Nicotine Free for first time in Decades!

Calibos

Vaping since 2012. Very quickly settled on a 24/7/365 vape of Liqua Cuban Cigar 24mg in Kanger T2 Clearo's with VV Egos and then 40w Eleaf iStick the last few years.

In other words Vaping didn't become a hobby for me. I never had drawers full of Juice, tanks and Mods. It was simply a new safe method to ingest nicotine for me.

About 6 months ago I final said feck this, its about time I start moving down the nic levels in order to eventually get off these things too. Its amazing how someone who only a few short years earlier was blowing 500+ a month on a 30-40 a day fag habit now resented the €40 a month I was spending on Vaping.

I was worried about crawling the walls at each nic drop but I was worrying about nothing. In a blind test I would never have known I was dropping a nic level each step of the way except the last. Even throathit was not a giveaway till the end. I mixed some 3mg with some 0mg to create 1.5mg for a few days but when the final drop of 3mg was gone it was Zero the rest of the way. This drop I did notice both in throathit and mild agitation. However, nothing like going cold turkey off the fags or higher nic juice. ie. Enough to notice it but not enough to have me crawling the walls. After about 3 days even that mild transitory agitation was gone. I did some very stressful work the last few days and was not craving some nicotine like I expected. Sure I reached for my 0mg Vape as I took a quick break and a drink but there was no crawling the walls. So I'm definitely in the Placebo Zone now. ie. All Nicotine cleared from my system for the first time in decades, Physical addiction to it most likely gone and now I'm just left with the psychological addiction to the hand and mouth actions and inhalation.

Thats the beauty of Vaping. Being able to deal with the nicotine addiction and the psychological addiction to the hand/mouth actions seperately making both easier. Also with vaping its like we have a safety barrier that stops us falling all the way back down the Smoking Addiction Mountain if we relapse. When a Smoker relapses, they buy a 20 pack of their old fags and before they know it they're smoking even more than they ever did when they gave up. If a Vaper relapses, if he's not an absolute moron who buys some real fags and who deserves anything he gets, he'll simply reach into the drawer or glovebox and pull out the old e-Cig with 0mg Juice to get him through the stressful period. Maybe he goes out and buys some 12mg juice because he NEEDS some damn nicotine to deal with this stress!! Maybe he's back vaping for another few years. Maybe he drops back down the nic levels quickly after the stress is over and is back to 0mg and off vaping again before he knows it.

Point being a simple relapse due to a stressful event didn't knock him off the mountain and cause him to fall all the way back to the bottom.

Vaping is the best public health invention in decades as far as I'm concerned.

IRISH OS1R1S

Great post and congratulations!

dball

great post - thanks for sharing
I started vaping on June 1st 2013 and currently vaping 2mg,
started at 16 mg - went to 12 after about 1year and kept dropping the nic a small amount every 4-6 months On my 5 year anniversary i hope to be at zero nic.
Thats the plan anyway.
I did the 6mg to 3 mg there about 3 months ago and it was noticeable/ last few weeks ive gone down to 2mg.
I agree with everything you say and well done. Ill hopefully be joining you on the 0mg soon.

Dr Bill V1.5

Congrats and great post. This is really what vaping is all about, staying off cigarettes, yes a lot of us (me included) do look at it as a hobby and have the shelves, boxes and presses full of juice, tanks,mods etc but after reading your post it does bring it all back down to the simple fact that we vape to stay off the cigs and whether we have 1 kit or a dozen it doesn’t really matter as long as we’re not using cigs.

Calibos

Just thought I'd post a little update.

About 5 weeks since I last had nicotine that didn't come from a tomato in my system. Been vaping 0mg Juice since then.

I'll tell you what though. I'm not so sure its the nic we are still addicted to. 5 weeks later and I still feel the goo on me for a vape at certain times and in certain circumstances and the vape still hits the spot and scratches that itch. This is 0mg juice remember. Effectively I'm in the 'Addicted to my Baby Soother' phase. Maybe that realisation will make complete cessation of vaping easier when my 0mg runs out, ie. "Cop yourself on, its a feckin' soother. You don't need it ya big baby!" or it'll mean a very depressing admission of defeat and ordering of more 0mg of that highly addictive Propylene Glycol, Vegetable Glycerin and Flavourings

Thecageyone

Gratz, that is the original aim of vaping, to knock down on the nic and eventually give up. Sadly it's become more of a trend, a lifestyle even , and I agree we do get addicted to the habit itself. I know I 'need' my vape on me at all times, and I kind of hate that fact

Calibos

Also forgot to mention that my Blood Pressure dropped after ceasing nicotine and my GP says I should try tapering and coming off my BP med (20mg Benetor) as I may no longer need it.

dball

seem to be spending more time filling tanks than actually vaping. tiz like water at this level.

Calibos

UPDATE

Youre not going to believe this guys....

Beaten by the Soother/Dody/pacifier!!

Zero problem transitioning to 0mg nic. Barely noticed the transition. Been nicotine free for over two months at this point. Yesterday was D-Day when I ran out of zero nic juice.....

Crawling the ****ing walls I am!!!

Found an old 12mg complementary juice in the drawer. theres nicotine in my blood again!

I Swear, its not the nicotine we're addicted to, its the baby soother in our gobs.

Half logic and half brain playing its addiction tricks convinced me to vape the 12mg and order some 3mg which will come Tuesday. Im coming off an SSRI for anxiety at the moment which is increasing my edgyness and I'm embarking on a serious weightloss regime (water and electrolyte only) fasting shortly which aparently is boring as fcuk when trying to avoid thinking about food, prepping, shopping and preparing thereof etc Vaping will fill some of that gap, VR Gaming exercise will hopefully fill more of the time not dedicated to food while also keeping me active and burning off more of the fat.

My rationale is that it was mad trying to do all 3 at the same time, ie give up vaping, SSRI and food (for a time) all at the same time. Gonna consult with the fasting subreddit and my GP about whether I should or should not also postpone coming off the SSRI till after the fasting. Ive made some amazing progress in getting my life and vices back on track these last few months and being nicotine free was part of that but I feel I was a little over confident thinking I could manage to do all three at the same time. Looks like at the very least Ill postpone coming of the vape till the other two are dealt with.

At least I now know, that coming off nicotine while vaping is a piece of pi$$, its coming off the vape itself that is the hard part. When I do try again ill just be going from 3mg to zero and I wont buy 2 months worth of zero, maybe a weeks worth. At least this is a prime example of what I alluded to in my post from before christmas, that at least with vaping one doesnt fall all the way back down to the bottom of the mountain like we used to when we broke down and bought a packet of fags and ended up smoking more than before we gave up.

Disappointed in myself though that I broke after a day without my Baby Soother/Dummy