Still Not Smoking…Vape Away!

It’s amazing how well I am doing with my latest attempt here to quit smoking.  In the past two days, this weekend entirely, I haven’t had 5 cigarettes. I’ve been eagerly using my new KangerTech Subvod vape.  It’s got the Kilo Dewberry Cream e juice still in it because I really like that stuff.  It gives a smooth hit with a creamy finish.

Yesterday I visited the Smoke Signals store in Dover, New Hampshire.  It’s conveniently located right in downtown Dover and has ample parking right in front of the store.  Smoke Signals is a pipe and tobacco shop selling a wide variety of products from regular cigarettes to a great line of glass pipe products, hookahs, and a super sweet selection of vaping products – everything from e juices to mods, batteries, coils and every piece or part you could want to enhance your vaping experience.  And the shop owner, I cannot recall her name at the moment, was super helpful to this newbie vape user!

I tried several different juices and settled on 3 new ones to bring home.  I got Juice Rollups Strawberry, Kilo’s Cereal Milk and Ecto’s Orange Creamsicle.  I really like the Creamsicle and the Cereal Milk, and am not so fond really of the straight up strawberry.  I have filled several clearomizers with different juices and labeled them.  I interchange them with my VapeUSA 1100mah battery.  For this beginner this is fine, I’m getting good hits and using 18mg nicotine right now, so my nic cravings are fulfilled as well.   I do get bigger and nicer hits from my Kanger Subvod kit with the Nano tank and .5 subohm coil.  I did get a recommendation to use a .2 sub ohm coil and I would get even better hits.  I’ve got to get some of those .2 coils, the ones I have are all .5’s.

I’ve found that with not smoking that I am craving a lot of water.  I’ve been drinking bottle after bottle.  My anxiety over quitting has been minimal, not even enough to reach for my anxiety meds, which is great.  Overall I am feeling much more confident in my ability to quit this time, alot of that is due to the vape devices I believe.  I’m still satisfying my craving just with new flavors – which I like better than cigarette flavors!

Tuesday:   Ok, so today I cheated a little and had a couple of regular Newport Smooths….bad bad Ang.  They didn’t even taste good, I’m not sure why I had to pick them up, maybe just to remind myself that I really DO want to give up this nasty habit and be done with it once and for all.  Anyway, a little slip won’t kill me and I guess it’s to be expected to some degree.

Vaping: A beginner’s take

I have been a cigarette smoker for 35 years…yeah, sick huh?  I know I need to quit and I am enlisting the use of electronic cigarette devices, vaping, to help me quit.  I also am very interested in vaping all by itself.  I’m a beginner at vaping and I want to document my journey into the vaping world.  I’m going to start here with the very basics of electronic vaporizers and if you are interested in the subject I hope that my writing and videos on it will bring you some insight as well.  Everything here is going to be trial and error.

What is “Vaping”?  The use of electronic cigarette devices was developed in 2003 by a Chinese pharmacist named Hon Lik.  These devices produce a vapor that is inhaled by the user and which can deliver nicotine (or not) much like a regular cigarette does, simulating the feeling of smoking without the tobacco and harmful smoke.  To date no serious harmful effects have been shown in trials.  but it’s a new sort of thing, and we don’t know the long term effect yet…I’m betting personally that the harm is of minimal concern compared to that of my regular cigarette smoking habit which we know is killing me.

What are the devices like?  Some e-cigg devices look and feel like real cigarettes, called “ciggalikes”.  As the industry and recreational useage of vaping devices has grown so has the development of delivery devices.  The battery packs, or “mods” now come in a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from the cylindrical stick type to the small rectangular handheld boxes that can hold multiple batteries.  Some units are self-enclosed and have no adjustments, making the delivery sort of automatic.  More complex units have adjustments for temperature, voltage and air flow control.

There are basically two parts to the devices.  There is the battery pack or base, and the atomizer or clearomizer top which holds and dispenses the “e-juice” or liquid that contains the flavoring and nicotine.  Many vape users do so without nicotine as well, enjoying only the flavor and cloud or vapor production.

The devices can get quite technical, with some people “building” their own vape units.  These built units are often called RDAs or RDFs.  That angle of vaping is very foreign to me at this point, but I am sure I will get there eventually. For now I am going to stay away from talking about buildable devices and the such.

E Juices or E Liquids:  Now this is the fun part.  There are literally thousands of flavors and types of e juice.  E juice is the liquid that holds the flavoring and the nicotine, if you choose nicotine, and is made of a base of propylene glycol, glycerin, nicotine and the flavorings.  There is propylen glycol and vegetable glycol…popularly called PG and VG. These components seem to regulate the taste delivery, vapor production – or cloud – and amount of throat hit that you get.  Personally I don’t like an uncomfortable “throat hit” so I try to keep my PG to VG composition in my e juices to a 60/40 ratio and that seems to give me the best hit thus far.

There are basically two ways to “hit” on the unit, or draw the vapor in.  One is the mouth to throat hit and the second is the mouth to lung hit.  Both are pretty self explanatory, in mouth to throat you don’t inhale as much of the vapor whereas in mouth to lung you are inhaling like you would on a cigarette.

I bought 3 new juices yesterday.  My favorite at the moment is Kilo’s Dewberry Cream which to me tastes a little like a creamy cookie.  The after taste is awesome and the hit is very smooth.  I’m using an 18mg nicotine blend, so I am getting plenty of nicotine to satisfy my cravings.

I also picked up Mad Mike’s “Blind Date” juice, which I haven’t tried yet.  And I got The Schwartz’s “The Upside” which is a yogurt flavored juice, with a 12 mg nicotine dose.  I like The Upside, which does taste like yogurt, but not as much as I favor the Dewberry Cream.

Flavor Sample Kits:  One of the fun things you can do with the e juices is buy them in sample packages from companies like Zamplebox.com – one of the best I am told.  You can go to the website and build your “flavor profile” which is what you like or might like in flavors and nicotine strengths, and they put together a box of samples, either small (3 flavors), medium (6 flavors) or large (11 flavors) in a very nicely presented box and mail it to you.  I have yet to try the service myself, but am going to be doing so in the very near future.  My first box of samples will be from Zamplebox.com

Vape Shops:  I’ve discovered that while it’s cool to check out the local vape and smoke shops that the pricing online is far far better than in the brick and mortar stores.  I’m sure they have a higher overhead and the convenience of instant gratification is definitely a plus when dealing with a shop rather than waiting for an online order.

So, I have made it through my morning here with 2 cups of coffee and only 1 real cigarette.  The new Kanger Subvod that I bought yesterday, filled with Dewberry Cream has fully satisfied my nicotine craving for the morning.  I’m pleased with the early results of my testing these products.

Yesterday I purchased the KangerTech Subvod Kit from Elite Vapor Portsmouth in Portsmouth NH.  I was really happy with the customer service of Max, the employee thta assisted me with my purchase.  He was knowledgeable and helpful.  And he gave me a 10% discount for being prior military.  Bonus!

I’m pleased as punch with this Kanger unit.  The ease of use is excellent.  The 5 pushes on the button to turn it on and off is great, no chance of it turning on in my pocket.  The TopTank is great; comes fully apart for cleaning and has very easy coil replacement.  I purchased 2 additional coils from him, so that I can use a fresh clean heating coil in the TopTank every time I change out e juice. It also comes with the USB charging cable and a spare pyrex glass tank in-case you break one.  The Subvod battery is 90 mm in length, 18.5 mm in Diameter and weighs only 57 grams.  The voltage output is a steady 3.7 V on the 1300 mAH battery.  The kit comes with very nice little instruction booklet, a card on how to soak the coil before use and an authentication card for KangerTech.

So, in conclusion here I have to say that my experience thus far has been very good.  I’m having fun with the whole vaping thing, and I will continue to learn and will be writing and vlogging more on my Youtube channel about my experience and the learning processes.  (I posted a video yesterday you can see here on Vaping.)