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Electric Cigarette
by ladyofcampfires
I like many people succumbed to peer pressure in my early teens and took up smoking. Most of my fellow underage smoking friends simply grew out of the habit as they got older but I was one of the few who remained with a cigarette constantly in my hand or in my head. At twenty years old I was smoking thirty a day, sometimes more. I always ... smoked roll ups to which meant the inside of my fingers were stained yellow, my teeth were not much better and my non-smoking friends would always comment on the fact I smelt of smoke. I decided something really had to change when I joined the gym. A twenty year old girl of a healthy weight really shouldn't have been struggling to breathe after a few minutes on a treadmill like I was!
Prior to purchasing an e-cigarette I have attempted to quit smoking using patches, gum, throat spray, nasal spray (by far the worst!) and inhalers. None of these methods worked for me and I don't think lack of willpower was entirely to blame for that, I've really wanted to quit for rather a long time now. It just always seemed and felt impossible. I assumed the e-cigarette must have been doing something right as everywhere I looked someone seemed to be 'smoking' one of these things.
----- What is an E-cigarette exactly? -----
Quite simply it is a fake, electronic cigarette. Using a battery, liquid nicotine, vegetable glycerine and flavourings an e-cigarette recreates the smoking experience in a very realistic way. The user gets their nicotine 'hit' as well as fulfilling the addiction of holding something, inhaling and exhaling smoke (actually vapour with an e-cigarette). The difference is these e-cigarettes contain no tar or other harmful chemicals contained in tobacco. They don't smell or cause anyone around you to passively smoke. They don't stain your skin or your teeth and usually they work out cheaper than smoking tobacco. They're legal to 'smoke' in public places too which means no more freezing to death in the cold when out and about whilst your mates are snuggly sat in the warmth of a public building. This being said, everywhere obviously has the right to ban people from using them in their property if they wish to do so.
----- There are hundreds of models, which is best for me? -----
There seem to be two types of e-cigarette, one which uses a cartomizer and one which uses a clearomizer. The cartomizer e-cigarettes seem to be the most popular probably because they're easier to get hold of. These are the e-lites and nicolites and generally tend to look like a usual cigarette. Personally I use a clearomizer e-cigarette. These types tend to look more like pens with a mouthpiece at the top. These also come in just about every colour you can think of with changeable mouthpieces in a variety of colours, shapes and patterns so if what your e-cigarette looks like is massively important to you you'd do well with one of these.
Both work more or less the same. They both use liquid nicotine which is heated up with a battery when the user sucks on the mouthpiece. This then allows the user to inhale the nicotine and exhale a smoke like vapour making the experience feel more like smoking a real cigarette. E-cigarettes using the cartomizer tend to have a light up tip which glows when the user inhales too again making the experience feel more 'real'.
The real difference between the two types is how you refill your cigarette with nicotine. The likes of e-lites and similar brands use the cartomizers which contain the nicotine and simply screw on to the battery; these tend to look like the filter of a real cigarette. The cartomizer types, however, are filled with a liquid often referred to as 'e-liquid' or 'e-juice'. With these you simply pull off the mouthpiece and pour the liquid into the e-cigarette to refill it. The liquid is again made of liquid nicotine and contains some sort of flavouring. Flavours of cartomizers tend to be fairly limited to tobacco flavours, menthol flavours and a few fruity flavours whereas e-liquid comes in just about any flavour you can think of from pepsi to popcorn, strawberry cheesecake to redbull and even rum and whisky flavours! I personally find that e-liquid works out a fair bit cheaper than the cartomizers too.
----- Price and Availability -----
E-cigarettes are readily available. E-lites seem to have a stand in every shopping centre now days and my local Tesco store sells Nicolites as does WH Smiths. I've seen them in plenty of corner shops now too. As usual though you get the most choice by looking online. The clearomizer types don't seem to be sold very much in usual shops; I can't recall ever seeing one. My local Sunday market has a permanent stand which sells them which is where I purchased mine but if you're looking for this type of e-cigarette (and after trying both types I do think these ones are much better) your best bet is online where there are plenty of options from plenty of different sites.
Prices vary significantly and you can pretty much pay whatever you want for one of these. The vast majority of people purchase a starter kit for their first e-cigarette. Typically these will contain the actual e-cigarette along with a charger and some cartridges/liquids to start you off. My starter kit came with all of the above as well as a zip up carry case to keep everything together and I paid £25 for mine. The Nicolites starter kits cost £20 in Tesco and these tend to be the lower price ranges. Other models of e-cigarette cost around £40-£50 for a starter kit and I've seen some online costing more in the region of £100. Personally I don't find you need to spend an awful lot, as mentioned I paid £25 for my starter kit and it's served me perfectly well (I have the eGo CE4 model).
The refills again, vary significantly in price. Nicolites, for example, sell their refill cartridges in packs of three which cost £7 in Tesco. These three cartridges are approximately the same as sixty cigarettes.
E-liquids are a different story entirely. I purchase 20ml for £5 and this amount of liquid is approximately the same as two hundred cigarettes. Having said that I do purchase mine from a site which seems to sell their liquids much cheaper than any other site I've come across (www.smokshop.com if interested). Other sites I've looked at have sold 20ml for £7, 18ml for £6 and 10ml for £3.50. Again though, this varies significantly and those are just a few examples.
For roughly £7 you can purchase disposable e-cigarettes. These don't have a rechargeable battery or any way of refilling them with nicotine. Once they're empty you just throw them away and are a good buy if wanting to try an e-cigarette without forking out too much money in case it isn't for you.
----- Do they work? -----
In my experience, yes. I know a number of people who have switched to the e-cigarette and haven't smoked in a long time. This being said, I don't see that they have entirely worked for these people.
The e-cigarette appears to have a massive success rate in getting people off of tobacco and out of everyone I know who has purchased one of these I don't know a single person who has gone back to 'proper' cigarettes. The problem is, however, I know a couple of people who purchased one of these about two years ago and they're still smoking them with no intention of getting off of them. Granted they are no longer smoking tobacco but the nicotine addiction is still there thus you could argue that these don't really work.
Whether you refill your cigarette with cartridges or liquids you'll be able to buy your refills with varying amounts of nicotine. For me at least, the idea is to gradually lower the levels of nicotine you're taking in until, eventually, you're not addicted to nicotine anymore. Many people, however, don't do this. This isn't meant as a criticism; just a fact I feel is relevant before deciding if this is the method you should pick to quit smoking.
I purchased my e-cigarette eight weeks ago now. I continued to smoke tobacco first thing in the morning and last thing at night for the first week and had the odd one or two in the second week but I haven't smoked a real cigarette for six weeks and two days now. For the first two weeks I was using e-liquids containing 18mg of nicotine. I then lowered to 11mg and I'm currently using e-liquids containing 6mg of nicotine and, from that point, have been using my e-cigarette as little as possible.
This brings me to the next point against the e-cigarette. I haven't seen cartridges containing no nicotine but I have seen many 'zero nicotine' e-liquids, a lot of them actually so I assume people must be buying them. A smoker isn't just addicted to nicotine. The whole act of smoking is in itself an addiction. The e-cigarette does nothing to combat that addiction. I do think, however, getting rid of the addiction to nicotine before kicking the habit of drawing something to the mouth, inhaling and exhaling is a much easier way of doing it. It still requires willpower, but much less of it. The only time I really struggle with not using my e-cigarette now days is after a meal. Aside from those times I really don't use it that much at all just recently and I've every intention of stopping using it permanently in the near future. I should point out also that many people who have switched to the e-cigarette have already been successful in stopping using it altogether. I'm not suggesting I'm the only one who uses these as a quitting tool altogether rather than just something different to smoke!
In short, I would say that the e-cigarette does work if you're willing to let it. If you decide that this is just a safer, cheaper way of smoking rather than a quitting aid though then it is very easy to be smoking using these as often and for as long as you were smoking tobacco.
Whether it matters or not is uncertain. Nicotine itself isn't any more harmful than caffeine, it's just very addictive. What the effects are of long term e-cigarette smoking no one fully knows as no solid research has gone into it yet. Of course, there are plenty of daily mail type claims about how it's just as harmful and dangerous but until there's scientific, concrete evidence to support these claims I'll ignore them.
----- Would you recommend an e-cigarette? -----
Yes. Whether you just want to swop tobacco for an e-cigarette or want to use one to quit all together I feel they are worth using. Once you've spent the initial cost of a starter kit these tend to be much cheaper. The scent of my perfume lasts longer on my skin and clothes now I'm not smoking tobacco, my teeth are visibly whiter and that yellow/orange stain on my fingers has gone completely. I feel healthier and fitter and am financially much better off. I do believe the positives far outweigh the negatives and I've found mine to be much easier in terms of allowing me to quit than any other method I have used. This is by far the longest my quitting attempts have gone on for and I honestly cannot see me going back to tobacco. So yes, I would recommend the e-cigarette.
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