I am 40 days off being a 1 & 1/2 pack a day smoker and I need some advice on when and how to reduce nicotine levels in my mixes.
When I first started vaping, the folks at the vape stores said 6mg would be enough to help me quit. Well it was not and (while smoking and vaping) I found that 12 mg did the trick. It was easy to cut down to 9mg and then 6mg (where I am now) but I have read that it may be difficult to reduce to 3mg. Any advice from past smokers on how to approach my upcoming reduction would be appreciated.
The regs have me very concerned that I will not have the freedom, in the foreseeable future, that I now enjoy in DIY. I hope that I am wrong, but I want to be proactive and be prepared. I feel like it will be much easier to go from 3mg to zero than 6mg to zero, if that is what I am faced with.
I have been mixing like a Mad Scientist in my basement to have as much as I need and this forum has been amazing!
There’s nothing in the rulebook (or a rulebook for that matter) that says you have to do 3mg increments. It’s just one of those things that people started doing and it stuck. I went from 3mg to 2.5mg and now I’m at 2mg. I am pretty sure I went from 6mg to 4.5mg to 3mg. Do what works for you. Try going down 1mg at a time. If you get super bad cravings, go back up for awhile. Then go down by 0.5mg. Or, if you find it’s easy, go down another 1mg. Hope that helps.
Jojo hit the nail on the head. When you DIY you can do what you want. You can do it however you want. Personally I did go from 6 to 3mg to 1.5. But if you find the struggle is real at 3 so go 4 or 5mg nic. You make it your self.
You could also have a morning level and afternoon level. You can have a safety bottle at 6mg for when you feel you need the nic.
Personally I still cannot do zero mg. I’ve tried. I’m happy with 1.5mg nic at the moment. Maybe in the future I’ll go to just 1.0mg. But that’s the great part. I do what I want.
I concur to what @JoJo & @Chrispdx said, I first started on 24mg to give up initially, and I still failed twice before I went sub ohm, that was the kicker for me, then I got into DIY and made my own juice and now I am on 1mg/ or 1/2mg…Kind of a token gesture really, probably a placebo but I just don’t seem to want to go to 0 lol, so yeah, make whatever strength you want, if it isn’t doing it for you add a little more, the mix calculator works it all out for you, I have a written table in my notebook in 0.5mg increments which comes in useful. good luck
I moved very quickly through my progression in regards to dropping the nicotine levels.
I started out using MTL at 18mg. Which lasted two weeks. I then went to 12mg, and did that for 2 weeks. Around that month mark, I became really frustrated with the tight draw on MTL and was looking into sub ohm.
In (what I thought was) preparation for moving to sub ohm (DL), I changed to 8mg and started looking at new hardware. No one warned me that “you shouldn’t do more than 6mg on sub ohm.” Let me tell you… That first pull on 8mg on sub ohm was a real head-ringer. I mean, I haven’t had my head spin like that since probably the first time I tried smoking waaaaaaay back when.
Given that experience, I figured there can’t be that much difference between 2mg (going from 8mg to 6mg) so the next liquid I bought was 3mg.
So I went from 18mg down to 3mg in 45 days. I’ve been at 3mg since. Though I have tried dropping to 1.5mg, it was almost like it wasn’t even there, so more than likely, then next step for me will be 0mg.
Just listen to your body, and put mind over matter as much as possible. Good luck with however you approach it though! Congrats on the time so far though! =)
As a 2 pack a day smoker i started with 12mg when i started vaping (smoke free for 3 months) and i quickly went from 12mg to 6mg and stayed there for a month maybe and just went down to 3 mg without any problems.
I am considering to lower it a bit more and maybe go for 1,5mg to see how that feels.
In your case i hope you can manage to do what you want to do without any problems and congrats to 4 months smoke free. That in itself is an achievement you should be proud of and that goes to everyone that got off the stinkies and started vaping.
Using the ELR create a recipe feature you can enter what ever amount of nic you want to have in your finished mix. I lowered us from 6 down to well don’t tell my wife she freaks about shit like this but she and I have been vaping 2.5 for the last month or so. My goal is to get to one and then just stay there until the nic runs out or I take the dirt nap. at one I’ve got over a decade of vaping and going to get another small bottle payday. I found if I lower it a half a mg at a time I don’t even notice it.
I started vaping in the 28-30 nic level… when stating at sub-oming I was doing 9mg, I have been cutting it down a bit to 7 or 8 although my step daughter still prefers 9. I was going to be sneeky and start making her juice at 8 then 7 but I taught her to make her own favorite, that she mixes on her own now.
My suggestion is if you wish to cut down, mix at 1mg less if it doesn’t work for some reason, mix at .5 less. Wait a month or so then drop it down another .5 or so.
Took us 2 and a half years to get from 18 to 2.5. But then again we weren’t trying to go lower for about the first three months at 18 then on to the 12 for a long time. Like you @Sprkslfly I got my first sub ohm and mech for Christmas 2014 and that first hit at 12 was a bell ringer for me. I vape my son’s juice the rest of that day and got some 6 ordered on line that day as well.
Went from 18 to 12 and then, when I got my first sub-ohm setup, 4mg. I’m stuck at 3mg now, and have been for about a year or so… I still keep one bottle of 6mg ejuice made for my old Provari/Nautilus setup that sits on the back corner of my desk for those really hard days. I honestly haven’t even looked at it in a month or so. It’s probably going to go away now that I think about it. Ramble, ramble… Sorry. Just my way of sharing.
The point I originally meant to make is… Do what is best for you. You don’t smoke!! And THAT is what’s important.
Not smoking is the biggest thing, just like @Alisa stated.
Personally for me, it doesn’t matter the nic level, I just said “why not start lowering it”.
I’m with you. I don’t have a problem with nicotine, I like it, I don’t see it as the evil that it’s portrayed as. Sure, it’s a drug and an addictive substance, but so is caffeine and I don’t see anyone shouting the dangers of coffee or tea. IMO, nic got a bum rap from cigarettes and other things and is guilty by association. That being said, I’d like to go to 0mg so I can stop spending the money on nic and use it for more hardware or flavors.
Also, FA sells this stuff called Flash. I’ve not tried it, but supposedly it adds throat hit. If that’s what you feel you’d be (or are) missing with 0mg, it might be worth a shot. I’m thinking of picking some up just to see if it works.
Craig, if you want to reach zero nic just do it at your own pace. But don’t do like me and convince yourself it will be hard. Having the luxury of dropping at a precise interval or all at once is freedom and puts you in complete control unlike any other cessation method out there not involving combustion. So relax, take baby steps or giant leaps, and remember the shackles that USED to bind you.
Here’s what I did, I made a 6mg and a 3mg of the same juice, I used the 6mg for my stress times and the 3 for the in betweens. then 3mg pretty much became the norm that my body wanted and a 6mg ended up being too strong, coughy stuff. but, yeah, have 2 bottles on the go for a while and let the weaker one become the norm.
And everyone has nailed it already. The beautiful thing about diy is that you can super fine tune what you want. You could go down in steps of .5 mg at a time gradually. If you had a mixing session once a month you could drop the nic .5mg each time and you probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.
