Ask Lemmy

I have quit smoking after switching to vaping. To be more specific I'm a cannabis ex-smoker who switched to dry herb vaping where you heat raw flower or concentrates up until the cannabinoid oils vaporize but not so hot that things combust into flame. Before I switched I was having issues with coughing up black tar mucus flem and some wheeze in the lungs. No more of those problems, and I can actually taste the terps and subtle flavors now.

Took me years, but yes.

This was back in the day when you could easily source stuff to mix your own juice though. I was vaping 3ml and I stepped down 0.5ml every month until I was vaping just flavor. At that point I'd carry my vape around but use it WAY less. Eventually I'd get sick of bringing it with me and just stopped using it.

Then I'd cave again, and restart the process.

Took me a few years, but my vapes are gone and I only smoke when I'm shithoused and around a bunch of smokers, which is a maybe once every couple years event now?

I'm not sure how it would work these days. Everything is packaged, can you even mix your own nic content? Fucking big tobacco fucked up the market.

Even just switching to vaping full time is better than smoking, so get your family member one and hope for the best.

My friend started smoking after quiting because he started vaping... So there's always that.

The TL;DR on this one is "if someone wants to quit being addicted to nicotine a vape is a decent way to stop." If they don't want to, they'll just switch to the vape instead of smoking.

So they have to want to quit in order to get any benefit.

My spouse and I both did.

I was a pack per day smoker for 15-20 years. Switched to vaping as it was becoming so popular. Stepped down the nicotine over the course of a few years until I finally just got tired of going and buying 1mg juice and stopped. Haven't had a vape in about 2 years and a cigarette in about about 5.

I still get a craving now and then but it passes. Cigarettes usually just smell like a disgusting ashtray and I'm glad I don't smoke anymore.

edit: we both actively wanted to quit and I'm so happy it worked for us

Yes, I know someone who did, but they ODed on the nicotine cartridges via vaping and not reading the dosages carefully. They quit entirely after that.

20 years smoking 10 to 15 cigarettes a day, switched to vaping for 4 years, then quit completely as I was fed up with the logistics of vaping.

My last cigarette was 9 years ago and I don't miss it at all. I consider vaping was the biggest reason I quit, seconded with the avoidance of social situations where smoking is common.

Yes! I smoked for over 20 years. I didn't think I'd ever be able to quit. I started vaping with the goal of quitting, and eventually quit! Then I quit vaping too, about six months later. It's an excellent cessation method, with almost a 70% success rate. The next closest cessation method has a success rate of 3% and is owned by the tobacco companies.

Get a device that hits like a cigarette. This means mouth to lung, and not a big DTL cloud machine. It also ideally means a round mouthpiece. Make sure it's good enough to give throat hit, but not so good that it produces massive clouds. Ideally you want a device that is not sub-ohm. Start with 18mg tobacco flavored juice. Then just vape. Sometimes you'll smoke cigarettes, and sometimes you'll vape. Don't beat yourself up when you smoke, but try to vape more than you smoke. Before you know it, you'll be reaching for the vape more than the cigarettes, until you don't reach for cigarettes at all. Then you're free!

Once you're free, wait a month and then cut the juice down to 12mg, then 6, then 3, then a mix of 0 and 3, then 0! After a couple weeks of 0 you'll just naturally quit, no discipline required.

Share this information with the person you know, and tell them that if I could do it, anyone can do it!

Edit: for such a device I recommend the Geekvape B coil series, in higher ohm ranges.

I think you have to want to quit smoking for it to work like that. I've found that because vaping is more accessible than smoking, someone's vaping consumption can be far higher than what they were smoking. It can be quite easy to sort of absent mindedly vape in a way that's harder to do when smoking.

But I do know people who have used vaping in this way. Someone I knew had tried to quit smoking before but they couldn't go from one cigarette per day (and they needed to quit fully, or their smoking would inevitably increase during times of stress). When smoking, I guess you could roll a smaller cigarette, but this friend tried that and it didn't work. Vaping allowed them to finally kick the habit for good because their vape allowed them to taper down the nicotine content per puff of the vape

While it may not stop the nicotine addiction. It beats the tar and crap actual cigarettes....

Don't think I've seen one of my friends actually quit yet, but vaping has replaced cigarettes for 90% of the usage.

So it really depends if you think vaping is less harmful than smoking.

Worked for a close friend of mine, he went from a pack a day to vaping, and was then able to lower the concentration of nicotine gradually over time. He still vapes, but no nicotine, and he never went back to cigarettes.

Yes, it just took me about 5 years of on and off vaping 😅. Vaping is a much better addiction to have than smoking though.

I did, not sure it made it easier though. It took away two negatives for smoking for me, it didn't smell bad to others and I could smoke inside.

If anything it made it harder to quit, but they're supposedly much better for you

Yup.

An older friend who smoke and drank a ton switched to vapes, and methodically lowered the nicotine content every two-there weeks for months, then stopper nicotine and vaped the flavours but as there was no more nicotine, the habit wasn't addicting and he just forgot about it more or less.

Now he's been alone free for years, and reduced his drinking as well. Looks fucking healthy now.

Check out SmokeFree.gov! It has great free resources that are science based. Quitting smoking is the number thing someone who smokes can do for their health.

The most effective methods to quit smoking include varenicline (aka Chantix), FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapies (gum, patch, lozenge, inhaler, etc), and behavioral therapy. Combining all of these therapies in a clinical trials results in the most people quitting.

No vape is FDA-approved as a cessation therapy, because no company has applied. There have been some small academic run trials, which tend to show a decrease in smoking, but continued nicotine addiction. Probably because vapes have much higher nicotine content than FDA-approved therapies. While vapes expose people to a lot less carcinogens than smoke, there are some carcinogens and nicotine itself is harmful to vascular and mental health. So if the evidence-based methods don't work, completely switching to vaping would be less harmful.

Yes. I switched to vaping after smoking a pack a day for ten years. Then in about a year I was able to winnow my usage down and quit vaping too.

I had tried many times to quit before that. Have not smoked in 13 years now and after about 8 years I stopped liking the smell.

Not fully but I just don’t carry a pack anymore. Vaping is much better in my personal experience

I quit smoking using a vape and then quit vaping.

I found that it was easier to quit smoking using a vape because I kept the same motion. I needed a powerful one to feel a similar hit.

And I found it easier to stop vaping than to stop smoking because I could mix liquids to have any desired nicotine content, allowing me to reduce it very gradually. A lot of people simply replace smoking with vaping but that's still an improvement.

Depends on what part of it you're addicted to.

I just want nicotine. I don't care out of what.

Some people want the feel, sensation and flavor of a cigarette.

I just want my fix so I can carry on with my day.

That's kinda the line between moving to a vape or not.

Yup.

I smoked a pack a day for roughly 30 years. My night time breathing was getting ugly and my wife would sometimes get woken up by the sound of my wheezing.

Every method of quitting failed me except vaping. I started as most do with a high nicotine vape juice that tasted like tobacco, but after about a month I swapped and started going lower and lower nicotine and change the flavor from tobacco to a custardy type.

2 months of that got me off the cigs. Two more months got me down to zero nicotine. Two or three more months after that I was done.

I have been off cigs for 7 years.

My breathing no longer feels wet or difficult at night. And My yearly health tests all come back the same as a non-smoker.

Yes. Switched to vaping and was vaping for multiple years before quitting completely. Biggest thing was the "safety" of always being able to have my fix without an actual smoke. The "never again" mentality made it so hard to ditch the cancer stick but the vape was always like "it's ok, you can just have a little puff whenever you feel like it". Slowly down the nicotine content. Puff less. Even less. At some point I just forgot. Still have the vape. Still have the liquid, albeit it's dark red now and looks radioactive so utterly unusable. But point is that the vape eventually faded into irrelevance in a way that cigarettes never could.

You can try but some people are allergic to the liquids used. And the person vaping has to slowly decrease the nicotine amount over time, a lot of people start increasing it instead and end up with more unhealthy nicotine levels than regular cigs. Also vaping is not good for the lungs either.

I did, but I would mix my own fluid; every couple of batches I would half the nicotine content. Eventually it was near-negligible, and perhaps two weeks after that I was doneski

Vaping didn't help me quit, lozenges and lining up my quitting date with some dental work that you're not supposed to smoke with was what finally worked for me.

Yes.

Wife and I switched to vaping, then that eventually dropped off to nothing.

100% yes. It made a big difference for me. I didn't even want to stop smoking I just did.

My mom did. She smoked cigarettes since the 80s and quit in 2012 with vape. She never smoked a single cigarette after that

Yes. I moved from cigarettes to vape about five years ago. I was steadily reducing vaping to quit entirely before the pan happened and I allowed myself to continue vaping to aid anxiety. I have not attempted to quit since.

I quit not only because of vaping and tobacco-less nicotine pouches, but because I wanted it. If you are buying it for a family member, you can't make them quit... Hopefully they are wanting to, because you can't make that decision for them. Just like any other addict.