Became intolerant to vaping after a decade

[MarylinC37]

My tale of woe started last year when I became intolerant to nicotine and caffeine. Double whammy. Was getting massive brain fog and anxiety. Am still vaping 0mg but it's not the same anymore.

@rew did going to 0 nic clear up the brain fog for you? I've had that going on for over 9 months because of the way I like vaping DTL and getting much higher juice pickup in the vapour to get the best flavour so I ingest a lot more juice on each puff. I've managed it by mixing my favourite juice to only have 1/2mg nic and slowing my puff rate down whenever I feel too much brain fog effect by over vaping.

 

[rew]

@rew did going to 0 nic clear up the brain fog for you? I've had that going on for over 9 months because of the way I like vaping DTL and getting much higher juice pickup in the vapour to get the best flavour so I ingest a lot more juice on each puff. I've managed it by mixing my favourite juice to only have 1/2mg nic and slowing my puff rate down whenever I feel too much brain fog effect by over vaping.

Brain fog has still not completely cleared but it is tons better than it was. I still have 1 decaf coffee a day and even that does affect me a bit. Also I have been in the process of moving house for nearly 5 months which has been causing a lot of stress and not helping my mental state in general.

 

[MarylinC37]

Brain fog has still not completely cleared but it is tons better than it was. I still have 1 decaf coffee a day and even that does affect me a bit. Also I have been in the process of moving house for nearly 5 months which has been causing a lot of stress and not helping my mental state in general.

Must admit I've always preferred coffee and generally drink 2 or 3 cups a day with caffeine. I enjoy it too much though so I don't see me going over to decaf unless I feel I have to. I still put 1/2mg nic in my other flavurs so I might go to 0 nic in my main flavour when I mix up my next big batch in a couple of weeks and see if that improves things.

 

[rew]

Must admit I've always preferred coffee and generally drink 2 or 3 cups a day with caffeine. I enjoy it too much though so I don't see me going over to decaf unless I feel I have to. I still put 1/2mg nic in my other flavurs so I might go to 0 nic in my main flavour when I mix up my next big batch in a couple of weeks and see if that improves things.

Trial and error is the only way I guess.

 

[Hoodlum]

I used to get the horrific brain fog myself, but that was a consequence of just vaping too much. I used to have it on the desk next to me as I worked from home. In the end, I just put the vape at the other side of the house, meaning I'd have to consciously get up, take a break, walk over to where it was just to hit it a few times, and then back to the desk.

Even then I still sometimes hit it too much, I actually got a timed lockbox at one point to try and only let myself hit it once an hour!

 

[Hoodlum]

Update - I'm now almost 5 weeks post-creatine. I did anticipate if this problem had been caused by that, it would take 4-8 weeks to fully clear my system, going off stuff I'd read online.

And lo and behold, my throat irritation is now only about a 2/10, if it was a 10/10 at its worst. I'm still leaning towards this as the probable cause, despite the ENT thinking it was unrelated. Too much of a coincidence? The creatine was the only thing that changed noticeably, I formed the hypothesis, carried it out, and it worked. The only other possibility I'm considering is that it is something that built up gradually as a consequence of vaping heavily oxidised liquid for weeks.

I find unless the nic strength is very high, then having the vape liquid be somewhat oxidised (I guess you could call it "heavily steeped") is the only way to deliver any kind of throat hit. And I used to love taking massive DTL rips, you don't want to be doing that with much more than 6mg/ml or you'll just spend your life in a nicotine-stoned haze But the downside is if the liquid is too oxidised, it cludges up your throat.

Anyway the good news is I'm recovered enough now to puff on a disposable small vape again, without too many problems, just some mild irritation which passes off. Had to try a few though until I found one I could tolerate. Maybe another couple of weeks back to normal?

I now variously puff on the IQOS, use artificial nicotine pouches, use Swedish snus AND vape a little bit, I'm not sure "chugging nicotine in as many different ways as I physically can" was the original goal of this exercise

 

[MarylinC37]

I used to get the horrific brain fog myself, but that was a consequence of just vaping too much. I used to have it on the desk next to me as I worked from home. In the end, I just put the vape at the other side of the house, meaning I'd have to consciously get up, take a break, walk over to where it was just to hit it a few times, and then back to the desk.

Even then I still sometimes hit it too much, I actually got a timed lockbox at one point to try and only let myself hit it once an hour!

I'm the same. I can always tell when I've over vaped because the brain fog gets worse and I also feel a bit of tingling and soreness in my mouth and throat. Like you, I'm a DTL vaper and I'm also a flavour chaser so I love squonking on a dripper and I also space the wraps of my coils to get the airflow to pick up much more juice in the vapour on every puff to increase the flavour. It creates quite a thick coating of juice inside my mouth on every puff so I end up ingesting quite a bit of juice. The flavour is amazing but I have to slow down quite often to give the brain fog and tingly mouth effects a chance to calm down.

I think there are lots of possible factors that often work in combination to cause the symptoms we often get so in most cases I don't think there is likely to be a single solution to fix the problem. One thing I know about nicotine though is that pure 100% nicontine is lethal if it's absorbed through the skin so in the tiny doses we vape I do think the more we vape the more likely it is that the nicontine content will act like a skin irritant and cause inflamation and soreness the more nicontine we ingest. Other factors like PG or VG allergies and also the effect of heating are then more likely to exacerbate the problem.

I'm glad you seem to be getting on top of Mr Flemming though.

 

[Hoodlum]

Dear diary...

After seemingly reaching a stage where I could vape a little without too many issues, for some reason I regressed back to getting bad throat irritation again. Started on the medication that the ENT doctor gave me to control reflux, will see if that is the culprit. Only on day 2 so have to wait a while for it to start working.

Had to go back to the IQOS again, after putting it away, since it's the only thing I can puff on which only causes very minor irritation. The snus is good in its own way, the strong ones can give a nice intense nicotine hit, but it's not a total substitute for the satisfaction of puffing on something.

Since it looks like I'll be on this type of thing for a little while longer, I'm going to look into getting a dry herb vaporiser and using it with some pipe tobacco. I figure if I'm going to inhale tobacco products, even if it's not combusting it (so theoretically less bad for you than normal cigs), then I'd rather do it with a product which is as close to natural tobacco as possible, not the hyper-processed stuff you get in cigs and these little sticks you put into the IQOS.

 

[deadmanvapes]

Hi @Hoodlum

Sorry to hear about the rough few weeks you had! Glad vaping wasn’t the issue though. Just wanted to note something on the subject of Nicotine pouches. I work abroad and offshore a lot so I often can’t take my vapes with me, so I use Snus, which obviously you can’t buy in the UK. I try to avoid nicotine pouches as they tend to be harsh on the gums after a while. I get my Snus from snusline.com, they ship directly from Sweden now, and Snus is pure tobacco pouches, none of that synthetic stuff you get in Nic pouches!

 

[Hoodlum]

Hi @Hoodlum

Sorry to hear about the rough few weeks you had! Glad vaping wasn’t the issue though. Just wanted to note something on the subject of Nicotine pouches. I work abroad and offshore a lot so I often can’t take my vapes with me, so I use Snus, which obviously you can’t buy in the UK. I try to avoid nicotine pouches as they tend to be harsh on the gums after a while. I get my Snus from snusline.com, they ship directly from Sweden now, and Snus is pure tobacco pouches, none of that synthetic stuff you get in Nic pouches!

Yep you're not wrong there, the nicotine pouches are pretty unpleasant - they make my heart pound, raise my blood pressure and generally make me feel scatty, I'm amazed they're so popular! I've also been getting snus from snusline, it's way nicer isn't it.

Pipe tobacco in the dry herb vaporiser is absolutely brutal - the amount of nicotine it delivers is insane, it almost gave me an out of body experience the other day, I'm frightened of the thing