What It’s Like To Be A Former Smoker Turned Daily Vaper
Here’s my story, the first of many to come. I’m a regular vaper, by which I mean that I use a vaping device on a daily basis, typically multiple times a day. But it wasn’t always like this. For more than a decade, I was a smoker. And for the latter part of that period, I was a heavy smoker or what is known as a “chain smoker.”
Some friends called me a chimney. While obviously not polite, it was a fairly accurate portrayal of my cigarette intake as I could often be found puffing out a cloud of smoke.
The Reason I Quit Smoking And Started Vaping Instead
Then things changed. Here’s what changed: I got sick.
It all started what is now years ago when my health went on the decline. It wasn’t just smoking, but rather a perfect storm of ailments that ultimately left me with a difficult choice to make: quit smoking or remain ill. Choosing to quit smoking, I gave it an honest shot. I’d tried before and it had never worked out, not for more than a matter of weeks anyhow. But this time was a bit different, as I actually felt the absolute need to quit. I was desperate and ready to try anything that might work.
Before this, I had tried vaping before but I wasn’t entirely impressed. In the early stages of vaping, the products weren’t nearly as impressive as they are today. They were rather cheaply made, depleted their batteries quickly, and often leaked e-juice directly in my mouth. Fortunately, the technology has seen some advances since vaping first became popular and so I figured I’d give it another try.
The First Vape That Worked For Me
At first, I picked up a Blu brand e-cigarette and some cartomizers, which are also known as vape cartridges. The cartomizers are the part that contain the e-liquid. They attach directly to the vape battery and with that, you have an e-cig. I’d seen the Blu brand floating around at local retailers, such as gas stations, and I figured it would be convenient to switch to a readily available brand so I gave it a shot. It worked just well enough to help me begin to make the switch.
In the beginning, the Blu e-cigs did the trick- they allowed me to dramatically reduce the amount I smoked as I gradually became more and more comfortable with the vapor. But I wasn’t thoroughly impressed. I figured there had to be something better on the market and I was right, there are.
The E-Cig I Use Today
After vaping my cheap e-cigs for a while, I eventually started to branch out and explore the other options. I was well aware of the Juul brand, as they’re also carried at local retailers around where I live and so I figured I’d give them a shot because I’d heard good things from friends. Without putting too much thought into it, I snagged one. It worked. Not only did it work, it worked a lot better than what I had been using up until then. As you can imagine, it wasn’t long before I hopped brands, switching from Blu to Juul.
These days, now being a daily vaper, I’ve grown quite fond of my Juul. Sure, there is nicotine in there, which is what helped me quit smoking in the first place, but it feels a lot less damaging than smoking. In fact, my health has improved quite dramatically since I gave up the cigarettes and started vaping. Of course, scientists continue to research, weigh, and debate their findings, but for me, it’s as obvious as the difference between a salad and cheeseburger- one clearly being healthier than the other. So while scientists continue to explore the potential health risks of vaping, I’m comfortable in my belief that vaping is truly the less harmful option. And I’m definitely not the only one who thinks this, as just take Public Health England’s findings from their latest e-cigarette review, which found vaping to be somewhere around 95% less harmful than smoking. That is a huge difference and for me, it’s a world of difference. It’s the difference between feeling like I have COPD and breathing fine while I rest my little head at night. A world of difference.
The Benefits, From My Perspective
For me, it’s been a long time since I was huffing down a pack of cigarettes each day and at this point, I feel pretty healthy. I wouldn’t say I feel great, but I do feel good. When I go for a run, I find myself breathing hard, but I don’t find myself gasping for air and coughing my brains out. So as far as activities go, everything’s just that much easier now that I’ve made the switch.
I used to stink. If you’re a smoker, you might not notice it, but you smell. The more you smoke, the worse you smell. It really is that simple. Having switched to vaping, I don’t smell anymore. Who wants to be stinky? Not me. Imagine hopping out of the shower, smelling fresh and clean, only to step out and have a smoke and find yourself stinking again. Not ideal. But with vaping, there’s none of that. In fact, quite a few people in my life who would prefer I not smoke around them don’t mind one bit if I vape inside of their homes or cars. It really is that big of a difference.
Breathing better is great and so is being less stinky, but there’s another big kicker here and it’s the ability to smell and taste better. After a while, I couldn’t help but notice that my sense of smell and my ability to taste had improved. This isn’t as important to me as breathing better, but it’s definitely good for something. It also made me that much more aware of how bad smokers smell.
No more stains on my fingertips and disgusting smelling fingers and hands is another benefit. While the staining wouldn’t always be apparent, the smell of my hands was just atrocious. I became quite used to it over time but now that I’ve stopped smoking, I can’t believe I ever smelled like that. Mind you, I’m a relatively well kept chap and walking around smelling like an ashtray is certainly far from appealing to me.
My Future With Vaping, The Way I See It
While I’ve come a long way since my days of smoking and have even managed to recruit some friends over from the dark side (smoking), there is still much I’d like to accomplish. So while I have kicked the smoking habit, I would like to dial back my intake with vaping. While it does clearly seem to be the better option and not by some small margin, I would like to decrease my dependency on the nicotine contained within the e-juice that I vape. To do this though, I’m likely best served by a different device.
The problem with the Juul vapes is that they, up until recently, have only been available in one nicotine strength. For some of the people like me, former smokers using vaping to quit smoking, there is appeal in the different nicotine strengths that some e-juice manufacturers offer. With Juul, there are some blatant limitations. At the moment, that I’m aware of, they offer only two nicotine strengths. To top this off, Juul’s refills are pretty expensive. This is why I’m looking at a number of alternatives, like the Vaper Empire brand of vaping supplies, which include refillable vapes, e-cigs, and e-juice that can be purchased separately. With Juul, just for reference, you’re buying these packs of pods that are filled with e-juice. You don’t fill them yourself and there’s no refilling. You use them and then you toss them. It’s not cost effective and it’s not preferable. But with brands like Vaper Empire, you not only have the ability to refill your cartomizers and tanks, you also have the ability to purchase e-juice at a reasonable price and in a variety of nicotine strengths that go all the way down to no nicotine or “0 nic” as some refer to it. And with the different nicotine strengths that they offer their vape juice in, vapers like myself can gradually reduce their nicotine intake while maintaining the same level of use (actual puffs).
My Next Vape
The next e-liquid vape that I’d like to pickup is Vaper Empire’s Vibe Series Deluxe, which has a large 4.5 milliliter tank that’s designed to be refilled and a powerful 2000mAh battery that I’m guessing lasts a lot longer between charges than what I’m using now. And the best part: I can use any e-juice I want. Not being limited to just one brand of e-juice has its appeal to me, especially after using only Juul brand e-juice, which only comes in so many flavors, for so long. I’ve read some really positive reviews from other vapers that have tried it and at this point- I’m pretty enticed. It looks and sounds like an excellent fit for me given that it’s powerful, refillable, and still fits in my pocket. While not as small as what I’m using currently, I’ll trade the small size of my current vape for the ability to vaporize other e-liquids in a heartbeat.
The End Game For Me
While my initial goal with vaping, which has proven successful, was simply to quit smoking, my end goal is to eventually vape very little or not at all. The way I believe I’ll get there is via slowly reducing the amount of nicotine that I’m getting by gradually moving to lower and lower nicotine strength juices. Will I get there eventually? I think so but only time will tell.
Day To Day Life
For the most part, my day to day existence is similar to it once was, only I breathe better, feel better, cough less, stink less, and find myself forced outdoors less. That last part due to the fact that while I used to smoke strictly outdoors, I now vape indoors a considerable portion of the time. The reality, as far as I’m aware, is that the scientific research into vaping’s impact on an indoor air quality is limited, but there is evidence to suggest that it’s nowhere near as harmful as smoking indoors — at least as far as secondhand vapor and secondhand smoke are concerned.
Vaping, from what I’ve personally found, seems to be much less offensive to those around me. For the most part, those who would otherwise take great offense to the lighting of a cigarette indoors simply do not seem to care if I vape indoors, at least that’s what they tell me. The end result is that I spend a lot less time outside in the proverbial smoker’s corner and a lot more time indoors, enjoying the things that I like to do.
On top of all this, I also spend less money on vaping supplies than I did on cigarettes and lighters.
So as you can see, switching from smoking to vaping has had a significant impact on my life and as far as I’m concerned- it’s all been positive. I’m glad I made the switch. It wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever set out to do and actually accomplished, but it appears to have been well worth the effort.
