The placebo effect and how it relates to vaping
A friend of mine on facebook (Robert Green) proposed and interesting question. He asked what percentage of the vaping experience was due to the placebo effect. This was such an intriguing question to me that the answer was just too involved for a simple comment/response on facebook. For those of you that don't know Robert, he works at a local vape store ( The Crave Cave), is very into the local vaping scene, is very honest and helpful to everyone he meets and knows his shit about vaping and gear. He also posts some very entertaining videos to facebook at least once a day. (Hmm, man crush? maybe, I don't know LOL)
The short answer is he feels its at least 50% and most seemed to agree with him, As do I. However I actually feel the percentage is probably quite higher than 50%, possibly closer to 90%. Why didn't I just reply " Oh I feel its closer to 90%" and leave it at that? Well for one I think if I am going to make a claim that high it deserves some sort of justification on my part. Also I have a website dedicated to beginning vaping so I figured it would be a cool thing to add. Or maybe its just my OCD or I just like to hear myself talk?
First of all lets take a look at what makes smoking so addictive. I feel there are two parts to this. First is the chemical addiction, second is the behavioral addiction. Obviously when we think of chemical addiction we are thinking of Nicotine. It is after all the key addicting agent in tobacco. That being said I don't feel its the only one. There are a lot of chemicals and compounds in cigarettes both natural and added. A good way to show this is that studies have shown smokers have decreased MOA levels and increased dopamine levels. MOA's are responsible for breaking down dopamine. And scientific studies have shown that nicotine does NOT effect your MOA level. So we can only assume there is something else in there that is causing this effect in your body.
Nicotine while highly addictive is really just a stimulant similar to caffeine. It actually has a shorter half life than caffeine. A cup of coffee stays in your system for 8 to 10 hours where as the nicotine from a cigarette is absorbed in a few hours. Which is probably why you want one every three hours so. Makes sense to me anyway. It is also important to note ( to me anyway) that nicotine in itself is not "bad" for you. No more so than caffeine is. Its the delivery method that sucks.
Something else to note is that nicotine alone will not give you that light headed feeling or "head rush" that those first few drags of cigarette will give you. My guess would be this is something in the tobacco or possibly a lack of oxygen to your brain from sucking in smoke? I am not a scientist or a doctor so its purely a guess. All I know is any other type of nicotine delivery system will not give you that feeling.
At any rate I doubt any of these chemicals have a half life of more than a week. Some may stay in your system for up to a month at trace amounts, but I am sure the half life is much much less. So this means that medically and physically quitting smoking shouldn't be any harder than quitting caffeine. Just stop for a week or so and you should be good. Sure you feel like shit for a few days, but once its out of your system its out. Ok then, why is so damn hard to quit?
Well that leads us to the behavioral or social side of smoking. Lets face it, its a habit, and a really shitty one at that. I like to think of it more as a being addicted to porn or gambling. You can call it an addiction all you want, but technically there is no chemical or physical addiction there, its just a really bad habit that is hard to stop doing. This is why patches, gum and other nicotine delivery devices fail so often. Sure you are getting the nicotine, often times more so then you would get from smoking. However they are doing nothing for the actual physical habit of smoking. When you wake up in the morning you WANT that cigarette, or after a meal, or out with friends or after sex or whatever really. Lets say you get a flat tire and you are stressed out. Someone says, "here have a some nicotine gum". Fuck that, you want a cigarette lol. Its not all chemical, a lot of it is mental. This is why I say Vaping is probably mostly the placebo effect and not a chemical replacement for smoking. Since the chemicals leave your body fairly quickly it isn't so much the chemical addiction, it is simply the act of DOING it.
This is why I feel Vaping works so well and is becoming one of the easiest ways to stop smoking. Its not really a quit smoking plan as much as it is a Replacement Therapy device. It does a much better job of emulating the act of smoking while still being much less dangerous and hazardous to your health. Is it the perfect solution? Nope, quitting cold turkey would still be your best bet if you can do it. Is it the same as smoking? Nope, I still miss that head rush. However it is safer, cheaper ( to a point) and you don't smell like an ashtray.
Again we can compare it to porn ( and why not right?). You could replace your porn addiction with looking at Cat videos on youtube. Sure you would still be wasting hours a day looking at videos online. But wouldn't you rather get busted looking at cat videos than porn?
( Don't get busted masturbating to cat videos though, that would just be fucking weird!)
A half an hour video on why you cough when you vape and how you can help minimize it.