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Stephen Howard

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As some of you who have visited my workshop over the last decade or so will know, I've long since given up smoking and have switched to this new-fangled vaping malarkey. It'll be six years since I had a ciggy on the 13th of January.
It ranks as one of the best decisions I ever made - and subsequent to my making the switch, almost all (bar one) of my clients who smoked have made the switch.

Do we have any other vaping saxophonists out there...or am I the only one?? (Please let it be just me...please let it be just me).
 
Nicotine free way before Vapors came along, so never experienced.

I'm thinking though, with the sheer amount of vapor you sometimes see belching out of car windows, a very simple holder could be fashioned and attached to the Lyre holder on a Sax (the equivalent of a Guitar player pronging his lit ciggie on the straggling bit of string on the tuning pegs) allowing you to Vape and play. It would have the added bonus that if you took a hit before a solo, you could act as your own smoke machine, propelling an impressive ploom from the working ends.
 
I stopped smoking in July 2011 the day of my quadruple bypass surgery. It helped to be in the hospital while going through the first week of nicotine withdrawals. One day when I was especially unpleasant to be around, one of the nurses came in and slapped a nicotine patch on my arm and told me to "settle down". Nicotine is a very addictive substance regardless of the delivery system. Here's wishing you the best Stephen Howard.
 
Having tried ‘cold turkey’ several times and failed miserably to quit my 40 a day habit I tried vaping December 2014 and haven’t had a cigarette since, I enjoy vaping and collecting vaping equipment (shiny, shiny) I also diy my juice and use only a very small amount of nicotine, I’m thinking of trying nicotine free soon as I’ve gradually reduced the percentage of nicotine over time, when I first started vaping I was using a 2.4% mix now I’m only using 0.3% so for me it definitely was a good way to get off the ciggies
 
Having tried ‘cold turkey’ several times and failed miserably to quit my 40 a day habit I tried vaping December 2014 and haven’t had a cigarette since,

Sounds very much like my own experience. I only meant to try it out of curiousity, and instead I quit a 40 year habit overnight.
Like you, I mix my own eliquid but vary its strength from 12 to 24mg. I tried zero nic for a while - and while it was OK it didn't have any of the 'pick you up' hit you'd get from a nice cup of tea or a fresh coffee - and I found I tended to vape more.
Unlike you I've managed to stave off the dreaded shinyitus (so far)...but what with so many new mods and atties coming out on an almost weekly basis, I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out.
 
I'm thinking though, with the sheer amount of vapor you sometimes see belching out of car windows....

I have to admit, I really don't get all that 'cloud-chasing' business. No-one ever did that when they smoked...so why has it suddenly become fashionable to chuck out huge clouds? I'm guessing it's something along the lines of 'big car/small car'...if you get my drift.
I tried it once - I think I coughed for about 20 minutes afterwards.
 
I'd given up giving up when I eventually gave up. I even convinced myself that a cigar wasn't smoking. :rolleyes:
 
Nicotine is a very addictive substance regardless of the delivery system..

So they told us. However, one of the interesting things about vaping is that it removes all the other nasties associated with smoking - and it turns out that it's these that have the greater 'hook'. I never left the house without my baccy...but it's not uncommon for me to forget to take my vape with me these days.
 
The only time I want to smoke now is when I'm watching "Peaky Blinders".
 
I gave up 'cold turkey' 28 years ago and could still smoke a ciggy. It's not a craving, it's just a thought rarely and easily forgotten. I believe vaping is ok for some people but they never seem to give that up so they are still addicted just in [perhaps] a less harmful way. If you want to give up smoking there is only one way...and that is to stop, just stop. Vaping, cutting down, only smoking after ten am or only on days with a 'Y' in it, none of these things work, you are just prolonging the agony and fooling yourself. You are still addicted. Once you have smoked you will always be addicted but when you actually stop trying to fool yourself you stand a better chance of never smoking again. Wake up and smell the coffee (and you will when your sense of smell comes back} and give it up.
 
You are still addicted. Once you have smoked you will always be addicted but when you actually stop trying to fool yourself you stand a better chance of never smoking again. Wake up and smell the coffee (and you will when your sense of smell comes back} and give it up.
I was never addicted but would smoke a cigarette when I had a cup of coffee which makes your last sentence a shade problematical.
Simply stopped doing it well over forty years ago.
 
I was never addicted but would smoke a cigarette when I had a cup of coffee

I have met people like you. People to whom a cigarette was an occasional pleasure, a rare breed indeed. Most of us mere mortals became almost hopelessly dependent...almost, but not quite.
 
Nick O Teen is a menace to society.
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I believe vaping is ok for some people but they never seem to give that up so they are still addicted just in [perhaps] a less harmful way. If you want to give up smoking there is only one way...and that is to stop, just stop. Vaping, cutting down, only smoking after ten am or only on days with a 'Y' in it, none of these things work, you are just prolonging the agony and fooling yourself. You are still addicted.

One of the interesting things about the rise of vaping is that it's given various scientist a vast pool of volunteers with which to test these long-held assumptions - and one of the very first questions asked was "If nicotine's so addicitive, how come so many vapers are consuming a fraction of the quantity they were before...with no apparent ill-effects?"
Granted, initially there seems to be a need for a high level - but it ramps down extraordinarily quickly...far more than it ought to given the 'pernicious' nature of nicotine addiction.

Vapers too started asking questions - the most common being "How come this is so easy?"

It turns out that most of what we 'know' about nicotine comes from some pretty dubious sources, and a very great deal of doesn't stand up to even very basic scrutiny.
Thankfully there's new research being done - and old research is being re-examined with a more critical eye.
One of the most entertaining snippets is that the LD50 (the toxicity of nicotine) we've been using for the last 100 years turns out to have been completely made up by a couple of scientists who made a complete bodge-up of their experiments. No-one queried it for 100 years, and now it seems it's 10-20 times less toxic than we thought.

Current epidemiology places nicotine consumption (via means other than smoking) at around the same risk level as a caffiene habit, and there's some fascinating research that suggests a very credible link to the prevention of dementia and Alzheimers.

But by far the biggest problem with vaping turns out to be that Big Pharma, Big Government and Big Tobacco aren't making as much money out of it as they did smoking.
 
There's another issue - more pressure on pensions as many fewer people are dieing from lung cancer.
 
Addiction is a very subtle state of mind. The mind justifies or denies it, in many ways and convinces itself quite successfully.
 

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