When I first started vaping, I posted about it here. Perhaps a few of you are interested in how things went. Right up front: I don't endorse vaping. The choice depends on your personal preferences and the tradeoffs that you find acceptable. Same goes for nicotine in general, although personally I think lozenges, gum, or patches carry negligible risk, if any.

As a novice vape user, my primary concern was that progressively increasing tolerance would diminish the returns of nicotine, both recreationally and nootropically. That turned out to be true, although not to the degree that I'm upset or regretful. (More on that momentarily.)

I knew that most likely I'd become addicted to nicotine, which didn't bother me. My view is that addiction is not problematic unless it disrupts your life or prevents you from pursuing your goals, whatever they may be. (We could quibble about terminology and call it "physical dependence" instead.)

I wasn't, and still am not, particularly concerned about health issues. Where I've settled on that: Vaping is vastly better for you than smoking, but almost definitely worse than not vaping. It probably chops my expected lifespan by a bit. (Vaping specifically, not the intake methods that don't require inhalation.)

There is some probability, although it seems low to me, that vaping will turn out to cause substantial damage like smoking does. I do plenty of potentially harmful things because I think the payoff is worth it, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, how my nicotine habit has developed:

1) My self-discipline went out the window within a month or two, first gradually and then completely. Initially I reserved nicotine for when I was actively working, to get the performance boost and to reinforce the habit of focused effort. That was powerfully effective while my strength of will lasted (a week or two, IIRC). But soon enough I told myself, "Okay, reading and answering email counts too," and my limits on myself degraded from there. Now I vape whenever I feel like it.

2) I no longer get a pleasurable head rush on every hit, as expected. I do still get them in the morning after my first hit or two, and when I'm drunk or high. (Combining alcohol with THC and nicotine = bliss.) I don't chain-vape — just sitting there puffing — unless I'm drunk, high, watching a movie, or hanging out with friends.

3) Normally, I vape every 5-30 minutes. (It occurs to me that some people might consider that chain-vaping, but it's not literally continuous. YMMV on the semantics.) If I get sucked into concentrating on something, the rate goes down. However, if I'm doing boring work, the rate goes up. I haven't attempted to actually measure my overall vaping cadence, so take that with a grain of salt. Alas, self-perception isn't necessarily accurate or reliable.

4) I started out vaping 20-30mg nicotine salts, and now I rotate between various juices that range from 20mg to 55mg. The nicotine content of the juice makes surprisingly little difference to my vaping experience. Higher nicotine percentages give me a more intense head rush when that happens, but otherwise the sensation is pretty similar.

5) I can easily put down the vape, at least for relatively short periods of time. Not effortlessly, but easily. Abstaining for a couple of hours (e.g. going to lunch, running errands), I'll think about vaping once or twice but won't get cravings. A full day or more will cause cravings, but not irresistible ones. Near the end of a week, I was excited to start vaping again, but the physical cravings had died down.

It is difficult to describe the difference between "my body is telling me to consume the substance" and "I want to consume the substance again because it's fun and part of my routine." Also, both urges come from the brain, so how do I disentangle the sources? Again, my self-assessment may not be reliable, and I'm not sure whether I'd hold out indefinitely if I tried to quit for real.

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Aside from the addictive nature of nicotine, why do I still vape? The experience is indisputably worse than it was in the beginning. Well, as I summed up above, the downsides seem minimal (in terms of risk-reward calculation). And vaping is fun! In the same way that constantly chewing a fresh piece of gum would be. The head rushes are comparatively rare now, but they still feel super good.

Also, tentatively: I think that I'm still getting slight nootropic benefits, on par with how I'm affected by the of 1-3 cups of coffee that I drink on a daily basis. Marginally more alert, focused, and calm — certainly outstripping any other nootropic that I've tried (unless you count caffeine), including modafinil. Granted, modafinil seems to effect me less than others. My fiancé and I tried similar doses; he's much larger than me and the modafinil affected him plenty, whereas I felt nothing. We both enjoy vaping nicotine.

In case anyone is curious, I use the Suorin Drop, and I rotate brands of vape juice. My favorite so far is Guava Pop by The Mamasan.

Thoughts? Questions? Feedback?