Vaping; The Clean Alternative to Typical Cigarettes

@Juaro @SAcptm (iirc you guys vape)

 

Yep. Gonna come rescue you in this lonely thread.

I smoked for 10 years and tried every method possible to quit. Patches, gum, cold turkey (a bunch of times). Longest I ever made it was 6 months(!) of cold turkey when I relapsed on a really shitty day.

Switched to ecigs after another BoW (Owl) posted me some starter gear. That was about a year ago now and I haven't even come close to relapsing since. I also have no desire at all to go back to regular cigarettes, unlike every other time I quit where it was all I could think about. So I'm going to go ahead and declare these things fucking miracles which should have existed a long time ago.

There is a downside, of course. Since these things are so useful precisely because they provide a viable alternative to actually smoking (unlike patches and gum which are just utter dogshit), you actually end up enjoying them and remaining addicted to nicotine. As I said, I've carried on using ecigs for a whole year now, and intend to carry on using them. Some people would look at that and might call it a failure? You just have to remember that it's an addiction displacement solution, one which I enjoy and feel happy with, rather than an addiction cure.

Finally, I feel so much fucking physically better and healthier now than I did when I was chaining 30 a day. I don't wake up hocking phlegm anymore or get those awful over-smoked burnt-lung hangovers after going out.

 

Sure, its a healthy replacement to an unhealthy means of satisfying an addiction. However, addiction, in and of itself, is not necessarily inherently unhealthy. You could probably use those vapes for the rest of your life with little, if any, ill effect. No sense letting the perfect (quitting cold turkey) be the enemy of the good (substituting in a vape addiction).

I think its a net boon to the world, and good on you for quitting, despite what the naysayers find fault with.

 

Yep I agree but it certainly isn't clear to everybody, especially people who have never smoked, how just changing the means of delivery can be such a fucking big deal and such a relief to people who have known nothing other than being-a-smoker since they were literally children. It's utterly fantastic.

 

I definitely wouldn't consider it a failure... Like I said, on it's own, nicotine is about as dangerous as caffeine. It's when it's paired with tar, carcinogens, and whatever else they pack into cigarettes that it's dangerous.

Not only is vaping healthier, it's cheaper, more socially acceptable, there's tons of flavors and different modifications you can make to your rig, you can use them pretty much anywhere, etc etc etc.

I also don't plan to quit vaping any time soon... It's clearly working for me. I can breathe easier, I don't get winded when I walk up a flight of stairs, I don't stink like burning shit all the time... It's all gravy and I'm supremely satisfied with the results. Obviously, if I really wanted to taper off the nicotine, they offer fluid with varying doses, all the way down to nicotine-free.

 

I just recently dropped down to 1.8% from 2.4, it takes a bit of adjustment but it's not too bad, and I can see it being eventually pretty easy to just wean all the way down to the 0% nicotine liquids.

Another perk is that I started messing around with trying to build my own wicks and coils, and its been a nice refresher on basic electronics. Saves money on atomizer replacements too. If you use kanger atomizers bonesauce, lots of them are pretty easy to rebuild whenever they break. Just gotta buy some specialist wick + kanthal wire, take apart a broken kanger atomizer to see basically what's meant to go where, and you can make the habit even cheaper.

 

I don't really see any point in taking it up if you don't smoke. The flavours tend not to be particularly strong, and become even less so after your atomizer has seen a few days usage. You could probably have about as much fun standing over a pot of boiling water.

 

Well, that's not necessarily true... My little sister got one for Christmas from her boyfriend, and she uses that e-shisha stuff without nicotine. There's TONS of flavors out there.

@BlueLuigi It would be really difficult to suggest anything cuz I don't know what's in your area, but for some ideas of stuff online;
http://www.mtbakervapor.com

e: This is my current favorite flavor. http://www.elevatedvaping.com/products/andromeda
Shit is delicious!

 

only now noticed this thread

@JTG I summon you

 

Thumbs up. I'm always looking for advice on flavors and mods, shit like that.

 

I use an iTaste MVP 2.0 battery, which is fucking brilliant. The battery lasts about 3-4 days of constant chaining without a recharge. It also has a digital display for variable voltage/wattage settings (variable wattage will detect the resistance of any coil you put in and adjust the wattage automatically to keep the voltage consistent, so as not to blow it - very useful if you make your own coils and aren't very accurate with the resistance), a puff counter, and it can even charge my goddamn phone.

I also use an Aspire Nautilus tank which is by far the nicest I've ever tried. It can't charge my phone though.

As for liquids, I have settled on exclusively getting them Darkstar Vapour because those guys treat me right. But I'm pretty sure they're UK only.


I went through a whole bunch of pretty shitty setups to get to this one that I'm happy with. I previously used a Kanger EVOD but the abysmal battery life and regular fluid leakages just became too much of a hassle.

edit: on the negative side, it does look like I'm carrying around some kind of giant space radio. Thankfully I'm prepared to look perpetually uncool.

 

When it comes to vapes, the bigger and bulkier the better.

I'm happy with my eleaf iStick battery, digital display with the variable voltage/wattage, battery lasts like 3-5 days of almost constant use, it's fairly chunky and durable and feels good in the hand... I have a Kanger GeniTank Mini, it was the only one I could afford at the time but it works great.

The biggest issue when it comes to e-liquids is consistency. There are SO many companies out there offering SO many flavors that it's kinda difficult to choose from all the options. It's nice to have a wide selection, but half the time the flavor names make no sense or have any correlation to the flavor itself. For example, on Mt. Baker Vapor's site, they sell liquid made by GWAR called Bloodbath. The only description they give is that it's, "a powerful tropical fruit blend specially designed to satisfy the bloodlust of every scumdog in the universe." What KIND of tropical fruit? Does it have coconut flavoring? If so, I don't want it. But does it have pomegranate? I'm all over it.

It's just annoying when the descriptions for everything are so vague.

 

The first ever flavour I tried was called "Grandpa's Cough Syrup". Yes, it was every bit as vile as that sounds. Generally though, like most people I leaned pretty heavily towards tobacco flavours at first until it dawned on me that there are much tastier things on this earth than tobacco leaf. Now I mostly go for your generic minty or fruity stuff and try to steer clear of anything which sounds too gimmicky.

 

One thing I have noticed as a commonality, doesn't matter which brand name it is or where you get it, but any Premium Menthol flavor tastes NOTHING like menthol. It was one of 3 flavors I got when I first got my vape, and the menthol was just kinda... Yuck. Same with a different brand my sister gave me. I stick with that Space Jam Andromeda flavor, 15mL bottle, 18 mg nicotine, and tastes fucking fabulous (blueberry/pomegranate, you can't go wrong). It's a little more expensive ($12 a bottle), but considering just how good it is it's worth the money.

I dunno, maybe someone here can explain it to me a little better...

What's the deal with the ratios between vegetable glycerin (VG) and propylene glycol (PG)? I've seen discussions about containing the max amount of VG with trace amounts of PG... What's the difference between, say, 75% VG/25% PG and 50%/50%?

 

As I understand it, one is better for producing thick vapour and the other is better at retaining flavour and giving you a "throat hit". I think there are purists our there who use 100% VG or 100% PG but most people like both of those things so you normally get a mixture of the two. I guess a lot of it is simply personal preference over how you want the actual vapour to feel, I guess you could try experimenting with different ratios until you find one you like best but a lot of that is going to be clouded by the quality of the flavouring from the different brands you're testing.

The issue is also annoyingly complicated by the fact that people are kind of dumb and often look at VG and think "vegetables =natural", then they look at PG and think "propylene = oh shit CHEMICALS!" so you end up with the baseless assumption that dominant VG mixes must be healthier for you. As far as I'm aware there is not yet any proper reason to think that at all, so just go for what you enjoy.

My regular liquid is 30:70 VG:PG, but I honestly don't have a preference as far as I know. Flavouring tends to be more important in my opinion.

 

I pretty much figured it didn't make much difference. I actually had to explain to this girl at work that it's actually not unhealthy, at least when compared to traditional cigarettes... Of course people are going to say it causes pneumonia/cancer/etc. because it's cutting into big tobacco's profits.

I dunno, I'm just not all that interested in PG/VG ratios... Really, they're just flavor bases.

 

Both propylene and vegetable glycerols have been health-tested extensively for decades because they are used in food and in smoke machines (as an alternative to dry ice machines) for clubs, film sets etc. Obviously you wouldn't want to fill a club with poisonous gas so they were studied and approved back in the day. Granted, however, directly inhaling the stuff regularly for long periods of time is much more exposure than you would get from the occasional smoke machine, so I'm not claiming it's 100% guaranteed brilliant for your health. But the argument of "this stuff has just been invented, we have NO IDEA what it will do to you!" is a bit dishonest because it ignores the fact that all the ingredients (except nicotine) have actually been approved as food additives for decades, and likewise the glycerols have been used as safely inhalable faux-smoke for a long time too.

 

Yeah, I mean sure, it's technology that's in it's infancy, but let's think about it for a second;

People are wary of making the transition to vapes/e-cigs because they're worried about POTENTIAL health concerns... But really, what could be worse than being carcinogenic? If you're smoking cigarettes, typical, traditional cigarettes, you're smoking something that is KNOWN and PROVEN to cause cancer, emphysema, COPD, etc etc. What's the worst that could happen if you switched? You're already using something that causes cancer, I think I'll take the risk for something that will potentially save my life.

 

Totally with you. That's a classic case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.