2. Started quitting after college with great difficulty.
3. Failed to quit for more than ~6 months at a go for a decade and half.
4. Started smoking e-cigs / vape last year (the liquid kind).
5. Quit vaping AND smoking months ago WITHOUT EVEN TRYING.
There was a pleasure loop hard-wired in my brain from smoking that I could ignore but would always win if 1) I was exceptionally stressed out or 2) I was drunk.
Without any difficulty whatsoever and without a conscious effort to do so, vaping somehow de-programmed that loop. My desire to smoke anything just disappeared. Stress and alcohol cause zero cravings now.
Further:
1. I don't recommend smoking. Risks far outweigh the benefits.
2. I don't recommend vaping unless you already smoke cigarettes and want to quit.
Juuls have been great for me. Been smoking a pack every 2-3 days for the last 2 years. I tried vaping but it gave me a headache for whatever reason. Tried juul recently and I went without smoking for a few weeks. Improved my breathing a whole lot. Unfortunately I am using both juul and cigarettes now, but I am smoking a pack every two weeks or so since I am okay going days without smoking, which is a big improvement.
Seeing that I know like 4 people that do it (and I haven't got that much of a social circle), I very much don't doubt it's true.
>Vaping somehow magically helps you stop smoking but without hooking you on vaping, you just somehow lose the desire to smoke or vape at all. And it happens "WITHOUT EVEN TRYING".
And if you're familiar with the subject, you know that nicotine patches and gums, that contain, you guessed it, nicotine (like vaping does), have been a long term medically suggested way to quit smoking.
Second, even if you get used to nicotine (like we get hooked on coffee), with vaping you can control (to the ml) the amount of nicotine in in your ecig liquid, and reduce it gradually over time.
>This denies all logic
No, knee jerk reactions denies all reasoning, and opt for confirmation bias.
For what it's worth, I had the same experience. Vaped for a year - the first few months I switched between vaping and real cigarettes, then vaping only. Went down a few levels until I got to 3mg liquid. Found 0mg unsatisfying, so I took the plunge and threw my vaping gear away - cold turkey. It was bizarrely easy. I've tried and failed numerous times and it was just easy. Over two years later and I haven't looked back. I haven't been the slightest bit tempted to smoke or vape and I know I never will - it's like a switch has been flipped in my head. I'm free!
This isn't everyone's experience but I think it's common enough to not just write off as propaganda. I can't prove I'm not some socketpuppet account but this felt real to me.
I went through the same cycle: smoke > vape > quit. But I suspect I likely would have quit as I got older anyway. I've read that the greatest reason people quit an addiction is age.
Hookah smoke has almost no nicotine since it’s filtered through water, but hookah can still be addictive. That’s because tobacco also contains addictive MAOIs in addition to the more well-known nicotine. E-cigs don’t have MAOIs, only nicotine, which makes them easier to quit.
Nonsense. The water in a hookah cools the smoke, but doesn't really do much filtering, and it DOES NOT remove nicotine. Hookah smoke is fairly low in nicotine, but that's because most shisha is "washed" to remove most of it's nicotine -- kind of like how decaf coffee still has a trace of caffeine in it. Try an unwashed shisha some time, they're out there.
You could have a compelling argument if you had any actual fact-based reasoning in there.
For those of us that have actually gone through the process described in the post you responded to, it's just really complicated all around. How do you respond to someone that categorically denies your experience is impossible?
1. Smoked in college in earnest.
2. Started quitting after college with great difficulty.
3. Failed to quit for more than ~6 months at a go for a decade and half.
4. Started smoking e-cigs / vape last year (the liquid kind).
5. Quit vaping AND smoking months ago WITHOUT EVEN TRYING.
There was a pleasure loop hard-wired in my brain from smoking that I could ignore but would always win if 1) I was exceptionally stressed out or 2) I was drunk.
Without any difficulty whatsoever and without a conscious effort to do so, vaping somehow de-programmed that loop. My desire to smoke anything just disappeared. Stress and alcohol cause zero cravings now.
Further:
1. I don't recommend smoking. Risks far outweigh the benefits.
2. I don't recommend vaping unless you already smoke cigarettes and want to quit.
3. YMMV.