I have a friend who has been using an e-cigarette for 10+ years. He doesn’t seem any less addicted to smoking as back when he was using old-fashioned cigarettes.
I understand e-cigarettes are supposed to help you quit… but has anyone actually had success with them? Or, is it more like trading one vice for another?
I quit smoking with them but it was more about harm reduction for me. They’re obviously less healthy than not using it at all, but everyone I know who quit smoking using an ecig has their own anecdotes about how they felt better after switching. I used to get bronchitis flare ups every flu season but that hasn’t happened since I switched. I don’t cough up crud all the time, I can climb stairs without getting winded, and I smell like fruit instead of cigarette butts which I’m sure everyone else appreciates. My nic level is also so low now I’m basically just vaping flavored vegetable glycerin.
I started vaping seven years ago as a way to quit smoking; I smoked my last cigarette literally outside the vape store before walking in and asking what to I buy to pull this off as nothing worked. The transition was seamless; not only did I never even crave a cigarette again, I very quickly learned to loathe the smell of cigarettes once my full range of smell came back. There’s not even a temptation to start up again.
It also helps that I choose vapes that smell amazing.
I am still vaping, yes, but I’m stepping down my nicotine pretty much every two years. I started at 24 and am now at 15 (I was stuck at 18 for a while). Those transitions I can definitely feel, but I can start with adjusting my mod’s wattage, air flow, use different coils for a bit, and ease into it so once I step down, there’s no chance I step back up, and then reward myself sometimes with a new fancy mod with a touchscreen with more leds or a cooler tank or something. All that and I am spending an order of magnitude less than I ever did on cigarettes and I have the math to prove it.
It’s certainly not ideal and yeah, it’s slow and basically only progressively reducing harm, but it’s a process that for me is guaranteed to work with no backtracking and progress is assured.
Been a smoker for 20+ years, a pack a day.
Wife made the ultimatum: kids, or a smoke.
In the end, quiting is about the reason why. Some people do it for themselves, others of others. Whatever works for you.
I used the nicotine stickers and a clean esmoker to disconnect the habit from the addiction. Worked like a charm, the esmoker got lost in the car dashboard after a week.
The stickers hurt. You wear them for 24h so I put them on my hips, my ass etc because I need to wear them in my sleep. After a few days I ran out of space since the skin is slightly inflamed from the stickers. Switched to a lower dose, didn’t help. After 2 weeks I stopped all together.
Mind you, this would not have worked without the esmoker.
My lungs felt better when I switched to e-cigs but my nicotine intake skyrocketed. For cigarettes I had to go outside and devote a couple minutes. With e-cigs I could do it inside and I could just take a quick hit or two as I was doing things. So even though I felt better I felt waaay more dependent on the nicotine, tons of hits throughout the day. I ended up switching back to cigarettes for a few weeks before I finally quit because I found it easier to stop. Still wasn’t easy though. Good luck!
They don’t do shit for me. I could vape an entire cart and still want a cigarette just as much, if not more, than before I used the e-cig. The nicotine gum did a better job of curbing my cravings for a cigarette. So did Prozac; but that was given to me for depression and also gave me ED, so I mean… You wanna quit smoking or you want a working penis? You can choose 1. 😖
I smoked for a long time, switched completely to vaping several years ago and still do it. I started at nicotine level 24mg - supposedly the equivalent of a Camel or Marlboro - decreased gradually to where I’m now at the lowest nicotine level widely available in pre-made juices, 3mg.
Remember that nicotine at these doses is not harmful, nor is it a carcinogenic. What it is, is addictive, and the documented harm from the cigarette as a nicotine delivery system comes from the combustion.
With that in mind, I admit that I’m still comfortable with vaping after several years, my health has improved dramatically since then.
I can breathe much better, easier. Now I don’t catch every single throat infection and flu of the season, and if I do catch one, it’s now usually so mild that I don’t even need medication to sleep with a clear nose.
What keeps me on edge is the pervasive anti-vaping sentiment, caused by the anarchic environment of the fledging vaping industry at the beginning, many nicotine delivery systems packaged EXACTLY like candy. A greedy gold rush attitude poisoned the well at the outset.
As an analogy, think Bitcoin and crypto.
This is healther alternative to smoking and way easier to quit.
Quiting is relatively easy if done the right way - add less and less nicotine shot to each bottle until you start forgetting your vape. For example, go from 3mg/ml to 0mg/ml in the period of 6 months.
if you aren’t smoking already, there isn’t really a good reason to start
This is why I was glad to see all the legislation beginning to come out banning disposables. I swear 95% of disposable users I see are kids who’ve never smoked, and disposables are just the alcopops of the smoking world - cheap, sweet, and used as a gateway in rather than out.
We already have laws banning sale of vapes to children. Why can’t I, an adult, have a sweet flavored vape? I can legally buy weed gummies and flavored alcohol. Flavor bans are ridiculous.
I think they should be stricter on people who give or sell them to minors. Maybe they should start charging parents every time teens are caught vaping, until the source is found. Add more pressure, make it more difficult to ignore than it is to deal with an angry teenager.
I’d been smoking cigarettes for 11 years and just switched to vaping 2 months ago. My lungs feel much, much better. I can walk up multiple flights of stairs/longer distances without getting winded. My mouth also no longer has that eternal burnt paper taste, especially when I wake up in the mornings.
So for the purposes of what I switched to vaping for - to ease back on destroying my lungs - vaping/e-cigs work. I used to smoke 2 packs in about a week and a half. I’d say the amount I vape now is the equivalent of 1 pack every month (I don’t constantly hit it throughout the day).
I have no doubt that inhaling vapor with that density is still not good, but it’s better than what I was doing previously.
As for helping to quit the habit entirely, I think that’s the opposite of their goal. All these fruity flavors they keep coming out with seem like they’re designed to be popped like candy.
I quit smoking/vaping last year after 22 years of that. Vaping helped my lungs, to a certain extent, because I started having so many other issues from vaping, I switched back to cigarettes before quitting for good.
I quit using Defumoxan, which is a brand name for generic pills with Cytisine as active substance. I’ve been recommending it to anyone wanting to take back their life from nicotine addiction. At least where I live, you can get it without prescription.
I started having pangs in my lungs around the heart area (like a stinging pain) which went away when I didn’t vape for a day. Also, while not having a wheezing breath, I did feel strain on my lungs. It got bad enough that I went back to cigarettes as those only made me cough (well, amongst other side effects of course).
i smoked cigarettes for more than 30 years. switched to vaping. it took 2 years but i was able to step down the nicotine level to zero. i haven’t smoked or vaped for 8 years now.
I quite vaping 6 months ago after 9 years. Vaping is…not good. Can it be used to stop smoking? Absolutely! Your lungs will thank you but man, everyone should be striving to quite nicotine entirely. It’s does nothing for anyone. The anxiety it cures is its own creation
For me, it was a very effective way of cutting down on my nicotine intake, as others have described, by mixing my own ejuice.
I vaped for 10-12 months with diminishing nicotine, then quit altogether. I 100% would recommend for smoking cessation.
I do wonder about those who demand an end to an nearly-harmless substitute for dirty tobacco - are we really willing to sacrifice ‘good’ for ‘perfect’?
I suspect the big drivers of the push to demonise vaping are funded by Big Tobacco. So yes, we may be sacrificing a good alternative to protect tobacco profits for a few more years.
Funny enough, it’s also aspects of the US government. There was a huge tobacco settlement across multiple states. The states opted to receive their settlement funds over a period of decades. The payout amount is tied to the number of cigarette smokers, NOT the number of vapers.
AND THEN, a bunch of state governments leveraged those predicted future funds into short term loans that they used to plug budget holes.
Enter vaping. The number of cigarette smokers begins to nose dive.
Enter an unholy union of cash strapped state governments and big tobacco money, and the perfect catalyst in a tiny number of stupid teenagers getting sketchy fake weed from China and dying from it. WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF UNTIL CHILDREN!! Boom, bans.
Nicotine itself is highly addictive but not terribly harmful. All the harmful shit is in the tar and other crap in cigarettes.
I personally used vaping to totally quit cigarettes. It was excellent. And now in my state vaping is effectively banned. We have to turn to black market mods and shit. It’s horrible, and in 40 years it’s going to be a massive “how the fuck did we let this happen” part of our history along with subprime mortgages and zero tolerance laws.
Aren’t there vape companies owned by tobacco companies? I know Vuse is. Tobacco has been on decline for a while now and lot of them are pivoting into other areas.
Switched to vaping not with the intent to quit, but to just get rid of the smell I get after smoking.
While trying different flavors, in time I decreased the amount of nicotine every time I time I bought a new bottle.
I then slowly started to forget to bring it with me when I leave the house until I vaped exclusively in my home and after a few more months decided to just throw it all away.
I also quit with vaping, but in a roundabout way. I used to smoke, but my wife would not have me smoking indoors, and my office was likewise no smoking, so I was on perhaps 10 cigarettes a day. I switched to vaping, and still couldn’t vape in the office, but my wife didn’t mind me vaping at home if I restricted it to one room.
Then COVID happened, and I ended up working from home. So… Even though the amount of nicotine I was using in the vape was low, I had nothing stopping me from vaping all the time, which is what I did. I actually began feeling just as bad in terms of lung capacity when vaping as I had when I was smoking, largely because I was vaping pretty much constantly whilst awake.
One day I just had a flash of self control, and. chucked my vape, batteries, coils and all the paraphernalia. That was late 2020, and I haven’t vaped or smoked since.
Weirdly, even though I ultimately went cold turkey, I do think switching to vaping from smoking helped me to quit. There was a marked improvement in my lung capacity and ability to smell during that time, and that gave me hope.
Very similar here. Smoking buddy at work was turning 40 and was like “If we don’t quit now, we never will!” so headed to a random vape shop. Bought a vape for lke £50, was on 1.2mg nicotine strength. First day was fine. 2nd day was tough. 3rd was also tough. 4th day I realised “oh shit, never going back to smoking…I feel fine. I can work with this.” So that caused me to panick but then thought ok, bought the same vape as a redundancy (so as to not have to fall back on ciagarettes).
Then, after 6 months switched to 0.6mg nicotine. 6 months after that, 0.3mg. 3 months after that 0.2mg (put my high school chemistry hat on, figured 10ml 0.3mg + 10ml 0.3mg + 10ml 0.0mg mixed up in a 30ml bottle = 0.2mg per 10ml). 1 month after that 0.1mg, 1 month after that 0.0mg - 1 month later, stopped entirely (you genuinely just start forgetting about it, it’s weird).
Went from 30 cigarettes a day to no nicotine and no vape in 18 months.
It sounds like you vaped for a while and then quit (congratulations btw). I smoked for many years and then quit, and that doesn’t mean cigarettes helped me quit, or that I quit with cigarettes. You quit the day you “decided to just throw it all away.”
FDA has said that they find no evidence vaping improves quitting outcomes for smokers.
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I quit smoking with them but it was more about harm reduction for me. They’re obviously less healthy than not using it at all, but everyone I know who quit smoking using an ecig has their own anecdotes about how they felt better after switching. I used to get bronchitis flare ups every flu season but that hasn’t happened since I switched. I don’t cough up crud all the time, I can climb stairs without getting winded, and I smell like fruit instead of cigarette butts which I’m sure everyone else appreciates. My nic level is also so low now I’m basically just vaping flavored vegetable glycerin.
I started vaping seven years ago as a way to quit smoking; I smoked my last cigarette literally outside the vape store before walking in and asking what to I buy to pull this off as nothing worked. The transition was seamless; not only did I never even crave a cigarette again, I very quickly learned to loathe the smell of cigarettes once my full range of smell came back. There’s not even a temptation to start up again.
It also helps that I choose vapes that smell amazing.
I am still vaping, yes, but I’m stepping down my nicotine pretty much every two years. I started at 24 and am now at 15 (I was stuck at 18 for a while). Those transitions I can definitely feel, but I can start with adjusting my mod’s wattage, air flow, use different coils for a bit, and ease into it so once I step down, there’s no chance I step back up, and then reward myself sometimes with a new fancy mod with a touchscreen with more leds or a cooler tank or something. All that and I am spending an order of magnitude less than I ever did on cigarettes and I have the math to prove it.
It’s certainly not ideal and yeah, it’s slow and basically only progressively reducing harm, but it’s a process that for me is guaranteed to work with no backtracking and progress is assured.
It helped me quit.
Been a smoker for 20+ years, a pack a day. Wife made the ultimatum: kids, or a smoke.
In the end, quiting is about the reason why. Some people do it for themselves, others of others. Whatever works for you.
I used the nicotine stickers and a clean esmoker to disconnect the habit from the addiction. Worked like a charm, the esmoker got lost in the car dashboard after a week. The stickers hurt. You wear them for 24h so I put them on my hips, my ass etc because I need to wear them in my sleep. After a few days I ran out of space since the skin is slightly inflamed from the stickers. Switched to a lower dose, didn’t help. After 2 weeks I stopped all together.
Mind you, this would not have worked without the esmoker.
My lungs felt better when I switched to e-cigs but my nicotine intake skyrocketed. For cigarettes I had to go outside and devote a couple minutes. With e-cigs I could do it inside and I could just take a quick hit or two as I was doing things. So even though I felt better I felt waaay more dependent on the nicotine, tons of hits throughout the day. I ended up switching back to cigarettes for a few weeks before I finally quit because I found it easier to stop. Still wasn’t easy though. Good luck!
They don’t do shit for me. I could vape an entire cart and still want a cigarette just as much, if not more, than before I used the e-cig. The nicotine gum did a better job of curbing my cravings for a cigarette. So did Prozac; but that was given to me for depression and also gave me ED, so I mean… You wanna quit smoking or you want a working penis? You can choose 1. 😖
Vaping disposables or salt nic devices did nothing for me. I had to have a mod that actually delivered a punch.
They help you stop smoking. In my experience they don’t help you quit nicotine, they just manufactured all the joy out of it.
I smoked for a long time, switched completely to vaping several years ago and still do it. I started at nicotine level 24mg - supposedly the equivalent of a Camel or Marlboro - decreased gradually to where I’m now at the lowest nicotine level widely available in pre-made juices, 3mg.
Remember that nicotine at these doses is not harmful, nor is it a carcinogenic. What it is, is addictive, and the documented harm from the cigarette as a nicotine delivery system comes from the combustion.
With that in mind, I admit that I’m still comfortable with vaping after several years, my health has improved dramatically since then.
I can breathe much better, easier. Now I don’t catch every single throat infection and flu of the season, and if I do catch one, it’s now usually so mild that I don’t even need medication to sleep with a clear nose.
What keeps me on edge is the pervasive anti-vaping sentiment, caused by the anarchic environment of the fledging vaping industry at the beginning, many nicotine delivery systems packaged EXACTLY like candy. A greedy gold rush attitude poisoned the well at the outset.
As an analogy, think Bitcoin and crypto.
This is healther alternative to smoking and way easier to quit.
Quiting is relatively easy if done the right way - add less and less nicotine shot to each bottle until you start forgetting your vape. For example, go from 3mg/ml to 0mg/ml in the period of 6 months.
I am currently using e-cigarettes as a former smoker
I would say:
From now on I’m going to refer to cigarettes as analogue vapes
This is why I was glad to see all the legislation beginning to come out banning disposables. I swear 95% of disposable users I see are kids who’ve never smoked, and disposables are just the alcopops of the smoking world - cheap, sweet, and used as a gateway in rather than out.
We already have laws banning sale of vapes to children. Why can’t I, an adult, have a sweet flavored vape? I can legally buy weed gummies and flavored alcohol. Flavor bans are ridiculous.
I think they should be stricter on people who give or sell them to minors. Maybe they should start charging parents every time teens are caught vaping, until the source is found. Add more pressure, make it more difficult to ignore than it is to deal with an angry teenager.
I’d been smoking cigarettes for 11 years and just switched to vaping 2 months ago. My lungs feel much, much better. I can walk up multiple flights of stairs/longer distances without getting winded. My mouth also no longer has that eternal burnt paper taste, especially when I wake up in the mornings.
So for the purposes of what I switched to vaping for - to ease back on destroying my lungs - vaping/e-cigs work. I used to smoke 2 packs in about a week and a half. I’d say the amount I vape now is the equivalent of 1 pack every month (I don’t constantly hit it throughout the day).
I have no doubt that inhaling vapor with that density is still not good, but it’s better than what I was doing previously.
As for helping to quit the habit entirely, I think that’s the opposite of their goal. All these fruity flavors they keep coming out with seem like they’re designed to be popped like candy.
I quit smoking/vaping last year after 22 years of that. Vaping helped my lungs, to a certain extent, because I started having so many other issues from vaping, I switched back to cigarettes before quitting for good. I quit using Defumoxan, which is a brand name for generic pills with Cytisine as active substance. I’ve been recommending it to anyone wanting to take back their life from nicotine addiction. At least where I live, you can get it without prescription.
Just curious since I just got into it… what other issues did you have? If you’re comfy with saying, of course.
I started having pangs in my lungs around the heart area (like a stinging pain) which went away when I didn’t vape for a day. Also, while not having a wheezing breath, I did feel strain on my lungs. It got bad enough that I went back to cigarettes as those only made me cough (well, amongst other side effects of course).
i smoked cigarettes for more than 30 years. switched to vaping. it took 2 years but i was able to step down the nicotine level to zero. i haven’t smoked or vaped for 8 years now.
They’re not inherently “supposed to help you quit”. That’s only if you use them with that superficial intention.
They certainly allow you to reduce or remove nicotine intake - because you can change the fluid.
I quite vaping 6 months ago after 9 years. Vaping is…not good. Can it be used to stop smoking? Absolutely! Your lungs will thank you but man, everyone should be striving to quite nicotine entirely. It’s does nothing for anyone. The anxiety it cures is its own creation
i cannot spell quit
For me, it was a very effective way of cutting down on my nicotine intake, as others have described, by mixing my own ejuice.
I vaped for 10-12 months with diminishing nicotine, then quit altogether. I 100% would recommend for smoking cessation.
I do wonder about those who demand an end to an nearly-harmless substitute for dirty tobacco - are we really willing to sacrifice ‘good’ for ‘perfect’?
It’s not about sacrificing good for perfect, but rather sacrificing good for profit.
I suspect the big drivers of the push to demonise vaping are funded by Big Tobacco. So yes, we may be sacrificing a good alternative to protect tobacco profits for a few more years.
Funny enough, it’s also aspects of the US government. There was a huge tobacco settlement across multiple states. The states opted to receive their settlement funds over a period of decades. The payout amount is tied to the number of cigarette smokers, NOT the number of vapers.
AND THEN, a bunch of state governments leveraged those predicted future funds into short term loans that they used to plug budget holes.
Enter vaping. The number of cigarette smokers begins to nose dive.
Enter an unholy union of cash strapped state governments and big tobacco money, and the perfect catalyst in a tiny number of stupid teenagers getting sketchy fake weed from China and dying from it. WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF UNTIL CHILDREN!! Boom, bans.
Nicotine itself is highly addictive but not terribly harmful. All the harmful shit is in the tar and other crap in cigarettes.
I personally used vaping to totally quit cigarettes. It was excellent. And now in my state vaping is effectively banned. We have to turn to black market mods and shit. It’s horrible, and in 40 years it’s going to be a massive “how the fuck did we let this happen” part of our history along with subprime mortgages and zero tolerance laws.
Aren’t there vape companies owned by tobacco companies? I know Vuse is. Tobacco has been on decline for a while now and lot of them are pivoting into other areas.
I successfully quit with vaping.
Switched to vaping not with the intent to quit, but to just get rid of the smell I get after smoking. While trying different flavors, in time I decreased the amount of nicotine every time I time I bought a new bottle. I then slowly started to forget to bring it with me when I leave the house until I vaped exclusively in my home and after a few more months decided to just throw it all away.
I also quit with vaping, but in a roundabout way. I used to smoke, but my wife would not have me smoking indoors, and my office was likewise no smoking, so I was on perhaps 10 cigarettes a day. I switched to vaping, and still couldn’t vape in the office, but my wife didn’t mind me vaping at home if I restricted it to one room.
Then COVID happened, and I ended up working from home. So… Even though the amount of nicotine I was using in the vape was low, I had nothing stopping me from vaping all the time, which is what I did. I actually began feeling just as bad in terms of lung capacity when vaping as I had when I was smoking, largely because I was vaping pretty much constantly whilst awake.
One day I just had a flash of self control, and. chucked my vape, batteries, coils and all the paraphernalia. That was late 2020, and I haven’t vaped or smoked since.
Weirdly, even though I ultimately went cold turkey, I do think switching to vaping from smoking helped me to quit. There was a marked improvement in my lung capacity and ability to smell during that time, and that gave me hope.
This is exactly my story. Nicotine free for years.
Very similar here. Smoking buddy at work was turning 40 and was like “If we don’t quit now, we never will!” so headed to a random vape shop. Bought a vape for lke £50, was on 1.2mg nicotine strength. First day was fine. 2nd day was tough. 3rd was also tough. 4th day I realised “oh shit, never going back to smoking…I feel fine. I can work with this.” So that caused me to panick but then thought ok, bought the same vape as a redundancy (so as to not have to fall back on ciagarettes).
Then, after 6 months switched to 0.6mg nicotine. 6 months after that, 0.3mg. 3 months after that 0.2mg (put my high school chemistry hat on, figured 10ml 0.3mg + 10ml 0.3mg + 10ml 0.0mg mixed up in a 30ml bottle = 0.2mg per 10ml). 1 month after that 0.1mg, 1 month after that 0.0mg - 1 month later, stopped entirely (you genuinely just start forgetting about it, it’s weird).
Went from 30 cigarettes a day to no nicotine and no vape in 18 months.
You probably added 10 years to your life with that. Healthier years too.
Yeah, I hope so. This infographic used to haunt me a little before I stopped:
I love those at the end how you can return to the risk levels of non smokers in really not that much time in the grand-scheme.
It sounds like you vaped for a while and then quit (congratulations btw). I smoked for many years and then quit, and that doesn’t mean cigarettes helped me quit, or that I quit with cigarettes. You quit the day you “decided to just throw it all away.”
FDA has said that they find no evidence vaping improves quitting outcomes for smokers.