“You bought that?” my father asked, staring at it.

“Yeah, isn’t it great? It was really cheap, but it still runs like a dream.”

“You bought that car?” he said to me, his voice rising in alarm. “It’s a German car, Jennifer. And not just a German car. It’s Hitler’s car.”

Oy vey. Right. It’s a German car. And not just any German car.

It was that car.

For those who don’t know their history, VW was founded in 1933 by Ferdinand Porsche after being approached by Adolph Hitler to create a “people’s car”. Adolf Hitler himself laid the cornerstone of the first VW mass-production facility where as many as four out of five workers were slave laborers. Some Jews wouldn’t touch a Volkswagen, much less buy one and drive one, with a ten foot pole.

I stood in the Volkswagen dealership today looking at Diesel Jettas, and my father’s words echoed in my ears from 20 years ago. Out of all the cars that we’ve ever thought about getting, diesel Jettas are at the top of our list for being awesome, and being green without having to deal with a Prius.

Interestingly enough, it turns out the Volkswagen may not be completely that car. “The Extraordinary Life of Josef Ganz” by Paul Schilperoord alleges that the Jewish engineer, and not Hitler, truly came up with the concept that Volkswagen built its company on.

There are also many other companies still in business today that collaborated with, sold to, or profited from the Nazis, including Kodak, Hugo Boss, Bayer, Coca-Cola… if you stopped buying from all of them, you’d knock a lot of common products out.

It is interesting (and ironic) that a Jewish engineer may have originated the iconic Beetle but even so…

I probably still won’t be mentioning to my Dad that I bought another Volkswagen.

Me. Quit. For over a month.

Lots of places have these little calculators that tell you how long you have quit – it’s supposed to motivate you to stay quit. Here’s my “I don’t smoke anymore” banner.

I wondered, though, about looking back.

And honestly, it wasn’t something that I thought I would want to do. But I did… I wondered what the calculation would be if I ran it backwards.

Cancer.org will give you the calculations… if you really want to know.

I estimated 1 pack a day for 20 years, cutting myself some slack for hopefully not having been a chainsmoker as a teen but, truthfully, this is probably a much lower end estimate and it could easily be twice all the numbers I am about to name.

Wussing out, though, it came out to 7,305 packs of cigarettes, or 146,100 cigarettes. That means I spent 507.29 days of my life smoking. Just over one and one third years, I lived my life with a cigarette in my hand.

That’s kind of astounding. Not nearly as astounding as the $40,000+ this calculator estimates that I spent to do it, though.

Start Vaping, Make New Friends, and Other Coolness

This has been a pretty interesting experience. Some of the highlights since I stopped smoking and started vaping are:

1. Going to the doctor and having the doctor compliment the choice and be ecstatic that my husband and I switched. (The Nurse also mentioned that PV’s were given to residents in a nursing home he worked at because the lifelong smokers were too ill to go out, and too unhappy without them, and they worked “fantastically”.)
2. Finding an instant and welcome community – ex-smokers and new vapers are evangelical when this works for them, and they are some of the most patient and kind folks in explaining things to noob idiots that I have ever found. Yes, it’s fun – but it’s also a cause that binds people together.
3. Going on a trip with my co-workers and not have to constantly break momentum because Jen needed a cigarette break (and a bonus, knowing that my co-workers and boss were so supportive that I vaped through the marathon hours-long meeting and they not only tolerated it but encouraged and supported it because they knew I was trying to quit).
4. Hearing my husband’s report of taking the kid to the doctor and having the kid’s pediatrician comment that we didn’t small like smoke.
5. Being able to taste.
6. Being able to smell.
7. Being able to vape in bed and not having to worry about setting the house on fire.
8. Being able to stealth-vape in the middle of the grocery store.

Probably the thing that’s made me most happy/sad and been most bittersweet is having my kid open up to me about how much my smoking and my husband’s smoking had bothered him all these years. He’s made little comments here and there that if he went to sleep over at someone’s house, he could smell the scent of tobacco on his pillow. His reports of a teacher thinking he may smoke – because he smelled like he smoked. Bitter, knowing that happened and I was oblivious to it because I couldn’t smell it, was incapable of noticing.

Sweet because I was able to stop it. Guilty because I didn’t do it sooner.

Disclaimer: I used to know nothing about vaping, and now I know a little something but only slightly more than nothing. I’m no expert. To find one, visit this forum or my vape shop.

I have upgraded my vape tools from the Volt, which I liked, to an eGo dual coil (see the picture and click it to visit the site). There are tons of differences between them and, honestly, I don’t know what they are other than one is smaller and holds less juice, and the other’s bigger and doubles as an awesome tablet stylus. I’m learning, but there’s a ridiculous amount to learn – voltages, mods, regulated, manual, automatic… I have no idea what most of it means.

I know bigger meant a bigger vape, and it tasted yummier, so I bought it.

Which brings me to my first in what will no doubt be a long series of evangelistic pieces of advice when trying to quit smoking by faking yourself out by vaping…

Don’t Buy Your Vape Stuff in a Mall or Convenience Store

I first found out about vaping from the Smoking Anywhere guys. Mall Kiosks with hipster dudes and e-cigs abounded a few years ago. The spiel sounded good, and I plunked down the $100. It was interesting, but not satisfying – weak, and the juices sucked. It failed, and miserably fast.

Lesson 1: Don’t cheap out.

Second attempt was the Volt, and I liked the Volt. It was an exceptionally well made PV (personal vaporizer) and I liked the e-juices we bought – but again, I didn’t know any better. My lack of knowledge screwed that attempted due to my ignorance about what e-juices could contain, what was available, and their differences.

• Vegetable Glycerin (VG) is a thick, sweet liquid and produces fluffy, heavy-ish clouds of vapor and lends a sweeter taste to your vape.
• Propylene Glycol (PG) is a much thinner tasteless liquid (and is the same stuff in fog machines).  PG produces more of a “throat hit” than VG does.

PG also, by the way, dehydrates the hell out of you – you could kind of guess that if someone were to tell you that PG is also used in humidors to control humidity. Unfortunately, no one told me, and I had no idea.

Lesson 2: Your juice matters as much as your PV.

The second time with the Volt, thanks to my getting 100% PG juices, failed. I felt like the Sahara Desert after a particularly brutal heat wave, and smoking cigarettes was less dehydrating than that stuff.

The Third Time Cham

So, third time’s a charm and I finally hit that effortless smoking quit that smokers that want to quit would probably trade their left arm for. I think this was due to ensuring that I had:

1. The right personal vaporizer – a quality one I was comfortable with that worked, and worked well
2. The right e-juice – the right nicotine level in the right flavor in the right mix of PG/VG for me
3. The right circumstances – I spent my first four quit days with 3 co-workers who knew I was trying to quit and who were extremely supportive (and who I knew would have been comfortable giving me crap if I showed up to a meeting smelling of a cigarette)

By the time I got done with those four days, I had been away from cigarettes long enough that my sense of smell, sense of taste has started to come back a little bit, and I had been vaping enough to prefer the clean taste of vaping over the thick, choking inhale of cigarettes.

Normally, if I hit two weeks with no cigarettes I would be climbing up the walls and an anxiety ridden basket case which, let’s face it, isn’t fun for anyone. This time, I dealt with numerous stressful situations and have not dealt with any particular basket case effects.

To some extent, quitting this way has seemed too effortless, and too easy. I already have hit the point where I might want the idea of a cigarette (the urge), but if I try and give in to the urge I am repelled by an actual burning cigarette itself.

I want to quit because I know that a 50/50 chance of lung cancer is really bad odds. I know that as I get older the effects of smoking will become more pronounced and difficult to deal with. I know that I am missing out on things I want to do because I can’t smoke there – hotels, an Amtrak trip. Staying at Disneyworld on the property.

I don’t want to quit because – well, I don’t want to quit. I’m an addict, and I enjoy it, and smoking blunts some senses so that to a great extent that what bothers you about my smoking (my smelling like an ashtray) doesn’t bother me in the slightest (I can’t smell it if you smoke, much less the smoke clinging to me).

So, the divergent forces – I should quit. But I don’t want to.

Enter Tobacco Harm Reduction.

E-Cigarettes

What are e-cigarettes? Katherine Heigl explains.

Granted, Katherine Heigl potentially isn’t the most authoritative person discussing the issue, so let’s try a doctor.

At this point, I need to mention I am not hocking SmokeStik – it just so happens that they have gotten pretty good press and have a great video that helps people understand what an e-cig is.

When I tried to switch last summer, I found a lot of blogs that were clearly slick affiliate splogs for different e-cig companies, but not an enormous number of personal stories, tips, and tricks for starting out – people tend to get passionate one they’re in it, but not so much when they are first starting out.

So, I decided I wanted to blog the journey, a bit.

Today is Day 4 since I have had an “analog” cigarette – the common name vapers use for a paper/tobacco leaf cigarette. And obviously “vaping” and “vapers” are the common name for using a personal vaporizer instead of an “analog” cigarette. Tomorrow, I’ll begin detailing out some of the issues surrounding switching – and there are issues.

It is still “quitting” some things, if not nicotine. There are things that you can do or choose that may make it not work for you – I had those and failed to switch last summer.

Hopefully, it helps someone better prepare, or encourages them to give it a shot.

As an adult, I once tested slightly higher for obsessive compulsive “tendencies” on a psychological test, and while it doesn’t lead me to wash my hands a couple of hundred times a day or cause me any major issues, it does lead me to have the ability to hyper-focus on a problem or complex issue long after most people would have burned out.

Some have suggested that smoking itself should be classified as an anxiety disorder, since all those of us who do it are likely compensating or self-medicating something.

OCD Tendencies? Have a drag and get to work.

My husband (who, ironically, has ADHD and who’s tendencies are almost the polar opposite of my own) says that watching me focus on an issue is almost frightening thing because he’s intimidated by my dogged determination to unthread a problem, figure things out, and organize everything into answers.

These tendencies have, to a great extent (and to such an extent that I wouldn’t consider medicating their eradication) have helped me through my life as opposed to being a hindrance – but when you hit a wall when finding a problem and you will accept nothing less than a solution, that’s stressful.

I have no doubt cigarettes helped relieve that stress.

Grit Your Teeth and Quit vs. Tobacco Harm Reduction

With the high potential rate of people “self-medicating”, the prevalent government tactic of “quit at all costs no matter how much it sucks to be you” is destined to fail for a lot of people.

Smoking statistics regarding quitting are absolutely abysmal.

I know numerous people, including myself and my husband, who have tried (and failed) repeatedly. Despite it being pounded into you that you have to quit or you will die a horrible death, people keep smoking. Despite 70% of people wanting to quit, most keep smoking.

It is an addiction and a habit that becomes to ingrained into your physiology and psychology that the “quit or die” lament works for a minority, and pisses off the majority.

Yet Tobacco Harm Reduction is a relatively new concept, and not one widely accepted yet.

In 2007, Britain’s Royal College of Physicians concluded “…that smokers smoke predominantly for nicotine, that nicotine itself is not especially hazardous, and that if nicotine could be provided in a form that is acceptable and effective as a cigarette substitute, millions of lives could be saved.

I would argue that “inveterate smokers” smoke for a lot of reasons, Nicotine only being one of them. It is a habit, it becomes ingrained in your own mental image of yourself. It’s boredom, enjoyment, a high, a calming thing under stress. It’s self-medication, it’s self-regulation. There is no one reason (nicotine) smokers smoke. If there was, as soon as the patches came out we would have all quit.

Ok, or at least 70% of us.

—

This is Part 2 in a series of posts about going from smoking cigarettes to vaping nicotine and an examination of the thought processes, experiences, and outcomes of doing so.

Everything in my youth at most supported me as a smoker, or at least supportive it was only indifferent – I was in a group foster home that used smoking privileges as a top level reward. When I moved back in with my father afterwards he felt since I was going to smoke anyway, I may as well smoke in the house. If caught outside during high school, they would just tell you to put it out – if the teacher didn’t light up with you. There were still teachers lounges filled with smoke back then.

By 18 years old, I was 100% a smoking addict.

In my early twenties, I smoked about a pack a day – then in my late twenties I started my own company, and I could smoke in my office because it was my office at home. Now free to enjoy my addiction constantly, I became a 2-3 pack a day smoker, and on bad days where I was awake nearly 24 hours have no doubt I smoked 4 or 5 packs. I have been smoking more than half my life, now – 26 years.

I told myself this was no big deal, as it was my one vice – I didn’t drink, really. Or do drugs. Everyone needed a vice, and this was mine. Everyone has to die at some point.

Kids have a way of making you feel ridiculously stupid about justifications like this, and eventually the realization that the cigarettes likely were potentially the cause or a contributing factor (though there is still some possibility of genetics being studied now) of Jacob’s CHD, and were setting a horrid example for him lead me to try and quit.

But I used all the medical methods to quit, and none worked.

The patches gave me horrific nightmares, Wellbutrin had no effect, and the potential suicide side effects of Chantix scared me. One 4 month quitting attempt (cold turkey and will power) a few years ago resulted in a weight gain of around 75 pounds, which terrified me because it came on so fast and despite counting every calorie, it seemed out of my control and mathematically impossible. So I started smoking again. That stopped the weight gain, but certainly didn’t help my lung capacity to be able to exercise.

The weight stayed on, and I got used to looking like a Weeble, and decided I was just going to smoke until the day I died.

Prematurely.

—

This is Part 1 in a series of posts about going from smoking cigarettes to vaping nicotine and an examination of the thought processes, experiences, and outcomes of doing so.

It has been a year of transitions and adjustments – I had that account since before I sold DrakNet, since before the last heart surgery. It still followed Steve Catoe, and from beyond the grave Steve actually followed me. It was the Twitter account that I quite unexpectedly became social media friends with my ex-husband’s wife unbeknownst to either her or I. I followed social media mavens that followed me back and who likely have so many tweets to read they haven’t noticed I am gone. On Twitter, you’re only as good as your last tweet, after all.

I always thought it was ridiculously stupid to separate out who you were on social media – a blog for this, and one for that, and then for something else. And then I saw the wisdom in it.

You can only talk about things that change the world

How can you talk about [something inane] when [something horribly tragic] is happening in the world!?

To some extent, there is a pressure to be relevant. On social media, you have to be hip, and important, and weighty. Your commentary has to be relevant and timely and entertaining and snarky. As you get deeper into a focus and a cause, writing or talking about anything else becomes more difficult.

If I don’t blog about the heart condition, will it look like I don’t care? If I stop talking about it incessantly, am I abdicating my responsibility?

I am a Heart Mom. That is a large part of who I am, and what dictates many things in my life from the jobs I can hold to the things I do to the vacations I take. But just like Jacob is not his heart condition, a mother of an ill child is not all that defines me.

Admittedly, it may be the most important. But it is not all that I am.

In splitting them off from each other and giving them their own spheres, I hope to be able to feel like I can talk about other things without neglecting CHD, and I also hope that I can be more open as a CHD Mom without worrying about what different people in different venues perceive. While I don’t mind that my co-workers read my blog (either one of them), I don’t want to require anyone to be bombarded with “all heart Mom, all the time”.

Likewise, I don’t want to feel like talking about anything else makes me a neglectful heart Mom. Which, to some extent, it really did this year – it was harder to move past the surgery than I would have believed. Nothing seemed as important as that. Nothing eclipsed it, even for a moment.

Back to Normal. Whatever that is now.

So, this blog will be getting back to “normal”, and that blog will remain deeply tethered to a world that I still live in daily but which I am trying to not let run my entire life from top to bottom.

That’s probably better for SEO, anyway.

The Twitter destruction was, in some way, symbolic of that. I used to walk away from CHD and pretend that the surgery fixed things, and I can’t do that anymore. The Twitter account for thousands of messages split back and forth and back and forth, and it’s roller coaster needed to be torn down.

Still deciding what I am rebranding myself as. Not sure, but it will be interesting to figure it out.

So, here’s an explanation.

This blog: All the CHD Posts have been moved from this blog to http://anotherchdjourney.blogspot.com/ – if you’ve linked to anything, that’s ok, as I spent my entire Saturday setting up redirects and moving every post manually, so any links will go to the right place. This blog will no longer have CHD Posts on it.

Why: As J gets older, he wants to blog about CHD as well, and Blogger enables sharing and the handing over of the blog more easily than splitting up the WordPress blog attached to my name will. So, it’s being unattached from being so intertwined with my name – it’s his story, after all, more than mine.

The Twitter Account: Yeah, ok, that one’s harder to explain Let’s just go straight to

Why: So, I was @jenlepp and I bought a zombie posse, and then I realized I would have to delete 600+ zombies. And I didn’t want to. Because that’s exhausting. My followers had also become all jumbled – CHDers and politics people and work people and industry people and the CHD people didn’t get what a DDoS was and the industry people sometimes had no clue what CHD was and … well, you get my drift.

Kinda jumbled.

So, I moved jenlepp to another name, and then snagged jenlepp back and was going to nuke the original jenlepp account and then realized… meh. I still wanted a CHD feed. And maybe the zombies would encourage someone to follow it who wouldn’t normally have learned about CHD. (Nevermind. I did nuke it.)

Yes, as all my social media fanatic friends have pointed out, only 32 followers re-followed, and I lost around 700 legitimate followers in the move. Sometimes starting over is fun.

[shrug]

So, if you are looking for CHD posts and information, you would RSS or Follow:

• http://anotherchdjourney.blogspot.com/
• http://twitter.com/chdjourney - Nevermind. I nuked it.
• http://chdnews.tumblr.com/

If you are looking for every other fleeting interest and thought that may pass through my brain, you want to follow/read:

• http://scattershot.jenlepp.com/
• http://twitter.com/jenlepp

and yes, I killed my Foursquare account. I just got tired of being more interested in checking in than hanging out.

Sorry if you were confused. I didn’t put all that much forethought into it.

I love this comic.