My secret shame: an addiction to these contraptions for (ugh) 12 years

These are vaping devices.  The long red pen on the far right is the oldest, what I puffed on for several years.  The center one is a Janty, brushed steel and heavy, and flat.  It feels good in my hand, and can hold the most e-juice, but its refillable cartridge burns out quickly, needing replacing every few days. 

The smallest one on the far left is a ‘Mini-Fit’, one of the latest devices and a real champ.  No bigger than my thumb, it can take endless juice refills, charges in minutes and plumes big clouds of vapor.  I had it in 5 colors—red, bronze, black, blue & gold.

They’re all gone now.  I quit vaping on July 4, and carted a bag of a dozen or so pens, 3 Jantys, 5 Mini-Fits, refill cartridges, e-pods and a case containing 22 bottles of e-juice (each bottle lasted approximately 3 months, I had enough to keep me vaping for years) downstairs and outside to the dumpster behind my apartment building. 

For the first time in 41 years, I am both “smoke and vape free”.  I HAD to quit if I want to get over this awful jaw disorder. 

This began with cigarettes, in 1979.  Both my best friend Dan & my girlfriend Sherri smoked, would always offer me one, and while I never felt pressured, sure why not.

And a week before I graduated high school, I bought my first pack—I was hooked.

I was never proud of the fact I smoked, but I enjoyed them greatly.  I’ll never forget one day in 1984, I was working in the Garden Shop at our local Murphy’s Mart, helping a woman load bags of potting soil & peat moss into her trunk.  She was fairly new in town, a dentist & avid gardener, and on friendly terms with everyone.  She said “Douglas you sure have a beautiful smile.”  I said “Aw, thanks Dr. Jane.”   She said “I’m surprised you’re a smoker, if you don’t quit you’re going to lose that smile someday.”  

She was right, of course.  I spent most of the 1990s getting several teeth pulled, and the rest either root-canaled, crowned or both.  Half of my upper teeth are bridges, and I wear a partial denture on the lower left.  Tobacco will wreck your teeth.

Still, I continued puffing away.

And then one evening in June 2008, I was watching foreign tv commercials on Youtube, and saw a British advert for electronic cigarettes, “for when a real smoke isn’t convenient.”   They weren’t even sold in the US yet, so I wrote the manufacturer and asked if I could order a kit.  I thought if it seemed real enough, it might help me cut down 1-2 cigs from my pack-a-day habit. 

Oh, it worked better than expected.  That kit included a couple of black pens (with a tip that glowed orange when you puffed) and a ‘juice sampler’ in different nicotine strengths.  18mg nicotine—12mg—6mg—3mg.  I began with the 18mg, but was still frustrated that it wasn’t like smoking at all.  You weren’t inhaling a dense, aromatic smoke, it was more like “sipping steam”. 

That first night, I tossed it across the room:  “Useless.”

But that inhale of steam contained nicotine, so I stuck at it, and began noticing in the days ahead that my urge to smoke REAL cigarettes was diminishing.  Instead of running downstairs for a cigarette every 90 minutes at the office, I vaped for a couple minutes at my desk instead.  Coworkers asked what it was, and laughed at the silliness of it.

I wasn’t laughing—for the first time in decades, I saw a real possibility of quitting cigarettes altogether.

And on July 4, 2008 I was outside on my balcony smoking my nightly “cigarette before bed” and a voice inside me said:  This is your last cigarette.  You’ll never smoke again.  That voice was right—I never picked up another cigarette.

Going to full-time vaping wasn’t easy.  The first few nights I puffed frantically on steam.  But eventually I adapted, and happily settled into vaping.  As days passed, I coughed up some awful stuff every morning as my lungs cleared themselves of 25+ years of tobacco use; soon my smoker’s cough was gone.  Everything smelled & tasted better.  My clothes smelled as fresh at the end of the day as they did in the morning.

That e-cig was a godsend!  I soon learned I could vape indoors too, the fog it produced was clean of tar or burnt tobacco, and didn’t yellow walls or lampshades, or stink up anything.    

Still, I didn’t want to trade one addiction for another.  I began vaping those other juices with less nicotine.  I switched from 18mg to 12, had a shaky start, but adjusted.  In the next several months I went to 6mg nicotine juice, and finally down to the lowest, the 3mg.  

I was one happy camper, and told everyone I was vaping the lowest juice available; how difficult can it be to quit now?  I’d do it when I was good and ready.

What I’d failed to see, I was vaping more to maintain the same level of nicotine in my body.  On that 3mg juice, I pretty much vaped constantly now.  It became a worse habit than cigarettes. 

I never thought of the workout I was giving my poor jaw muscles day & night… to think I did it for 12 years… I am such a dope. 

When I wrote at the top that I quit vaping, it wasn’t by choice; I wound up in the hospital over the 4th of July, and was in there longer than expected.  I’m debating sharing the whole story, I’d sooner just forget it.

A nurse found one of my vape pens on me, asked what it was and when I told him, he slapped a nicotine patch on my arm.  My vaping days were done.

After my release, I headed straight to my local drugstore and bought a couple boxes of the patches.  They’ve taken a little of the edge off, but this has been hard.   Everytime my phone rings or I get out of the shower or make a cup of coffee, I reach for a vape pen and—fudge.  I take some big breaths of air instead.  

I’ve been vape-free 3 weeks as of this writing, but I often feel as anxious as the first day.  The nicotine patches (which gradually taper you down) says the emotional need lasts around 6 weeks.

I just hope my swollen masseters will forgive me in time and calm down too.