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by reitanqild 3002 days ago
Another benefit I've seen a number of times is that people seems to have an easier time quitting. (Based on my sample of < 5 coworkers that switched to vaping.)

The pattern, as explained to me and IIRC, was as follows:

Started vaping insteadof smoking.

Tried vape with less nicotine. Worked equally well.

Tried with half strength.

Tried with even less. Also worked.

At this point it just felt silly so they just stopped.

(Note that these where young people.)

4 comments

Cigarette companies devote significant resources to building the positive feedback loop to increase the addictiveness of their products (the experience of unwrapping the cellophane packaging is a classic example). Vapes are a much more straightforward delivery method that lack these enhancements.

Of course there's some parallels there for the software world, like the endless A/B testing social-media sites do to maximize the amount of time people spend glued to their product.

I also think it's kind of a controlled dose thing. When one smokes a cigarette it tends to be the whole cigarette, whereas with a vape you can take a couple of hits, get a fix and put it down.
When looking for this I think it's useful to note that immediately after switching the amount of vaping can be huge. I was actually experiencing nicotine rushes and nausea in some cases when I first started

The problem I had was that a cigarette has an obvious stop point - it runs out - whereas a vape will go on as long as you have juice and power.

Over the 6 months or so getting used to it I've been vaping it's started to fizzle out. I know, n=1, but I think it's something worth noting in case people see an increase in nicotine intake immediately after switching

When I first tried a disposable cigalike this happened to me. I was previously smoking just under a pack a day, but without an obvious stopping point I found myself using the whole thing in a few hours, when it was supposed to be equivalent to a pack. Because of this, when I started using a sub-ohm tank, I only bought 3mg liquids (the lowest available). I could vape it as much a I wanted and it took pretty much constant vaping for 10 minutes to feel slightly unwell from the nicotine, so this worked very well for me.
That is basically how it went for me. I tried vaping, liked it, and substituted it for cigarettes. I liked the effect but found it easier to forget about. Eventually I bought some juice I didn’t enjoy, and simply stopped using it.
This is how people taper off of addictive drugs.

A proven strategy.