should just give up vaping. This whole this is getting to me and I can't even vape around my family in peace now.  

The news of a looming flavor ban is sickening! As an adult former smoker who used ecigs to liberate myself from cigarettes, I am appalled!

It is not my fault that kids are vaping flavors and nicotine intended for adults.
It is not my fault that people are vaping dangerous chemicals in THC mixes.
It is not my fault that people who lack knowledge about vaping consider it on par with smoking.

Parents need to own up to monitoring their own kids! These teens would be smoking cigarettes if they weren't vaping- just as they were doing before vaping came along. Teen smoking numbers are down because of vaping. It is this teenage generation's alternative to cigarettes. This should be part of our national conjecture on the topic!!!

We (legitimate adult users of vaping supplies) need to stand up for ourselves!!! There are millions of us.

Let us be heard!

We need to stand together and protest around our country on the same days/times to have our voices heard.

I say we all go to our local city halls and/or right outside of our workplaces near smoking areas on the same day/time with signs of protest to demand that our opinions be heard.

I also say that we compile lists of pro-vaping and anti-vaping elected representatives so that we may be able to vote our haters out of office!!!  

So I'm outside of Walmart vaping (away from the entrance... basically where the employees smoke... cig butts everywhere) This woman walks by, stops and says "aren't you afraid that will hurt you" and I go into the "it's safe, it actually has nothing to do with this" and then she says "because I was really interested in vaping" (I thought she was going to tell me to go in the parking lot or something... she actually wanted to quit smoking) So I explained the whole deal about THC carts and "contamination", the bed rep from news media, ect. and she as very interested. I told her to search the internet and find the truth (how they are finally telling the truth) She was so relived and thankful. I may have just helped someone get off cigs, someone that was very interested in vaping and got scared. Happy ending (I needed that) I wonder how many other people want to quit smoking and just got scared because of the media BS. Kinda made my day  

Starting this thread with main intention for people to post where it is you enjoy vaping the most. Post that as a response and I, as OP, will be satisfied. If a particular situation matches that place, then feel free to note that.

As I enjoy vaping in multiple places and vaping everywhere, with respect, here would be my top places:

1 - vaping in my car while driving - at times I think this is the best place to vape, especially when I am driving alone. Feel a lot of freedom when vaping here.
2 - vaping at home while doing one of three things: a) watching sports on TV, b) playing a video game or c) how can I not mention vaping while visiting ECF
3 - vaping in public - in a hospital (makes the hospital experience a little better, and is one of the easiest places to vape indoors, with respect to others). Or vaping in any public place where I know I have full permission to do so. A bar would likely be prime example here, but I do not frequent bars, so not sure really and is why this is last on the list.

And you?  

How Long Will I Live? - Life Expectancy Calculator


According to the calculator (above) white non-smoking American male have life expectancy of 77 years.

1 PAD smoker – 72 years. It means average white American pays for smoking a pack a day with 5 years of his life expectancy (2 PAD = 9 years).

Vaping by far is not as damaging as smoking. The problem is we do not know how big is that “by far”.

So, my question:

How much of your life expectancy can you sacrifice for vaping?

If tomorrow it will become known for sure that vaping reduce life expectancy by 1 year, will you continue vaping?

If it will be 3 months, what then?  

If you’re from the United States or probably any Western country, you will know how quickly our culture can go from one extreme position to the next on just about any issue. Around 25-30 years ago, nicotine went somewhat suddenly from being a socially acceptable vice that could be done in nearly every public place by almost anyone to a highly stigmatized addiction that turned millions of smokers into second-class citizens. Unfortunately, since the most common delivery of nicotine had been through traditional cigarettes that have been lethal for so many people including both my grandfathers, the stigma behind nicotine has persisted into the era of vaping. And it doesn’t help that the practice “looks like” smoking.

However, in and of itself nicotine is not dangerous. It occurs naturally in fruits and vegetables, and does not cause lung cancer. It’s a drug, just like any substance or activity that releases dopamine in the brain. I’m personally much more concerned about the consumption of highly-caffeinated, high-sugar drinks, which are not age restricted, “flavor” restricted, and aren’t taxed to death. I’m also much more concerned about the proliferation of flavored beer and spirits in the last couple decades, which have minimal restriction on advertising and haven’t been scrutinized by the FDA to any degree comparable to JUUL or the e-cigarette industry in general. And while those substances can be very addictive, they are often encouraged in social settings, can be “enjoyed in moderation”, and aren’t considered an epidemic. Without getting too political, I’m entirely convinced that progressives would rather have 400,000 smokers continue to die each year because they didn’t switch to vaping than a new generation take up a significantly less harmful habit.  

Would you consider chain smoking/vaping to be a habit formed out of Nicotine Abuse or out of Nicotine addiction ?. How much nicotine does a smoker/vaper need ?. Is someone who goes from sixty cigarettes a day to vaping the equivalent, or more, amount of nicotine per day an abuser or an addict ?. What would happen if they were to stop using nicotine altogether overnight ?. How and when did YOU start smoking, and how much ?. Was it through peer pressure when you were young ?, or did you just start smoking socially as an adult ?. Maybe you enjoyed smoking whilst drinking your morning coffee or whatever. Do these habit forming activites which become routine compound your addiction ?.

I'd just like to highlight the fact that substance abuse is a real thing and that the world seems to have conveniently forgotten all about it. Which i think is a perfectly good subject for debate in a forum such as ECF.

So maybe a yes or no might be sufficient. Should the use of nicotine via vaping or even smoking be considered by you as either substance abuse ?, or substance addiction ?. Nicotine is quite simply just a poison after all. It doesn't alter you consciousness, not that i know of, and serves no real purpose at all really. Unlike many other substances which i'd consider to be abused by many.

And i'm not sure how some members will respond if examples of the uses of other substances are used to describe what addiction can be like for some people. Because someone might report it as being off topic and have this thread closed.

Having said that, if you would like to use examples of addiction or abuse, (as a yard stick) of other substances as examples of how much control addiction to a substance can have over an addict, then maybe you should.


Questioning the belief of nicotine addiction could help people to think otherwise. Which is a good thing !. Writing it off as addction doesn't really help those who want to quit completely, it just serves to compound their belief in their own addiction.

A pre-emptive SORRY to anyone who doesn't understand what this thread is about. FYI, It's about whether the use of nicotine in vaping or smoking is considered to be either abuse or addiction by those who use it.

Mike.  

VAPING TESTIMONIAL
I smoked for over 50 years and it got to the point where I could barely breathe. I knew I had to quit but I also knew I had no will power to do so. Then 6 years ago I tried vaping and it literally saved my life. I still got my nicotine fix and could finally breathe easier and I was not inhaling all those harmful chemicals. I know taking anything into your lungs is harmful but vaping really is the lesser of two evils. And speaking of evils look at these statistics:
Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year
68,557 people died in 2018 of an opioid overdose
in 2017, 39,773 people in the US lost their lives at the point of a gun
In 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes
30,000 deaths were the result of domestic abuse world wide in 2018.
There are 2,200 alcohol poisoning deaths in the US each year.
so in the last year 631,027 died of unnatural causes, extrapolated over six years that is 3,786,162 deaths
1978 to 1995 a total of 37 Americans were killed by falling vending machines
There have been six confirmed deaths connected to vaping across the US
of these two were from lithium batteries exploding and not the vaping itself
and two were from people experimenting by adding dangerous chemicals to their e-cigarettes.
So in reality only two people died due to vaping.
and you pick vaping as a just cause. Really? where are your values and priorities?
more people die each year from choking or acts of stupidity than vaping.
Of all these causes you could get behind why are you picking the least dangerous and offensive one? I think it's time people learned to pick their battles.
so, 480,000 deaths by cigarettes and why doesn't the government care? Here's why, because for every smoker that dies a new smoker starts. And tobacco is such a cash cow the government doesn't want it to disappear. In Canada the average taxes on a carton of cigarettes is 65%, in the US the taxes are around 45%. That's a lot of free cash. But, if people switch to vaping there are no taxes associated with it. There are no health concerns, it is purely greed.
Here is the thing about statistics: you can make up anything you want or manipulate the facts to get your point of view across. Why? Because they can't be verified. So all the government does is use scare tactics and people are gullible enough to believe it. They have no scientific proof to back up their claims, it is all BS.
Vaping is a much safer alternative to smoking, so why don't they shut down the tobacco industry? MONEY!! MONEY!! MONEY!!
I will defend vaping over cigarettes forever.  

For a start, I wasn't a heavy smoker. The farthest I've gotten is seven sticks a day.

Started vaping once with some eGo CE4/5's, it's not a good clearo so it went back to lighting up again.

Gotten some Vivi Novas, chain vaping for say, a month? Alternating between analogues, around a stick or two a day, then the battery got fried.

Went back to analogues again, picked up some mechmods, survive on alternating smoking/vaping for a bit.

Been busy for a bit and vaping just for nic fix, got into DIY to cut cost.

Found out it's habits, and gotten used getting nic fix by vaping.

Now resensitized to tobacco like before I even smoked, felt like vomitting like the first time.

Dependence on nicottine is dropping.