I was an early and assiduous smoker. Then I became a “social” smoker (ie smokes when drunk) and I could have stayed that way until I died – if I hadn’t discovered the vape. Vaping me is like smoker me rebooted. It started with a long and chic vape that looked like a sonic screwdriver. Battery life became a problem and we moved, my mister and I, on to a more sophisticated but much uglier machine, with such a detailed account of its wattage that I sometimes accidentally try to text people on it.
Pretty soon, I vaped constantly. The minute I woke up. In church halls, in meetings, on buses. I have brought myself to a level of nicotine addiction that my younger self wouldn’t have got up early enough for. Now, when my mister and I go to people’s houses, they call it The Attack Of The Vapers. When we run out of vape juice, we scowl at each other like two smack addict drummers on tour who don’t know how to say “baggie” in Icelandic.
And I let all this happen without even checking whether or not it was bad for me. It doesn’t feel like it is: you don’t get any of that smoker after-effect, where you wake up with a headache and sticky teeth. Yet it seems unlikely that anything so compulsive could be consequence free.
It isn’t, Lucy Wilkinson, the senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, explains kindly. “Nicotine is still the active ingredient. It raises the heart rate, so increases the heart’s workload.” But there’s no evidence of damage, right? “The long-term studies haven’t been done yet. But only because people haven’t been doing it for a long time.” Still, I press on, Public Health England say that it’s 95% safer than cigarettes.
I asked personal trainer Nyambe (my wellbeing inspirer) what he thinks. “You’ve got to think of all the chemicals,” he says. “With tobacco, at least that’s a leaf.” I take that to mean he thinks smoking is better than vaping: he says I should ideally do neither. But he would say that.
He has an ally in a BHF-funded study. It has another year to run, but has already pointed out that vapes “contain cancer-causing molecules such as nitrosamine, and toxic chemicals such as diethylene glycol, that are not found in regular cigarettes”. Diethylene glycol is fatal in large amounts; small amounts, over a long time, may be neutral or may be harmful, but are unlikely to be beneficial.
This isn’t enough to make me stop, but is enough for mild anxiety – the impact of most health advice. The main downside is that it’s such a bad look to be this addicted to anything.
This week I learned
Vapes contain toxic chemicals that are not found in regular cigarettes – and I’m hooked.
