50 Shades of Vape

Went to the movies with my wife last night to see 50 Shades of Grey.  Having read the books, and I'm no spoiler, I'll just say that the movie was Spot On!  Perfect casting of Anastasia, innocence and sensuality, naiveté and personal strength.  I think they also cast Christian Grey very well, matched with an intense actor, but not overpowered for the role.  Nailed it.

Now if you'll forgive me for grabbing a shock title I'll get to the point, because there is one here.

If smoking cigarettes isn't both S&M, bondage and submission, I don't know what is.  Unfortunately it is playing both roles in a relationship where there is pleasure and pain, abuse, and high risk carried out by oneself upon oneself.  There are so many things wrong with that I don't know where to begin.  Hey if it's adventurous fetish play in sex that's one thing, but playing death roulette with smoking is all the downside without even one upside.  Nobody has an orgasm and everybody dies quicker as a result of the cigarette roulette game.

Most smokers cannot remember a moment in time when they decided "I'm going to be a smoker" I'm committing today to a habit that I'll keep for a lifetime, no matter what the consequences.  I never had that conversation with myself.  So why would a rational person of sound mind and healthy love of oneself choose to do something as harmful and self destructive, as to inhale 7,000 carcinogens with every puff?  And pay for the experience?  Voluntarily submit one's vital body systems to the abuse of smoking?  And accept the high risks and inevitable dangers which all cause or assist in death?

I invite some real thought on the subject.  Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point, has a chapter on the psychology of smoking and nicotine addiction in social terms.  Also Dr. Maxwell Maltz, in his book Psycho Cybernetics discusses breaking the addiction of smoking which holds only a short chemical/physical but a longer psychological grip on the mind.

And I arrive at my intended topic:  Vaping is an obsession for me and many folks I've met since dropping cigarettes and switching to vaping.  I have often wondered why I am so consumed with everything vape.  It's like a furious romance.  A compulsion to learn, and try, and collect, and hoard.  A self discovery often frustrating as hell to figure out how to make the pieces fit.  Just when I think that I've got my vaping going well something changes....the juice I loved to vape all day is now disgusting to me and OH NO I JUST BOUGHT 240ML OF IT.  Or that tank that was the Bees Knees when I bought it a week ago now just tastes horrible and metallic or burnt, no matter how many coils I change or how tenderly I treat it.  What a festering turd I wasted money on!  On to what's next and what's new.

I found my way to dripping after about 6 weeks of trial and error....mostly error.  Infuriating days of muscling through crappy unsatisfying vapes, juices that set off all the wrong signals in my taste buds while craving a cigarette, but loathing a cigarette at the same time.    ...and then it was nirvana.  Coil, wick, charge a battery, drip and then WOW!

Cut out the middleman of vaping I figured.  why mess with all the pre made stuff when all the stock coils and tanks and battery devices in the world were simply trying to do what dripping does...and yes, I can control exactly what goes in and comes out of my vape.

But the horizon of vaping really opens up once one begins to drip and sub ohm.  Now it's all about the batteries, the chargers, the wicking material, the wire,  the build, Ohms Law, and oh yes, the mod and the RDA....I never thought I'd need more than one power source and one tank, if I could just ever find the 'right one for me'.

Now I have plenty of the right ones....mech mods, box mods, regulated, unregulated, RDA's, RBA's sub tanks owned, and many more that I covet.

So why now, after I've found the way to a satisfying vape in my daily goal of not smoking cigarettes, am I intoxicated by vaping gear, juice, chat and community?

I suppose it's this:  years of sensory deprivation shackled to one brand, one taste, one self destructive form of masochism, I'm suddenly free and now can explore the things that I was missing...and also have honest reflections with myself about why and how I smoked, what guilt and torment I loaded on myself all those years.  Punishing myself for punishing myself.  Oh yes, how else would you describe a smoker's guilt while smoking?

Best line from the movie we watched last night:  'I'm 50 shades of fucked up'  and so it goes that smoking is a fucked up form of self abuse, vaping is 50 shades of freedom.