What's that red thing?

One of the things that's made me look up from watching to make sure one foot goes in front of the other is what a lot of people call "vaping", meaning using an eCigarette to inhale nicotine instead of smoking traditional "analog" cigarettes. My experiences to date have been so surprising that it's one of the main reasons I've begun blogging again.

The story so far:

A few years back: My boyfriend, the long-suffering Asuma (no, I'm not going to out his real name or nearly anyone else's--I have friends who treasure their privacy and I have other friends who are relatively famous in their fields, so I'd need a very good reason to post anyone's real name here, including my own), has a niece living close by that we hear from from time to time, usually when there's a project or event she wants our involvement with.

But as usual I digress, so let me get back on track.

The niece had stumbled onto a new-cool-something that she wanted each and every one of her smoking friends to check out, mostly because she'd signed up as a rep for the company (think of the Avon lady, only selling nicotine vaporizers), and since I've been a smoker for a very long time she naturally thought of me.

She tried her ass off to sell me one of her company's eCigs--I don't remember the company name but they had one of the guys from the TV show "Deadliest Catch" as their spokesperson, so maybe that would give you the company name if you care. It didn't work for one plain reason: There was no way to try out a system that would start out costing me more than a carton of smokes.

That was a huge catch for me. Laying out around $100 by the time I got done ordering the cartridges (the thing needed to make with the fake smoke) without knowing if I would even like the damned thing is not an option. I'm not a rich bitch--an extra $100 has far more uses than a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey smokey-thingy could demand if I'd never laid my own hands on one or had a chance to smoke off it at least once! Besides, I've got a few other habits too--I knit, I make soap and other scented goodies (if it reeketh, I maketh), and have you SEEN the price of anime DVDs lately? Crack's cheaper! I have to admit it's not nearly as fun though... Anyhow, you get the point. Thunking down that much cash and thereby leaving me short of money for "real" cigarettes (my way of thinking at the time--part of the reason for blogging this process is to see the changes in my own thinking and show it to those of you who give a shit) wasn't happening.

The last time I ran into her, a year ago or so, she was still trying to talk me into sampling the wares by buying a set. I still wanted a chance to try one before committing to that much cash, so I looked around--at the disposables in stores (and thought they were WAY too expensive--2-3 times the price of a pack of cigarettes but only designed to last about as long as one pack) and on the Intarwebs (same deal on price but add shipping charges that ranged from reasonable to ridiculous and it still added up to "um, I'll pass, thanks") plus checking out reusable systems, which seemed to be a better deal.

I've also got a friend who has been using eCigs for a long time and one piece of advice was to reload the cartridges instead of buying ones you couldn't reload--said it would save me even more money. So I kept looking around and thought there were a couple that might be handy but to reload the cartridges would be minor surgery each time since they just weren't designed to be reused. 

FAST FORWARD TO...

Late August, 2012: I opened a MyPoints.com email to find an ad for an eCig company that was offfering a 4-pack of disposable eCigs for $25 or so plus a free shipping code. I hit the link, went to the site, looked the offer over and popped for the sample set.

I got them in 5 days or so, opened one and started using it. It was different but felt a lot more like really smoking than the Nicotrol nicotine inhalers I had a prescription for that I used once in awhile when I was somewhere I wasn't allowed to smoke and had to deal with nic fits.

The trouble was the taste. The Menthol one wasn't bad, but the Strawberry and Blueberry flavors had about as much to do with tasting like those fruits as a Chihuahua has with being a kitten--they're about the same size, they do a few things the same but one is no substitute for the other. Worst, the "Tobacco" flavor tasted like someone cracked a pack of Marlboro Reds, took only one out and then left it on someone's front porch over the winter and I picked it up and tried to smoke one. BLICK! I eventually used them up--I used up the Menthol one the week before last at home, a friend and I used up 2 of them on a bus trip that turned into the Bataan Death March when the driver got lost and I killed the third on the way home that trip. That was the last weekend in September 2012.

During that following week there were times I found myself wishing I had one left. I thought that was odd as hell--I had cigarettes, but sort of... yeah, it's the right word... craved an eCig.

Mid-September 2012: I was still working on those awful disposable eCig samples when I had a three-day fandom convention to attend. Since I work on our convention's PR team, I figured there'd be times I wouldn't want to break off a conversation or I'd be alone at the table and not be able to go smoke, so I brought the disposables along. Two strange things happened that weekend.

The first was meeting a guy who noticed I had an eCig. We wound up talking for the better part of an hour about eCigs in general, how lousy the ones I had tasted and that not all of them taste like that, and best of all, once I had a rechargeable and refillable system, how I could make my own (DIY) eLiquids, flavored just as I liked them, with exactly the right amount of nicotine! Seriously cool, I thought. It just might be worth it--and it'll save me money on smokes, which was even cooler!! "Anime--Crack is Cheaper" is a t-shirt that should have been made just for me, and I had me a VERY loooooonh wishlist!

The other thing was actually not so great as far as using eCigs was concerned but did point up a problem with their increasing popularity: ignorance.

I'd been talking with a staff member of the convention I was at. He'd stopped by the PR table to ask about some ways to connect state conventions together, and we wound up babbling more than a little bit, so I'd pulled out one of my disposables rather than break off the great talk we were having.

"Ummm, we don't allow those here," gesturing to my eCig.

The answer to the inevitable "Well, why not?" was...

"We decided we don't want to have those around here."

Further "Why" questions didn't get me anywhere--mostly the answers added up to "because we said so", an answer that quit working on me around age, oh, THREE. 

Discussing the incident later, the nicest conclusion as to why it wouldn't be allowed was ignorance, mostly of what was exhaled during eCig use. Water is actually the main component of what is left when a user exhales but many people believe that much more harmful ingredients are both used in the original liquids and are remaining in the exhaled vapor, so that seemed to be the logical conclusion as to why a large pile of well-educated people wouldn't allow something so harmless to be used.

Fine, I thought, "it's your con, your rules. But it would be really f'n cool if you'd not only educate yourselves on what you're outlawing but actually POST THE RULE if you expect anyone to follow it." Nope, they hadn't bothered to post it anywhere--website, signs around the hotel or in the programming guide where the full list of rules WAS printed.

Last week of September 2012: I spent this researching various systems, initial cost, cost of supplies once I'd begun to use them, ease of refilling (highly important if I was actually going to save any money since some systems' carts cost almost as much as the packs of cigarettes they were replacing) and other issues that came up as my research showed me what nicotine vaporizers were capable of doing.

I came out of the week deciding I wanted a Vea system, so that's what I'd be buying on payday.

So--that's what brought me from "I heart my cigarettes too much to ever get rid of them" to purchasing an eCig system to setting my quit date. You'll find the rest of the story as you keep reading Unstuck in Midlife.