The E-cig Thread

Any recommendations for one just to aid in quitting smoking? A lot of the newer discussions in this thread seem to be as a hobby.

Juvarisx said:

Any recommendations for one just to aid in quitting smoking? A lot of the newer discussions in this thread seem to be as a hobby.

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I was a 3 pack a day smoker until 2015 when I had the PEs and nearly died. Smoked 25 years, although much of that was 1 pack a day until 2007 I jumped to 2 and 2011 3.
I made the mistake early on and vaping in the US was just taking off fullscale by buying shit ecigs like paying $100 for a Blu kit and those disposables for years. It wasn't until I bought a decent mod and a Kanger Subtank that I was able to quit smoking completely. I had tried tons of times over the years but once I had the Kanger I had a craving here and there but never fell off the wagon so to speak except the few rare times I treated myself to a cig only to find it made me feel like shit and smelled disgusting as fuck. Those times, I never made it through the pack.

Many many options out there for mods and tanks and I've had quite a few of both but I personally keep going back to Kanger Toptank. Easy to fill, parts are easy to get such as replacement glass, o rings and every vape shop/online store carries the coils and shit you need for them and the tank and everything is fairly inexpensive. Smok was my next best favorite but it eats juice and everything is more expensive.
I would say get a name brand well tested and used mod. I've paid $100 for mods that broke down in months. I paid $40 for my Cloupor 3 years ago and has been used every day and still works, although it is showing some real age. I should add the first one I bought caught on fire and might have burned down our house had I not been sitting there. I took it back to the store, it was swapped for another new one and been going for 3 years straight. I no longer charge batteries through the mod do to that. I use a Nitecore 4 battery charger since that event.

You can get a great mod/battery/tank and juice going for $100 these days. If you do your own juice, even at *low* amounts like 250ml at a time, you'll still save a TON of money over a vape store.
You don't need a 3 battery with built in tv screen 300 watt mod to start but you don't want to start with the disposable ecigs from Speedway either.

I'd highly suggest starting off with a tobacco flavored juice to make the switch easier as it will help with the craves then once you are cig free a few weeks and actually can taste things and smell the world again, switch to whatever you like. For me it was banana stuff for a year. Now I mostly do mint, fruits, cereals and during holidays a eggnog flavor.

Depending on what you currently smoke and how much will give a solid idea where the nic level you want to start is. You can go pretty damn high on nic but just like cigs, too much can make you sick and the more nic in the juice, the worse the flavors tend to be. You want it to be just high enough to end your cravings and eventually drop it down so you can get better flavoring and shit.

FLAVORHUNTER50

ecigexpress is doing 50% off all items in the on sale area today.
Doesn't include nic though. all the flavors/bottles listed on this link is marked low and this takes an additional 50% off it meaning all the flavors listed are like 50 cents.
ON SALE! - <p class="shopbydepartment"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Shop by</span><span style="font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold;">Department</span></p> <-- track free link. Then add FLAVORHUNTER50 in checkout.

So I had a credit card get unauthorized charges a few months back that I rarely use for anything but utilities and other what should be secure stuff. I also used it for ecigexpress and amazon. No one could figure out how they got all the info but it was canceled and a new one issued. I made a purchase about 6 weeks ago with the NEW one and had unauthorized charges again last week on a card that had only been used 5 times, including once again ecigexpress. Some digging around shows many people have suffered the same fate, including ones that had virtual credit cards ONLY used at ecigexpress.

They redid their website recently with better checkout functions and features but as it turns out, the reason the previous site was so horrible is that it was compromised. They did the right thing and upgraded security and the site but FAILED to tell anyone why, which was basically they knew people were getting their cards stolen. Add to this my recent order of ejuice is 70vg/30pg and I've been buying it over a year after learning of them here. The latest shipment is as fluid as water, not like a thin oil as before.

Based on all that, I cannot suggest ecigexpress as a place to buy juice anymore and anyone who did order through them needs to scrutinize past statements and keep a eye on future ones with the card you used. Thankfully as far as I am aware, all major cards over fraud and they make it right in the end.

Wow. If you ever get hung out waiting on juice like I am and have to buy something temp. The new Vuse Alto is the way to go. Uses super magnets to seat in the charger and for the juice pods. Doesn't leak and almost as powerful a hit as my lighter use Kanger on 30 watts. It doesn't make a massive cloud but it isn't no single puff shit stick like the past offerings either. Fits nicely in the pocket too. Marlboro finally came up with something ok. Still expensive though at $20 for the starter( 1 pod ) and $13 for 2 1.8ml pods. I assume each pod is a packish. Says 5% nic but it hits a bit stronger than that. I'm wondering if it is salt juice.

Didn't even know this thread existed, thanks Zapatta

Currently just using some cheap vape kit, one of those Pockex. Irritates me having to buy the 5 pack coils for it, am I to understand you can easily & cheaply make your own coils and wicks using a proper vape? I'd prefer that route, not too stressed as I've saved tons of money just switching to vape vs smoking, so hasn't been a priority.

Wouldn't mind making my own liquid as well, got a bunch on a good sale after xmas, but it's not gonna last forever, and I'm not paying 20$ for a 40ml bottle.

Quit a year or so ago with the Juul and still use it. Not the cheapest way to go but easy, convenient, clean, consistent, and compact. It also has a nice throat hit. I had tried previously with all sorts of fancy vapes and batteries and juice but it was all such a hassle. Juul makes it all easy.

Frenzied Wombat said:

Quit a year or so ago with the Juul and still use it. Not the cheapest way to go but easy, convenient, clean, consistent, and compact. It also has a nice throat hit. I had tried previously with all sorts of fancy vapes and batteries and juice but it was all such a hassle. Juul makes it all easy.

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Yeah thats mainly why I got this Pockex one, someone I work with used the same one. I wanted something cheap to start with in case it didn't work out, but I wanted something that actually produced plenty of "smoke" as well. I'd tried with those shitty disposable ones years ago, and that was the main reason I couldn't stand it, I felt like I was puffing flavored air.

I need something more durable and permanent though. I had to throw a bead of superglue on the outside of the tank for this one, as I dropped it and got a crack in the glass. This thing isn't gonna survive a single day at work when I return, company replaces my cellphones & tools, but not this shit.

Zapatta said:

I started where you are and i'll save you a lot of trial and error and and tell you where I ended up to find the best easiest experience for the lowest price.

I am grabbing links etc to info bomb you without getting all tech and mathy. Hold on a bit.

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No hurry, appreciate it.

Juvarisx said:

Any recommendations for one just to aid in quitting smoking? A lot of the newer discussions in this thread seem to be as a hobby.

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I first posted in this thread in 2013, at the time I was trying out vaping as a method to eventually quit. I had been a smoker for about 20 years at that point. There was a self-righteous cunt that decided to start posting, spewing all kinds of shit, and I'm loathe to admit that in no small part to the negative stereotyping and FUD this guy was spitting I didn't end up pursuing vaping. The tech at the time was the other major contributing factor, not just the tech itself, but the availability of the tech in my city in Australia. I live in the far north of the country and as a result, it's oddly, much harder to get things. It's a vastly small place than Sydney, and the distance between us and Sydney makes things expensive or just unavailable. The internet solves that to a degree, but again, the distances involved means if it takes 3 weeks for something to get delivered from China, it takes 6 weeks total to get to me. I avoided this thread since then, and maybe I shouldn't have.

About 9 months ago I was at a social event and got talking with a guy that was vaping. I inquired about it and he was pretty reluctant to talk about it. He did however let me know there was now a brick and mortar shop in the area that was selling everything with the exception of the nicotine (which is illegal to sell here) to start vaping. So one afternoon I went down to the store, and asked the owners. "I'm a smoker, I'd like to give vaping a try as an alternate to smoking, and maybe, I can give it up for good." The lady I was talking too gave me that knowing smile and said "yep, we've all been were you are at some point ... here's what I suggest, lets try it out." I spent the next hour at the store, trying a few selected vapes, then some juices. Keep in mind, I'd done my research at this point, I knew what types of vapes were available, the hundreds of flavours, but I wanted to hear directly from someone that was a vaper. After my first pull on the vape she said, "Ah, you're an MTL, so try this one..." I said "That's impossible! I've always pulled the smoke into my mouth before pulling it into my lungs as a smoker. I've read about this Mouth To Lung thing." She said have another pull, so I did and sure as shit, I was vaping like it was a bong, straight to the lungs. I was a little shocked and said "I'm sorry, I must be that pain in the arse customer that's read/seen too much shit, and knows all the things." She laughed a little and said that it was actually a good thing that I'd done my research and didn't enter the shop, buy up a bunch of shit like I knew everything and sat down with her to help explain it all. My confidence in this lady and the business she worked for grew.

She suggested that I start vaping just the nic-free juice to get a feel for it, while I waited the delivery time for the nicotine to get here, which was going to be about 3 days. She said that it would be fine to smoke normal cigs during that time, but not once I'd gotten the nicotine into the juice, and to space it out if I really felt like a cig. Double dosing on the stuff could leave me feeling sick as a dog, and that made a lot of sense.

So I went home with a Prince Stick (i think that's right) it was a single battery tank on top with a coil set up. All pre-built stuff, plug and play. A contact sheet for how to mix nic with flavour and a website in New Zealand they'd had plenty of contact with in the past. Very simple, very easy. Fill the tank with juice, click the button, inhale the vapour. I bought enough nic-fluid to apparently last me for a year, a 200ml bottle at 200/mg. I think, I'd have to go look, I might correct this later. That bottle cost me 37 AUD. The vape and juice I bought cost about 150 AUD. It was costing me 65 AUD for a pack of smokes that lasted 3 days on average (pouch tobacco). It took three days for the nic to get here, which was super fast and I'd vaped 10mls of pure juice over those few days to get use to it.

I made a new batch with nic this time, and I haven't smoked a cigarette since that day. I haven't wanted to, I haven't needed too. I have vaped every day since that day with nic in my juice. I started at 12mg and I'm down so under 3mg and very, very slowly taking it down from that point. I started dropping it very fast at one point and I noticed my mood was unbalanced put the mix up a little bit and the mood swings vanished, so I decided to move it slower at that point and it seems to be working. I could go on for hours about the what/where and why of my original smoking habits, and if someone asks I will at some point.

It only took a few days for my lungs to start clearing, it took a month for me to realise that my lung capacity was now far greater than it use to be. Previously I could only hold my breath for a maximum of 20 seconds. I could now hold my breath much longer, up to 40 seconds if I really push it. I can imagine how much of a difference that would end up when I start really working on the rest of my health, exercising. Six months later mowing the lawn didn't cause me light-headedness, I was unfit as shit, and still am, but I can move now with feeling like shit.

There's been some huge positives that I won't go into in this post (unless someone asks) and a few negative ones like me needing to get some dental work done after my gums started receiving the blood they'd not had in years. I haven't felt this good in years. Holy shit.. that reminds me. Food. Holy fucking shit. I never knew what half the things I've eaten in the past 20 years have even tasted like. If a smoker tells you they can taste or smell things, they aren't lying, but they can't taste or smell like a non-smoker can. It was like a god-damned revelation. It was like having a super-power activated. I use to like hot food, stuff like Vindaloo's. Mainly because it gave "taste" to things that really weren't that exciting. Now? a Vindaloo (a good one, mind you) isn't just a ball of lava, I can actually take the kardamon, fenugreek, cayenne, chilli. Oh god. I'm pretty sure this is the main reason I've put on a little bit of extra weight since I switched, Food was always a thing I had to do, not something I ever enjoyed doing. Now? it's the other thing.

I'm currently still using a pre-built system. The GeekVape Aegis Legend, using Cerberus X-2 Aero Mesh coils. I started with Kilo Coffee Milk as my base juice and haven't stopped using it. It goes really well with real coffee, smells more like a caramel according to my missus. So I'm not much of a vape enthusiast at the moment, but I'm also not a smoker anymore.

TLDR: If you have a vape shop or two in your area, go talk with them after you've read some shit and watched a few videos. If you've got more than one store, visit a few before you throw down some dollarydoos. Talk to these people and be humble. Don't let some shithead on the internet try to talk you out of quitting smoking, by moving to vaping.

Zapatta said:

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Very nice, some solid info to look into. The info on the coils and wick are exactly what I need. Yeah I'd just do it all myself, seems easy enough, no issue with tools here either heh.

I've been using the salt based nicotine from the start, so I'll prob stick with it.

The coils are 0.6ohm, I still have the 45mg stuff, but I have a puff or two and seem to be fine, more than that I feel like I just smoked a fistful of cigs.