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?

  • MystikIncarnate
    17·
    1 year ago

    It can help, yes. But if you don’t want to quit, it will just be trading one for the other.

    What I can say is that vaping is at the very least, less harmful than cigarettes. You don’t get a lot of the combustion by-products you do with cigarettes.

    It’s not less addictive, and I’m not going to claim it’s healthier, just less harmful. Addiction to nicotine in any form is still an addition. Vaping doesn’t do anything different than cigarettes when it comes to nicotine. Its still an addictive substance, and the only real benefit you get from vaping (in terms of quitting) is detailed control over the concentration of nicotine in what you’re ingesting. This won’t matter if instead of vaping for 5 minutes per hour at 6mg, you’re vaping 10 minutes per hour at 3mg.

    In the end, it’s entirely up to you. Vaping is a tool that can give you the control to accomplish the task of quitting, if that’s what you’re intending to do. If you’re just looking for something less harmful, but don’t have the drive to actually try to quit, it’s just going to substitute one for the other.

    • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemmy.world
      6·
      1 year ago

      Well said. I’d managed to quit from cigarettes using a salt nic vape. It was a bit involved though. I learned how to make my own e-juice and properly dose nicotine (very important!). I titrated my dose down gradually over about 6 months until I was off nicotine. And then kicked the oral fixation by making a conscious effort to vape less. It worked alright for me. I wound up picking up the habit again a couple of years later after going through an extended period of shit just going wrong. Trouble is, I can’t do what I did last time because you can no longer order concentrated nicotine through the mail anymore. At least in the US

      • MystikIncarnate
        3·
        1 year ago

        yep, legislation for the children is basically restricting a lot of high concentration stuff from being ordered at all.

        Where I am (canada), we can’t get anything over 20mg/ml at all, unless we have a manufacturing license to buy anything higher. There are some shops that make their own e-juice that can mix whatever concentration you need. Here, that would be dashvapes in Toronto (though I’m sure they’re not the only one), and will go down to as little as 0.5mg/ml IIRC, since they have a manufacturing license and they have the high concentration liquid to mix it as much, or as little as they want.

        I’ve been more or less stuck at 3mg for a while myself, I refuse to go higher, I just need to restrict how often I pick up the vape to get anywhere, since the oral fixation is very real and keeps me reaching for my vape… that’s the bit I need to get under control.