daddyrabbit
Member For 4 Years
I've wrestled with myself for many moons on making this highly-controversial topic. And before you read this lengthy post, keep in mind that in NO WAY is this intended to either persuade or dissuade you from vaping. This should only be seen as my personal experience. I've gone through hundreds of websites (including this one) before I made my decision to vape, and here are some things to note while you make your decision. It will definitely seem as if I'm trying to talk you out of it, but I'm not. I'm simply giving you some hard truths that you will find yourself staring in the mirror at as I have. Thus far, I have no regrets in choosing to vape as a non-smoker and I invite my smoking vapers to read and comment as I'm sure they/you will offer some insight on misconceptions and inaccuracies. Otherwise, to the non-smoking (potential) vaper:
You are an outsider.
Don't fight it, just accept it as fact. It is entirely up to you to disclose whether or not you are a non-smoking vaper, but if you do, be prepared for the inevitable scrutiny to follow. While most (if not all) reputable manufacturers of hardware and juice will note that vaping is not intended to be a smoking cessation method, it is the de facto reason that most do. Allegedly, a mere 13% of legal-aged vapers come into vaping without having smoked first. As a non-smoking vaper, I have my reasons (dark place, didn't want to go back to opiates and drinking), you will definitely be asked the rhetorical, "Why on earth would you want to do this." and no answer will be a good or acceptable one.
"Well everyone had to try something for the first time, right?"
True, but unlike smokers who have smoked for the last three decades, you have a wealth of information at your fingertips that will aid you in your decision. Before the age of consumer-grade Internet, other than apocalyptic anti-smoking ads in after-school television and paper media, smokers didn't have the information they needed that would have prevented them from smoking in the first place. Unlike us, they were more or less forced into the life-altering decision of vaping while we may be looking for something to point at 20 years from now and say "I tried that."
So, while you/we may be taking a carpe diem you only live once curiosity approach to vaping, that 87% is taking this very seriously and we, the outsiders, will forever be seen as taking that for granted. We're doing it out of choice, they are doing it out of necessity.
Now is smoking considered a rite of passage to be accepted into the vaping fold? Of course not, but you will always have that looming over your head.
Google "sheeple". You will inevitably find yourself having to prove that you're not one.
This is NOT 100% safe for you.
You will see it thrown around a lot that vaping is 95% safer than smoking. Yeah...for (ex)smokers. You will always and forever be in that 5%. For us, we are introducing a foreign substance into otherwise clean lungs. Your insides haven't been tainted with the 4000+ chemicals and carcinogens of analog cigarettes and here we are CHOOSING to pour chemicals into our bodies.
Depending on who you ask, there are definite benefits to nicotine such as improved concentration and focus (I can certainly attest to that), weight and appetite control, anti-Alzheimer's/Parkinson's/ADHD/Tourette's/Schizophrenia abilities, and pain-relieving abilites. While those may be your reasons for vaping, fact remains that nicotine is incredibly addictive. It can be argued that the additives in cigarettes is what makes nicotine so addictive and it's much harder for a non-smoker to get addicted via vaping (I myself have been vaping at 6mg for months and can still put it down for days at a time without craving in the first). However, an alleged 1 in 3 will still get addicted (compared to 1 in 5 for ******). That's still a disturbing rate. There are literally hundreds of sites with studies that try to explain the pros and cons of nicotine. It goes far far beyond the scope of this post to explain the differences between addiction and dependence as well as all the facts about nicotine, but you still have to do your due diligence in researching and decide whether or not it's worth the risk. And I purposely overuse the word "risk".
Again, even if you do decide to go nic-free, you are still putting something into a clean body. And while it make take years and years and years to realize the long-term effects, you are slowing descending into a pollution of your body.
It can be argued that general pollutants can do just as much harm given time (the smog in China or living within blocks of a sewage treatment plant for example), but still, it isn't a concentrated voluntary inhalation like vaping is. Are you huffing spray pain here? No. And you're certainly not holding your face over a burning barrel of rubber or mixing chlorine and ammonia together and taking huge whiffs of that, but, anything going into your lungs that's not air, is not "100%" safe. Period.
You are not saving dollar one.
You will see that many many people are saving hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year by vaping. You are not one of those people. Unless you're fresh off of some other expensive addiction, every dollar you spend is an expense. You can tell yourself, "Well if I'm going to smoke something, I might as well vape" all you want, but the truth is while they may be "saving" money, you're simply "spending less money otherwise". Huge difference.
You are playing catch-up.
Face it, (ex)smokers came into vaping with a super-huge advantage when it comes to putting this into their bodies. When you take that first big drag and you see the curvature of the earth due to the violent coughing and your head is swirling (assuming you went with nicotine), you will find yourself asking "Is this what's supposed to happen and is something I need to get used to?", "Am I doing it right?", "Is this too much nicotine?", "Is this just bad juice?"
(Ex)smokers already know what too much or not enough nicotine feels like. They already know the basics of mouth-to-lung, direct-to-lung, and non-inhaling mouth-hits. They already know the difference between a hitting-it-too-hard cough and this-could-just-be-a-cold cough. You're coming into this having never experienced that all much less have firm knowledge of it. You can read and look at vids all you want, none of that can truly prepare you for filling your mouth and lungs full of super-heated vapor.
Begin with a starter's kit
There's a reason you don't take driver's ed in a Ferrari. You'll be tempted, maybe even advised, to go right after the expensive, flavor-explosive, cloud-generating mod. While some offering you advice will give you information overload on mods, batteries, drip tips, ohm's law, sub-ohm'ing, tanks, and coils, you should really get a starter's kit that has all of that already prepared for you. That way, you'll only spend 40 bucks on something you may not like rather than blowing over a hundred trying to assemble something from scratch based on the advice of veteran vapers. A starter's kit, while it may not have all of the flavor and clouds that you spent hours looking at on YouTube, will at least ease you in to all the basics that you need to know before going after the more advanced stuff. ESPECIALLY safety. If you can't take care of a pen mod, then you are a future news story waiting to happen when you discover the hard way that you can't take care of a 220-watt mod.
(Ex)smokers can go straight for the upper-echelons of gear as they're already used to most of what vaping entails. Of course, they still take on the risks, but by already having smoked, they're halfway there.
However, for the love of everything holy, unholy, living, and dead, don't go straight for the convenience store cig-a-likes like Blu and Vuse. Might as well go eat cold gas station sushi.
There's also the risk of obtaining clones/fakes when you go for the more advanced gear. Do yourself a solid and get a trusted starter's kit from a trusted source.
* CONTINUED BELOW *
You are an outsider.
Don't fight it, just accept it as fact. It is entirely up to you to disclose whether or not you are a non-smoking vaper, but if you do, be prepared for the inevitable scrutiny to follow. While most (if not all) reputable manufacturers of hardware and juice will note that vaping is not intended to be a smoking cessation method, it is the de facto reason that most do. Allegedly, a mere 13% of legal-aged vapers come into vaping without having smoked first. As a non-smoking vaper, I have my reasons (dark place, didn't want to go back to opiates and drinking), you will definitely be asked the rhetorical, "Why on earth would you want to do this." and no answer will be a good or acceptable one.
"Well everyone had to try something for the first time, right?"
True, but unlike smokers who have smoked for the last three decades, you have a wealth of information at your fingertips that will aid you in your decision. Before the age of consumer-grade Internet, other than apocalyptic anti-smoking ads in after-school television and paper media, smokers didn't have the information they needed that would have prevented them from smoking in the first place. Unlike us, they were more or less forced into the life-altering decision of vaping while we may be looking for something to point at 20 years from now and say "I tried that."
So, while you/we may be taking a carpe diem you only live once curiosity approach to vaping, that 87% is taking this very seriously and we, the outsiders, will forever be seen as taking that for granted. We're doing it out of choice, they are doing it out of necessity.
Now is smoking considered a rite of passage to be accepted into the vaping fold? Of course not, but you will always have that looming over your head.
Google "sheeple". You will inevitably find yourself having to prove that you're not one.
This is NOT 100% safe for you.
You will see it thrown around a lot that vaping is 95% safer than smoking. Yeah...for (ex)smokers. You will always and forever be in that 5%. For us, we are introducing a foreign substance into otherwise clean lungs. Your insides haven't been tainted with the 4000+ chemicals and carcinogens of analog cigarettes and here we are CHOOSING to pour chemicals into our bodies.
Depending on who you ask, there are definite benefits to nicotine such as improved concentration and focus (I can certainly attest to that), weight and appetite control, anti-Alzheimer's/Parkinson's/ADHD/Tourette's/Schizophrenia abilities, and pain-relieving abilites. While those may be your reasons for vaping, fact remains that nicotine is incredibly addictive. It can be argued that the additives in cigarettes is what makes nicotine so addictive and it's much harder for a non-smoker to get addicted via vaping (I myself have been vaping at 6mg for months and can still put it down for days at a time without craving in the first). However, an alleged 1 in 3 will still get addicted (compared to 1 in 5 for ******). That's still a disturbing rate. There are literally hundreds of sites with studies that try to explain the pros and cons of nicotine. It goes far far beyond the scope of this post to explain the differences between addiction and dependence as well as all the facts about nicotine, but you still have to do your due diligence in researching and decide whether or not it's worth the risk. And I purposely overuse the word "risk".
Again, even if you do decide to go nic-free, you are still putting something into a clean body. And while it make take years and years and years to realize the long-term effects, you are slowing descending into a pollution of your body.
It can be argued that general pollutants can do just as much harm given time (the smog in China or living within blocks of a sewage treatment plant for example), but still, it isn't a concentrated voluntary inhalation like vaping is. Are you huffing spray pain here? No. And you're certainly not holding your face over a burning barrel of rubber or mixing chlorine and ammonia together and taking huge whiffs of that, but, anything going into your lungs that's not air, is not "100%" safe. Period.
You are not saving dollar one.
You will see that many many people are saving hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year by vaping. You are not one of those people. Unless you're fresh off of some other expensive addiction, every dollar you spend is an expense. You can tell yourself, "Well if I'm going to smoke something, I might as well vape" all you want, but the truth is while they may be "saving" money, you're simply "spending less money otherwise". Huge difference.
You are playing catch-up.
Face it, (ex)smokers came into vaping with a super-huge advantage when it comes to putting this into their bodies. When you take that first big drag and you see the curvature of the earth due to the violent coughing and your head is swirling (assuming you went with nicotine), you will find yourself asking "Is this what's supposed to happen and is something I need to get used to?", "Am I doing it right?", "Is this too much nicotine?", "Is this just bad juice?"
(Ex)smokers already know what too much or not enough nicotine feels like. They already know the basics of mouth-to-lung, direct-to-lung, and non-inhaling mouth-hits. They already know the difference between a hitting-it-too-hard cough and this-could-just-be-a-cold cough. You're coming into this having never experienced that all much less have firm knowledge of it. You can read and look at vids all you want, none of that can truly prepare you for filling your mouth and lungs full of super-heated vapor.
Begin with a starter's kit
There's a reason you don't take driver's ed in a Ferrari. You'll be tempted, maybe even advised, to go right after the expensive, flavor-explosive, cloud-generating mod. While some offering you advice will give you information overload on mods, batteries, drip tips, ohm's law, sub-ohm'ing, tanks, and coils, you should really get a starter's kit that has all of that already prepared for you. That way, you'll only spend 40 bucks on something you may not like rather than blowing over a hundred trying to assemble something from scratch based on the advice of veteran vapers. A starter's kit, while it may not have all of the flavor and clouds that you spent hours looking at on YouTube, will at least ease you in to all the basics that you need to know before going after the more advanced stuff. ESPECIALLY safety. If you can't take care of a pen mod, then you are a future news story waiting to happen when you discover the hard way that you can't take care of a 220-watt mod.
(Ex)smokers can go straight for the upper-echelons of gear as they're already used to most of what vaping entails. Of course, they still take on the risks, but by already having smoked, they're halfway there.
However, for the love of everything holy, unholy, living, and dead, don't go straight for the convenience store cig-a-likes like Blu and Vuse. Might as well go eat cold gas station sushi.
There's also the risk of obtaining clones/fakes when you go for the more advanced gear. Do yourself a solid and get a trusted starter's kit from a trusted source.
* CONTINUED BELOW *
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Sorta like that "new carpet smell" in a new house. 
