I am curious to hear from people who started vaping without having smoked beforehand.

I’m curious about these things - feel free to respond to as many or as few of them as you wish. Primarily I am thinking about nicotine, but feel free to reply if you vape something different.

  1. What age were you when you started vaping? Feel free to reply with a vague range (e.g. 12-15) or description (e.g. young teen / adult)

  2. Why did you start?

  3. Do you regret having ever started? If so, why do you regret it?

  4. Have you noticed any long-term negative health effects from vaping?

  5. Do you feel that the socialogical and/or legal issues around vaping are more or less of a concern than health effects? (e.g. having to go outside to vape, vaping being banned/restricted in certain places/situations/countries, the risks of vaping being more legally controlled in future, etc.)

  6. Do you feel that the financial cost of vaping is more or less of a concern than the health effects?

No need to follow the numbered format or anything, this isn’t a survey, I’m just looking for answers to these questions for my own personal curiosity! Also, feel free to add any more information that you wish!

Please only share from your personal experience - no links to news stories or studies, please.

Also, not interested in responses from ex-smokers, sorry - those can be found in huge volume already.

  • ZikejiEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    1. ~18.

    2. See answer below.

    3. No.

    4. No.

    5. Yes.

    6. Yes.

    I started vaping around when I was 18, back when disposable coils were first starting to be a thing and the paradigm was mainly making your own coils, testing resistance, and then pulling your own cotton. Very much a manual process, and not a known thing just yet. Smoke shops were just starting to carry juice.

    I started after I got in trouble at work for eating sunflower seeds. Back then I had a pretty bad tick where I had to do something with my mouth quite often. My coworker mentioned it and I saw it as an alternative, I also liked the idea of replacing caffeine with nicotine as a stimulant.

    Easy to guess, but my symptoms and tick were ADHD related. It worked for a short while, but soon I was using both caffeine and nicotine, though by the time I quit vaping for the first time I had completely gotten over the tick.

    Since I started I’ve been through a few cycles of quitting and resuming. I’ve never quit because I saw it as an addiction, and mainly have quit for financial or health reasons, if any at all. And by health I’m referring to purely the impact stimulants had on my blood pressure, nothing to do with vaping itself.

    Being ADHD my addictions have always been as transient as my hobbies, and I’ve quit both nicotine and caffeine multiple times and only the last few times grew conscious of the withdrawal symptoms.

    I do recognize it as a legitimate addiction, as the time I quit intentionally (asthmatic friend was visiting) I did notice the desire to resume, although that may also be related to finally finding working ADHD treatment.

    If you plan properly you can use 0nic liquid and mix it with nic liquid to slowly wean yourself off nicotine, and have personally coached two people through this process, one of which was a lifetime smoker.

    Aside from health concerns from nicotine itself, the only health issue I’ve had from vaping was suffocating myself by vaping too much lol.

    I do think vaping in public should be treated the same as smoking, and that access be behind an age restriction. But I don’t see it as anything more than a mildly unhealthy vice. My addiction to sugar and sweet stuff has been much more harmful to me and is completely unchecked here in the US.