A week ago I received my order of nicotine liquid and started on a journey of finding the right amount to use for vaping. I made the assumption that because I smoke a lot I should go with a higher amount of nicotine to vape. I started with 18 mg, and found the vape to be very harsh and almost painful in my chest. Every time I had a vape, I’d wind up coughing and wheezing. I asked about this in the forums and then tried 12 mg. Same story. And again with 10 mg. Finally instead of mixing bottles of nic juice I found it easier and more economical to use the tank cartridges of my Ego-T e-cigarette and simply add drops of nicotine to my preferred flavour mix.

The Ego-T cartridge holds 2 ml of liquid. I was able to use a nicotine calculator and work out how much nicotine was in 1, 2 and 3 drops along with my menthol flavouring to work out what level of nicotine I could actually handle. The answer turned out to be 2 drops of 100 mg nicotine into 2 ml of flavour gives me about 6 mg nicotine and that’s my tolerance level.

There are several online nicotine calculators but I used a free program for Windows. Luckily I have Windows as a virtual machine on my Linux box so no problems there. The software is called “eJuice Me Up” (http://www.ejuice.breaktru.com/). Once I got my head around what details I needed to fill in, it’s quite straight forward to use. If you’re looking for an online calculator, this one is often mentioned in some of the forums I read: http://www.todmuller.com/ejuice/ejuice.php

At 6 mg nicotine, I can inhale the vapour without any sudden asthma attacks and I’m able to use it over the course of a day without any issues. I’ve found that it satisfies my need for nicotine quite well. I was able to go about 5 hours last night and about the same length of time today without having a real cigarette. That’s a pretty good indication that when I finish this last bit of tobacco I have, I should be able to make the switch to vaping completely. My problem here at home is that I know my roll-my-own cigarette supplies are just out on the patio and it’s easy to give in to temptation. When I went without, it was because I left all my smoking supplies at home so I didn’t really have any easy temptation. I only had the e-cig, and it did a great job at managing my craving.

I’m still struggling to find the words I’m comfortable with – “e-cig” still doesn’t sound right. “PV” for Personal Vaporiser is ok, but not everyone is going to know what that is. So excuse me while I flounder for the right noun to give this little device that’s becoming a part of my life. Meanwhile, I’ll keep on learning and will share my adventures as I go.