Those of you who have met me in real life know my main fuel has been Camel Lights. I have been a fucking locomotive for a long time. But now I haven't had a cigarette in eight days. I got a vaping rig and have been puffing away on that thing like nobody's business. I kind of would like a cigarette, but I'm not climbing the walls. My lungs feel clearer and Ms. Rigs says my snoring has decreased a lot. Downside is I can now taste the soap in toothpaste and I can tell our leaky toilet kinda smells like pee.
I dunno how to do it without coming off weird because I get super enthusiastic about it but I just want to congratulate everyone who Takes Steps re: smoking. My mom's been a chimney my whole life and it's fucked us both up, but she's been trying to quit since before I was born. She was already hooked long before she had me and fighting with it and I don't blame her for my second-hand issues or anything (she also tried to minimize my exposure, no smoking in the house, didn't let her friends smoke around me, ect), but it's kind of a Pet Issue. Not one I get mad about, but I get Feels about people trying to move away from it. Every time I hear about someone switching to vaping or going on the patch or attempting cold turkey I just want to pick them up and hug them and spin them around. I know a few people who are all "vaping isn't REALLY quitting and doesn't count" but it's still better, for you and the people around you. Go you! Have an internet spinny hug if you like, or a fistbunp if it's more your speed. :D (Also moment of happy because I don't feel Super Weird for posting this. Usually I chicken out because I'm worried about my Awkward Glee weirding people out, but being weird on Kintsugi doesn't trigger the shame-and-horror routine. Gods I love this site <3)
Fuck those people sideways. They didn't smoke for thirty years. They didn't try to quit about a million times.
Aw yes! As someone who watched a grandparent slowly wither from lung damage caused by smoking like a chimney all his life, I too think taking steps to not smoking or at least smoking a lot less is Really Great And Important! You go @rigorist <3
Yeah, while nicotine is Not Great For You, the other stuff in burning cigarettes is a whole fuckton worse. And it pisses me off when people treat things like smoking as a Moral Test, not a health issue that you can try to mitigate as much as you can.
My aunt traded smoking for vaping a few years ago and her son-in-law, who's been sending her the juice, has been gradually sending her lower and lower nicotine juice and now she's on the completely nic-free stuff. Fuck anyone who says that's not ~*really*~ quitting. As for me: smoked a pack a day for 12 years, quit cold turkey in 2006, never quite got rid of the itch to go through the motions of smoking, got a cheap e-cig last year and a bunch of what is basically glycerin with candy flavoring in it, and PROBLEM SOLVED.
It's been like a month. Gotta decrease my nicotine level, 'cause it now makes my mouth and throat tingly like the fucking gum did.
I think the long-term effects of vaping aren't known yet, but also that they can hardly be worse than smoking, so if that's how people start to quit or what they do to try to reduce the effects of smoking on themselves and other people, more power to them! I'm sort of cautiously optimistic at this point - I'm not a smoker myself, but my grandma is and she's tried to quit so many times over the years, so it's not like I'm under the impression that smoking or not being able to quit is a moral failure. Basically, I highly doubt vaping is a cure-all, and we'll know more about it one way or another years down the line, but I've heard good things about it and I'm happy it's got you off actual cigs! Sounds like it's doing good things for you, too, just by dint of not being a lot of smoke in your lungs. I hope this post didn't come off as condescending, I'm sure you're all too aware of the point I brought up re: long-term effects. And again, they at least cut out a lot of the literally toxic junk they put in actual cigarettes, so they're a win in my book anyday,
Also worth noting that the non-drug ingredients in nicotine vaporizers are similar to those in asthma inhalers and many other household products; this is a new use but not new to safety analysis overall.
