Hi, my moniker is Big Daddy Vaper, and I’m a Vaping Convert and Reformed Smoker.

It feels good saying this… No, I’m not saying this because I have clouds billowing out of me and want to be an attention whore. For what it’s worth, I can’t stand those massive clouds people blow… What is the point? It’s almost like it’s today’s version of Look at Me…
Anyways…

It feels good saying I’m a convert because I feel I have the best of both worlds. I have replaced smoking with vaping, and enjoy my “Me Time” but also, the lack of nasties entering my body is something to be happy about.

F&*k Combustion!!!!

Let me just clarify. I am soooooooo far from being Mr Health Nut, however, like most people, I have a responsibility to myself to take care of myself… If not for me, for my kids…

Everyone has their own horror stories from smoking…. Whilst this is not a doom and gloom post… I feel it’s something that people really should be talking about. Starting to end your smoking career path before Cancer, Emphysema, Heart Attack, Heart Disease, Respiratory Issues, etc take hold of you… If this is not scaring you yet, it should…

These illnesses alone should be enough reason for you to at least try vaping as a way to stop smoking.

If you recall my last blog, I was discussing a mate of mine… Mr Naysayer… This was the man that couldn’t get vaping…. Until he used a balloon… Now he is the biggest convert I have ever seen. He is another member of my “F&*k Combustion Team”.

Mr Naysayer was probably the worst smoker of the crew…. The kind of guy that always kept a spare deck of smokes hidden in his car, draw at work, desk at home and god knows where else he hid them.

Mr Naysayer has always been, and will always be, one of my closest mates. God love him, because, someone has to, right?

Mr Naysayer was a friend for smoking… I recall working together years ago, on our 15 minutes “first” break of the day… Most of us would grab a coffee and head downstairs to “put another nail in the coffin” before heading back into work…
Most of us would have our smoke and head back…. Occasionally you would see people trying to cram in a second smoke before heading back… Mr Naysayer, would smash back 3-4 in the space of 15 minutes before heading back up…

Over the years, his smoking became increasingly more and more frequent… If you ever mentioned this to him, he would give you the same spiel about if he dies young, so be it. At least he enjoyed his life…

Years passed, and his habits never changed.

There was a period of about 2 years where I lost touch with Mr Naysayer. He was a friend truly missed. The wife and I went shopping one afternoon, and I bumped into him. He looked withdrawn badly… Almost gaunt, pale as pale could be… I freaked out. What had happened to my mate???

He went on to tell me that he had just lost his mother to cancer. The reason I hadn’t heard from him in a while, was he was her palliative carer. A task that a lot of people cannot bring themselves to do, but he did it for the love of his mother.
This really rattled him. Like I mean really rattled him. Never in the 10 + years that I had known him, had I ever seen him like this.
Without upsetting him, we wished him well, and I told him no matter what, I would pop over during the week to see him.

Well, a few days had passed, and I thought it is best to jump in the car and head over. Mr Naysayer only lived a brief drive away.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to experience.

Whilst Mr Naysayer had been caring for his terminally ill mother, he lost touch with the world. He focused on his mother… and nothing else, not even himself.
In the first half hour of being with him, I must have counted him smoking at least 10 + ciggies whilst he was explaining the sad details of his mother’s fight with cancer.

After chewing the fat for a while, I think he noticed I was watching him smoke. He then came out and said that he didn’t care, he had just lost his mother and felt his life was over.
There was a lot of stress there. Whilst he has siblings, he still had to finalise his mother’s affairs. Whilst she was ill, he was the one to care for her.

As time went on, we started to see each other again more frequently, and soon enough, Mr Naysayer was starting to come out of his bubble. But his smoking was still going strong.

You could always hear him coming… Especially now he had developed a wicked smokers cough. And I mean that… Literally, he would cough and splatter anywhere he went… Whilst you could see the pain it was causing him, nothing and I mean nothing was taking him away from his smokes… Not even being hospitalised with a collapsed lung.

So the lung incident… This was the first time he had been medically told to stop smoking… And like most people on the path of destruction, he didn’t listen. Anyways, they drained his lung, patched him up, gave him a stern talking to, and then I met him at the hospital to bring him home. As soon as I saw him walk out the hospital door, there was a small grin on my face, my mate was healthy enough to come home and continue his recovery….

This feeling lasted about 3-foot steps….

3-foot steps later, the cigarettes came out, and there he was, fresh out of the hospital with respiratory issues and a collapsed lung, sparking up. I couldn’t believe my eyes….

This was the point where I had lost my s__t at him… How could someone who had just seen his mother die from Cancer be so blasé about his own health issues??

Got him home, got him settled, and that was when I did the unspeakable. I completely tore strips off someone who was emotionally broken. I had to! I couldn’t sit by idly and watch one of my closest mates who I cared about kill themselves, over a bloody cigarette!! I was filthy filthy filthy at him!

In the end, my youngest daughter was the one who made him see reason… I felt bad, but it had to be done….

“Mr Naysayer” she quietly asked… “Will you be coming to my birthday party this year?” She was getting plans sorted. Not bad for three years old going on to four.

It’s what she said next that got every single person in my house….

“I know you have been sick in the hospital, and I know some people die in hospital, but I want you to come to my birthday party and dance with me, Will you be ok then?”

How do you respond to that???

I went and got one of my nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) devices, and handed it to Mr Naysayer and told him straight up “If you break my little girl’s heart, I’ll break you in half” followed by “If you die because of smoking, so help me I will bring you back to life just to take that life away from you”

Needless to say, he knew I wasn’t kidding anymore… No more sugar coating it… He had to change.

He struggled. Really struggled. However, he kept trying.

He didn’t want to let my little trooper down… She always spoke to him whilst he was in the hospital, and was there the last time we dropped him off at the hospital. She loves Mr Naysayer because he always had the time to hang out with her and be a goose…. She developed her love of fist bumps from him…..
She was now becoming part of his inspiration to clean his act up and sort his stuff out.

The realisation

Boredom. He was a bored smoker… When he was bored, he would light up to give himself something to do….

Sweet!! We found a way to get thru to him….

Now, this isn’t going to be the same for everyone, but this is what worked for him:

Games… Playing Games. Giving himself something to do that would occupy his time, or as we put it, A Time Burglar. If you need a list of time burglars, respond in the comments and I’ll happily provide a list 🙂

It was not long after this, that we worked out his plan.

He was still smoking. Plain and simple, but, he had gone from 2 packs a day, to close to 3-4 smokes a day. How you ask? By working his system… It started with Nicotine Replacement Therapy… But like most people I know using these measures, you either hate them, stop using them after a few days and the rest is history, or, you become addicted to the NRT…

Mr Naysayer was at this point looking for an alternate. Nicotine was no longer an issue, but he still missed smoking… If you recall in my previous post, I was discussing how I gave pen vapes a try….

When I said I got rid of the Vape Pens, now you know where it went…

Mr Naysayer was missing something. In his words, he missed smoking. And he was brutally honest about it… “If my health was better, I’d still be smoking” was a standard phrase he used to quip….
So after a week of him using the Vape Pen, he came to the same conclusion… There was something nasty about them… We both didn’t know if it was just what was available at the time, or if there was something more sinister, but either way, it was enough to worry us…. There are a million stories online of Vape Pens going wrong, and the possible health risks associated with “Juice” or “Flavourings”. On top of that add that Nicotine in any form is illegal in Australia, and we have an issue.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…

As you know, Mr Naysayer was not a big fan of the Arizer Extreme Q that I have. After we put the balloon on the Extreme Q, he started to change his mind… But he still wasn’t a fan of the device.

The first few vaping sessions we shared, he really didn’t like the whip… Whilst everyone else I shared this with loved loved loved the whip, he hated it… Complained the draw wasn’t easy, and for his delicate respiratory system, it was hurting to inhale the heated air, the list of complaints went on.
So rather than basically writing him off for being a goose, we researched if the balloons would help.

For those of you that haven’t seen them, Whip style Vaporisers are your Vapes that look like mini Hookahs or Sishas…. What the Arab world call Argileh or the older generation would call a Hubbly Bubbly….

It’s your basic chamber but has a hose coming off it, and this hose is what you inhale your preferred flowers or herbs with. There is no water filtration like the traditional hookah, but, if you are feeling creative, there are ways of adding water filtration to some Whip Based vapes… (This will be a story for another time)

Balloon Vapes, on the other hand, are gaining more and more traction… In some parts of the world where they offer medicinal herbs, Balloon Style Vapes are almost exclusively recommended by doctors. I have a friend living overseas that had a doctor recommend a Volcano to her.

I have another friend living in another part of the world who was told it doesn’t matter which one, any of them are better than smoking.
The balloon, whilst looking strange, is somewhat a preferred method for a lot of people. It gives them the ability to vape their flowers, herbs or essential oils, but rather than having to consume it hot, it allows the vapour in the balloon to cool before inhaling. Breathing in vapours that have passed over the heating mechanism, by general rule, will continue to provide a warm to hot vapour inhalation sensation. Now the vapour in the balloon does have a limited life span, but, if you inflate your balloon, seal the end, and wait a minute or two, the vapour will cool down, making it a much easier experience.

Mr Naysayer, for the first time in a long time, had a look of happiness on his face. He was getting the smoking sensation of breathing in and seeing something expelling as he was breathing out. All without smoking, without combustion, without the nasties… He was vaping… And he was happy about it….
After a week or two, I got the call. Come and help me setup.
Mr Naysayer had purchased himself the Volcano Classic…

An absolute beast of a unit, and something a lot of people have experience with. If you want to learn more about the Volcano vaporizer, check out our User Review.
The first things I noticed about the Volcano >> No Whip!! This was a purely Balloon Only style Vape… Perfect for Mr Naysayer, but, somewhat disappointing for me. I mean, I love the Volcano, but I wanted a Whip and a Balloon which is what made me go for the Arizer Extreme Q.

As we unboxed the unit and wiped it all down in preparation for use, I noticed almost immediately, the build quality on this device was outstanding… When you hear about German Engineering and Quality, you can tell Storz and Bickel (The manufacturer of Volcano, Mighty, Crafty) really wanted to highlight this in their product. And for this reason, this is why I hold the Storz and Bickel items in such high regards, it’s almost like the Rolls Royce, the best you can get, with second to none build quality.
Volcano utilises their “Easy Valve” system. Something I wish all balloon vapes had. Rather than having to find something to seal your balloon, Volcano branded Balloons have an Easy Valve. Once installed into the end of the balloon, no vapour is lost as the valve is one way.

If you used a balloon style, but not a Volcano, you would know that moving the bag around unsealed results in lost vapour. Not with Volcano, you get to keep in the balloon what you haven’t yet inhaled.

I’ve seen Mr Naysayer fill a bag and sit on it for a period of 15 minutes, just slowly having a toke when he wanted to. And wouldn’t lose any vapour by putting the balloon down on the table. Add to this, the easy valve filling chamber, and you begin to understand why people go for premium products… This doesn’t look like a child’s toy, this is pure and simple build quality. Design innovation. Genius if you will. (Take note other manufacturers!!!)
When you add all this together, Volcano is a great option for a lot of people.

Now, don’t take me at face value. If you are looking at health benefits, understand, I am not a Doctor, far from it, however, I have personally consulted my GP and told him what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it. This is something I tell everyone. Go to your GP and talk to them. Get their input. At the end of the day, they are the person you go to when you aren’t well!

*Disclaimer – I AM NOT A DOCTOR – THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE – THIS IS ONE MAN’s JOURNEY *

Now, Fat Forward a year and a bit… I can report Mr Naysayer:

• Has not touched a smoke
• Has never looked back
• Has not been back in hospital with respiratory issues
• Has not had his lung collapse again
• Has FOUND something he likes
• Has FOUND something that worked for him.

We all struggle in the beginning… Quitting smoking is for a lot of us, like turning our back on a friend.
It’s not easy, but it’s also not hard. It’s about being in the right headspace, having your alternates worked out and having supportive people around you.

Have you hit your own hurdles? How did you get over them? Have you already converted to Vaping and seen any health benefits?? I would love to hear from you, hit the comment section below and feel free to share your experience with us or ask me any questions you may have.

Until Next Post…. F&*K COMBUSTION and keep on vaping!!!!