How Vaping Helped Me Quit Cigarettes

When I was growing up, I never thought I would smoke a cigarette. I was the soccer captain at my high school, I ate healthy, and I surrounded myself with friends who didn’t smoke or do drugs. Sure, I was offered a cigarette here and there at parties, but I always turned it down with ease. It never seemed appealing to me to smoke a cigarette.

But that all changed during my freshman year of college. A lot of my new college friends smoked, and after turning them down time after time, I finally gave in and tried one. There were some really good, deep conversations that took place over a cigarette. It was a social tool that instantly let me connect with another smoker, and it was that social aspect that eventually led to me buying my own packs, rolling my own cigarettes and giving a lot of money to Big Tobacco. 

I tried multiple times to quit smoking over the span of four years. The longest I made it was about a month. The problem was the nicotine; I had become an addict, and every time I went without a cigarette I became a huge jerk. I wanted to leave smoking behind me, but the one thing I couldn’t tackle was my physical and mental addiction to the nicotine.

I first tried vaping as an alternative to smoking cigarettes in late 2012. It worked fine for a couple weeks—but it just wasn’t the same as smoking a real cigarette. 

In 2012, the vaping industry was still relatively new. The technology was subpar, and the liquids were still being perfected. But now, after seeing how far vape technology has come in only two years, I thought that I’d give it another chance.

I went into this experiment with the mindset that I could use vaping to ween myself off my addiction to nicotine. As the vaping liquids come in different nicotine concentrations, I thought it would be effective for me to slowly reduce the amount of nicotine that my body was receiving. Then, when it came time to take nicotine out of the equation entirely, the physical withdrawal symptoms wouldn’t be so intense.

Vape Revolution is one of the largest and most established vape shops in Southern California. Based in Orange County, they supply vaping devices and liquids with the goal of helping people quit smoking cigarettes. When I told them about the article I was writing, they jumped on board and offered me everything I would need to make the transition from cigarettes to vaping, and eventually to freedom from my nicotine addiction. "That’s the ultimate goal," said CEO/Founder Charn Premyodhin. "We want to help others make the switch." Premyodhin is a former cigarette smoker and chef who uses his culinary flavor palette to create his own unique e–liquid flavors.

My first day without a cigarette wasn’t too difficult. Whenever I got the urge, I vaped until it went away. The only real problem I encountered was that I was vaping a lot more often than I had smoked cigarettes. This is because I was getting less nicotine per hit of the vape than I would be getting per hit of a cigarette. But I didn’t mind; vaping was a pleasurable experience. I got the oral fixation, I could do smoke tricks with the vapor and it tasted great.

After about a month of vaping, I began to notice that I was hitting the vaporizer less and less. This was a sign to me that I needed to lower the nicotine concentration of the e–liquids I was using. I went from .06mg to .03mg, which is  the lowest level of nicotine available for e-liquids. This resulted in an increase in my vaping again, but I was still not vaping as often as when I started.

Now that it’s been about two months, I can safely say that my dependence on nicotine has dwindled to the point where I can now try to switch to either a nicotine–free e–liquid, or just quit vaping entirely. Vaping has convinced me that it’s not a cigarette problem that I have; it’s a nicotine problem.

There have been multiple studies published about the potential hazards of vaping, whether it’s safe or not, and they all come to the same conclusion: we just don’t know yet. You may have heard about a recent study by Harvard researchers in which they link a chemical called diacetyl to e–liquids and e–cigarettes. Diacetyl is a chemical believed to be responsible for the "popcorn lung" disease, and it was found in a large percentage of the e–liquids tested. But according to another study published in the Nicotine and Tobacco Research journal in 2014, the levels of diacetyl in regular tobacco cigarettes are 100 times the levels found in the e–liquids. This study also concludes that the health effects of diacetyl in e–liquids would likely not impact the health of the users. Vaping has been going through this sort of thing time and time again, so it’s understandable that people are hesitant to vape.

I decided that I would try to get some hard evidence as to whether vaping is at least a less harmful alternative to cigarettes. I visited my personal care doctor, Dr. Peter Jensen who works for Graybill Medical Group in Fallbrook. He agreed to give me a peak flow measurement test, which measured the strength of my lungs. My lungs’ peak flow performance as a pack–a–day smoker averaged to 612.5. After almost two months of vaping, I went back to Dr. Jensen and we measured my peak flow yet again. This time, my average was 632.5. My lungs had gotten stronger by 20 points on the peak flow chart. It’s not a major difference, but it’s a start. Dr. Jensen made sure to let me know that he does not recommend vaping because the science on it is still debatable and they do not yet know the long–term health effects.

When I was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, I would wake up with chest pain. I would sometimes get sharp pains in my chest while smoking or just randomly throughout the day. Since I’ve made the switch to vaping, I no longer have any chest pain. I wake up feeling great. I can finally say that I’ve left cigarettes behind me.