MONEY
I thought I had it all figured out: all I do is buy one twelve dollar bottle every Sunday, fill up this little tank on the gadget here, press this little button on this thing and I'm laughing. I'm saving tonnes of money. Then you get a couple drinks in you and if you don't crack and buy a pack, you end up hooting one of those little bottles in a single night. The best laid plans of mice and men.
Then you build up a tolerance, now you're hauling back on the thing like crazy. I'm currently clearing through one and a half 100ml bottles a week, at $44.5 a pop, instead of the small $12 dollar bottles I started out on. It's not really that much of a savings benefit, really. "Lot of people say I could, you know, buy a ship or something. Or buy a boat."
At a pack a day, I was spending $5005 a year. Buying juice at this rate, I'll spend $3432. It's a nice little bit of savings, but it's not a good enough excuse to give to girls when they ask me why I'm vaping.
Which leads me to my next reason.
GIRLS HATE IT
If the vape store I went to was a country, it would be Saudi Arabia. Women are rarely seen inside there without a guarrdian, in this case, usually a boyfriend who drags them along while they stare at the floor. On a side note, I wonder if Saudi Arabia allows vaping. That would be a good question to ask the Salman next time he comes over to hang, I'll keep you posted. Anyways. I can count the number of ladies I've seen in there on one hand and I could count the number of ladies I've seen come in there on their own accord my drawing the number one on a piece of paper and counting it.
Also, one time (at band camp?), I was on my ex-girlfriend's phone to change the music on Spotify and a text message popped up: "Oh my god! Nooooo. He vapes?? Hahaha." It's something I've been lambasted for by quite a few ladies and I'm sure a lot of them have had similar conversations with their friends about my vaping.
I don't think I have to go out on a limb to say this, but a really nice vape is not going to impress a statistically significant amount of girls and it's definitely going to be a smaller amount then say, dressing well or wearing a Rolex to a club and constantly rubbing your cheek. I'd say out of ten girls, about .00025/10 would be impressed with it and maybe 1/10 would be able to have a conversation on the subject for longer than a minute without grabbing it out of your hands, stuffing it down her own throat and suffocating herself. If you're not a hard sciences guy let me put that in plain English for you: THEY THINK IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A NERD.
FAMILY
Everyone has someone in their family who sends them articles with dubious scientific credibility from misleading news websites. I have four. Three sisters and a mom who all text the same article in unison, until it seems like I'm back in first year university and someone's just put my number up on the Craiglist M4M section advertising "really good blowjobs from a straight guy who really wants to try sucking dick."
"This kid blew up his face vaping! Be careful!"
"Mac, be careful, look what happened to this guy!"
THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME, I'M TELLING YOU!!!!
If you're a single child or have ever wanted to see what it's like to be the youngest and only male child in your family, give this a quick go:
HEALTH
I recently switched to vaping a juice called Basic, a juice that is unsurprisingly not well-regarded for it's complexity of flavour. If it were a person, it would be named Anders, stay in on Friday nights and have a really big collection of tea. It's composed of the same elements that make up normal juices - VG (Vegetable Glycerin), PG (Propylene Glycol), water, and nicotine - just without the flavour. Sometimes, it takes of the flavour of your own breath, which is handy if you've forgotten or are unable to properly use your breath freshener.
The label also says you're not supposed to let your pets or small children vape, which may(??) be useful to know(????).
The switch came when my vaping ramped up to industrial levels. I was drinking a lot at the time and when that cigarette urge kicks in after the first beer I would hook up to my vape like an industrial fat sucker hooks up to someone getting liposuction.. except in reverse, which isn't a pleasant image. I'd wake up in the morning with what felt like a thin film of oil all over my lungs - something I called the White Lung (similar to the Black Lung and just as embarrassing around a bunch of coal miners) - so I experimented by switching to non-flavoured and the problem was solved.
Kind of.
You still know it's not great for you and it probably doesn't get that much better for you just because you stopped feeling the daily lung film. It's like smoking so much your throat gets sore, taking a lozenge and then thinking you're not going to look like John Daly in fifteen years.
I will say that vaping is clearly better than cigarettes when it comes to health and all that hand-wringing, concern trolling nonsense about "we haven't been able to test the long-term effects" is garbage if you're using it as a cessation aid. I was a pack a day smoker and couldn't walk up stairs. I switched to vaping and continued to use it throughout a three month training camp for a boxing match with no ill effects and clear lungs. I don't really care if it has long-term effects; in the short term I want to be able to not get punched in the fucking face in front of my family and a bunch of strangers and I'd rather not be choking on my own phlegm while I do it.
There might be long-term effects - and I think there are - but these people that think they're being righteous, helpful and well-meaning by bringing it up to someone who's trying to quit the White Devil does nothing but harm and puts them at serious risk of taking a vape to the eye.
CHAINED TO THE VAPE
Debts are insidious. They hang over your head, they provide unending, unceasing anxiety, and they limit your options. "Ah, I'd LOVE to go to Burning Man with you and do a bunch of acid and have unprotected sex with an uninterrupted stream of horny, hot, 22 year olds, but unfortunately I took out a loan for that fish veterinarian business I was keen on a few years back and it ended up going pretty poorly, then I spent all the rest of the money on cigarettes and booze and fast women and never paid it back, so now I gotta start paying this interest so I can have a credit card again by the time I'm 30."
Vaping is in many ways very similar to an unpaid debt that prevents you from banging a bunch of girls (or guys) at a dirty sex festival like Burning Man. I've been late so many times because I've forgotten it - running back in terror with no thought to the consequence of being late to my job (ironically, the thing that's paying for all that juice).
It's a constant reliance on an inanimate object, a constant need to fulfill, a thirst to quench, a nut to bust. I don't really want a life beholden to anyone or anything. That's why I made a sincere effort to pay off my debts. I want freedom and it's hard to say I'm free when my leaving the house checklist is "wallet, keys, phone, vape. FUCK! I forgot my juice." Drop my keys followed by angry, frantic, dismantling of my room until I find my juice, leave the house, get ten steps out the door only to realize I forgot my vape charger.
CONCLUSION
I don't want to be a slave to the Vape Man even though he's been quite nice. He showed me how to mod, sometimes gave me adderall, and even showed me a couple cool blues tracks. However, at the end of the day, it's not the huge financial gain I'd constantly spout to people (while vaping) when they asked me why I switched. The health benefits are, in my opinion, only valid over the short run and for people using it as a cessation aid (which I am certainly not, as I type this through a giant, smoky haze). I also quit masturbating and haven't had sex for quite a while, so I'm desperate for anything that will get my chances up even a tiny bit at this point. (Say, from 0.025% to 0.1).
Stay tuned for my next article: How I Quit Vaping On the Fifteenth Try
