This Time, The Cool Kids Were ... Right?

Vaping, an apparent affectation first embraced by Gen Z, could be much healthier than smoking. I'm already benefitting.

I hate to admit it, but it's true: when I first started smoking, I felt cool as hell.

Not cool like “Grease,” mind you. I felt cool like Audrey Hepburn; like Bridget Jones. (So, OK, maybe a little bit like Stockard Channing’s iconic Rizzo.) Smoking made me feel glamorous and worldly - elegant, really. And on top of that, it gave me something to do with my ever-fidgety hands.

It was 2003. I was living in Germany as an exchange student. My host mom’s brother had recently opened a bar, and his sister and brother-in-law seemed to consider it their sworn duty to funnel all of their drinking toward his business venture. And so did all their friends.

We hung out there every evening for hours. I'd politely nurse a (world-class) Hefeweizen or two - my burgeoning alcoholism would not make its debut for another couple of years - and stare out at the town square while the Bavarian dialect I didn't yet understand swirled around me.

For hours.

Meanwhile, I noticed that I couldn't seem to keep my right hand from absently plonking out piano parts. This had been a problem since I'd started high school, and I knew it was weird. It was also weird not to understand much conversation: I'd made great strides with “regular" German, but here in Bavaria, where you could ascend any of the nearby foothills and actually see into the Czech Republic or Austria, what was spoken truly amounted to a different language.

It would be as if you, an American English speaker, were plonked into a Cockney pub. You'd be mostly lost.

I had never known social awkwardness before, but here, it was undeniable: it was weird not to speak the language. It was weird to be picking out silent piano parts with my bored right hand. And it was weird just to be American: the war in Iraq was recent, and we were not popular abroad.

I was certainly an afterthought at best in these bar hangs; I regret to report that my host family wasn't wild about me. (How could someone not be wild about me? Hello; I'm delightful!) So one evening, when my host mother took a break from her unintelligible Teutonic twitter to pluck another Marlboro Light from a little leatherette carrying case, glanced at me, and asked, "You want to try one?” I said, "Sure!”

My dad smoked. My grandpa had smoked. Supposedly, my mother had, too, at one point, though I never saw it and certainly couldn't picture it. Fake news, I assumed. My mother would never.

“What's the harm?” I asked myself. And for awhile - quite awhile, actually - it seemed that there was none.

Now I felt, and, importantly, I looked a little more at home in a bar where I couldn't speak the language very well. I had something to do with that pesky, tune-tapping hand. I had a reason to be, well, anywhere: I'm having a cigarette. This also served as a built-in way to excuse myself from any situation when I needed a break: I'm going to go have a cigarette. And some of my best friends, even today, are people I met on smoke breaks.

But twenty years went by that way. Cigarettes became something of an investment. And there is very little argument to continue spending on something you're literally going to light on fire and watch turn to ash. It's also highly dubious at best to continually fork over money for something so likely to actively ruin your health. Well, except for the fact that those dopamine receptors that nicotine is so fond of attaching itself to can also feel, sometimes, like receptors for sanity itself.

Still, though - I did not feel nearly as cool smoking as I once did. I started thinking that maybe all those chic European women whom I'd emulated in the mid 2000s, dressed in head-to-toe black, with pointy kitten-heel boots and ever-present Marlboro Lights or Gauloises, had been wrong.

Late this summer and early fall, I tried to quit cold turkey. I tried that several times.

Then I tried cutting back. I tried only smoking at certain scheduled times of day. I tried smoking only in certain places. I tried a warped, self-flagellating form of mindfulness, wherein I allowed myself to follow my instincts, but viciously berated myself the whole time.

None of it took. With every method, I'd make it for exactly three days. On the fourth, I'd be confronted with a mild stressor - a lack of close parking spaces at Walmart; Dave in a grouchy mood - and fling up my hands, shrieking, “I can't be expected to do this right now!” and race off to the gas station to pick up a pack.

The problem was that, even as I knew I should quit and wanted to make good on my declaration, I knew that I loved smoking. I still love it! So I didn't have the courage of conviction to propel me through the hardest self-denial. Truthfully, I wanted to have quit - I didn't want to actually do it.

Given all that, my choice seemed to be between present misery and eventual indigence, which would assuredly also be miserable. I felt stuck.

But then, a new solution presented itself in an unlikely way. What about vaping? Could I switch to vaping?

All I knew about vaping was that my sister-in-law, Sheila, had done it a few years prior. She made frequent trips to different “smoke" shops around town, trying to hunt down certain kinds of cartridges in certain flavors.

"Ooh, just let me run in this one real quick,” Sheila would say on the way home from taking my niece to the park or to get ice cream. She’d inevitably spy some strip-mall dive with “VAPE" written on the windows in neon marker paint. It seemed like a real hassle to me. Waiting in the car, I'd get antsy. Choosing not to smoke in front of my niece, I'd be eager to drop them off at home and then light up like the pioneers did.

So I didn't have a great impression of vaping! But then I talked to my brother.

He was recovering from a surgery and mentioned that he had discarded cigarettes and started vaping. Furthermore, it had been our mother's suggestion! (So she did, after all, know what the score was here.) My brother is a purist when it comes to, well, almost everything. But he reported that he was feeling great, healing well, and saving lots of money.

“I don't know,” I said doubtfully. I pictured laying out as much as a carton would cost just for the Juul itself, then having to find, purchase, load, and replace the cartridges.

And I couldn't help remembering Sheila and her city-wide quest for the right cartridges. Ugh.

Still, it was something to think about. After all, I could get the nicotine while filtering out the worst stuff in cigarettes.

“I don't know how to, like, work things!” I suddenly exploded at a somewhat alarmed Dave, who had not been involved in the discussion. But it's true - I am distressingly bad at intuiting how things are to be operated.

I filled him in. “I feel like I'm going to accidentally spend $75 on cartridges that only fit model 31762-AA instead of 31762-AB, or something. Or lose the charger. Or break it. Or leave it outside and it'll, like, just explode, somehow. Or -"

"Fine, fine,” Dave said wearily. “Maybe get some more information, though. If you think it might work, you can go down to the vape shop and get set up.”

Hmm. Vaping would, I realized, preserve the ritual of smoking - inhaling from the unit; holding it as you talk or think, before you take another drag - unlike, say, nicotine gum or the patch. And it allows the user to stop consuming tar, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde, among many other carcinogens, while still getting a nicotine boost.

More investigation was required.

A further conversation with my brother yielded two important facts, both centered around the reality that vaping has changed since its fairly recent introduction.

To wit: I would not need to buy an appliance and cartridges. I could buy a cute little rechargeable, pre-flavored, disposable unit, good for about a month’s worth of smoking. And they were priced at two for $30.

Whoa.

This was significant. But there was still the inexplicable and vague feeling of disdain for this technology. Why should high schoolers and early-20somethings feel so badass, sucking on an electronic pacifier? For Chrissakes, why should everything have to plug in?! Why should there be an Internet of Things? Who needs a Bluetooth-enabled microwave?! No, really, tell me: who?!

“It plugs in to heat the liquid, so it will vaporize,” Dave said sensibly.

“Oh," I said, deflated. Well, of course. I really am terribly bad at knowing how things work.

With that, I decided to simply stop caring about how trendy and artificial vaping seems. After all, nearly every day, I find reason to petulantly remark, “38 isn't old!” If that's how you feel, Sally, it's time to live it. And openness to new ideas is the best anti-aging weapon around, right?

I couldn't find the brand my brother had mentioned, even at smoke shops. Finally, at the sixth place I went, the owner explained to me that he had a wide selection of similar products: $22 each. Pre-flavored, rechargeable, but disposable: use it up and then go get another. And there were dozens of flavors. They were called Flum®️ Pebbles.

Sold! I picked “Menthol.” Later, I'd try “Spearmint" and “Cool Mint,” just for fun. (OK, not just for fun - I somehow lost one of the units and had to replace it.) They're all winners! Taking a stab in the dark, I hooked up the Type C charger I use for my Google Pixel, and boom - it charged like a dream, although two of the three units I'd purchased actually came pre-charged. (Unlike the Google Pixel itself.)

For the first week or so, I decided, I'd get used to using this product - I believe my exact words were " bond with it” - by alternating the vape and old-fashioned, step-outside, fire-hazard cigarettes. I was still pretty attached to them. And smoking outside, away from my work, was as much of a relief as it had ever been. Pretty soon, though, I started realizing those cigarettes tasted gross.

We happened to be in a hotel that week. One night, toward the end of our stay, my insomnia told me go down from the third floor to the car in the parking lot and smoke for awhile. But I was tired and achy, and it was really very late. So, instead, I decided to sit by myself on our beautiful balcony and vape. To my genuine shock, I found myself able to enjoy the nighttime cool and quiet without starting and continually tending a small, stinky, cancer-inducing fire.

You'd think that would be a low bar to clear. But for the first time, I tripped over it.

And that was when I knew I was turning a corner. As silly as it sounds, when addiction gives us an order, we tend to say, “Yes, sir! Right away, sir!” even when it's illogical, disruptive, and painful in some way.

Now, it's been twelve days since I purchased cigarettes. In that time, I've made up my mind that vaping is a superior nicotine delivery system! It's cheap, quiet, convenient, and can be done inside! And, oh: it's almost certainly nowhere near as bad for its users.

Now, let's make no mistake - no one is saying that vaping, or using nicotine in any way, is actually healthy. It's not. The potential of science is nearly unbounded, but even so, we are not going to learn in fifty years’ time that nicotine consumption actually helps to ward off brain cancer or Parkinson's or diabetes or tennis elbow. It doesn't.

And if you don't smoke, you shouldn't pick up a vape! But if you smoke cigarettes, you should really think about switching. Consider this a non-paid, non-sponsored, totally independent plug for a Flum®️ Pebble!

After just ten days, I'm already feeling less winded. I'm tasting and smelling more strongly. Yesterday, for the first time since childhood, I smelled petrichor! My blood pressure is down. And I feel less of a mysterious back pain detectable only via its absence: I guess you really don't know what you've got till it's gone! These are many of the same benefits you get from quitting smoking altogether.

So think about it! We can talk about it on my next smoke break - inside.