Are you a Dual User?

Dual users are people who have begun vaping, but who also smoke at the same time. For many people, being a dual user is a natural first step on a smoker’s journey towards quitting.

Suddenly jumping from cigarettes to vaping can be a jarring experience unless approached carefully; being a dual user allows people to wean themselves off tobacco steadily while acclimatising to their new vape at the same time.

Being a dual user does not come without its challenges. Below we explore the positives, negatives, and advice for shifting your dual use in favour of vaping – if that’s your goal of course!

Is Being a Dual User Good or Bad? 

The answer to this question is very much dependent on your personal goals. Each person’s journey is different, and it’s important to find a method of achieving our goals that meets our individual needs.

In this way, dual using could be seen as either a helpful approach or a hinderance keeping you chained to your old habits.

Dual Using Can be Useful 

For some journeys, dual use could provide a useful crutch to help ease the transition from smoking to vaping. As we mention above, this process is complicated and challenging in many different ways.

Despite vaping being a very similar alternative, many people still find it quite far removed from the act of smoking.

Reducing, but maintaining a smoking habit alongside a new vaping routine can actually be a useful method of transitioning. Doing so can help manage extreme cravings, especially during periods of stress or social pressure.

Given enough time to acclimatise to a vape, or experiment to find the best flavour and nicotine strength for your needs, your new vaping journey can be that much more successful.

Dual Using Can be Harmful

While it can be a useful tool to ease the transition, those with and end goal of making the switch to vaping exclusively must be careful not to find themselves trapped by dual use.

Keeping cigarettes in your life may make it harder to make that final push towards vaping by itself as the satisfaction offered by smoking may consistently eclipse that of your new vape, making it mentally challenging to let go for good.

Further to this, the dual-intake of nicotine could actually deepen your addiction and lead to you struggling to find a vaping product that can meet such extreme needs.

We must be equally careful to ensure that smoking doesn’t start to overtake vaping and become the main source of your nicotine intake, invalidating any potential benefits of making even a partial switch.

How can you start to shift the balance in favour of vaping? 

There are a number of things dual users can do to shift their habit in favour of vaping. Most are simple steps that require a little willpower and a willingness to experiment to find success.

The most important thing however is to ensure you really want to stop being a dual user, if you are happy where you are on your journey, then that is absolutely fine – your goals are your own!

If you do want to start making vaping your main source of nicotine, a great first step is to simply start replacing one of the occasions throughout the day in which you still smoke, with a vape break.

Try to choose the easiest time to do this as it will help you find greater success if you are not denying yourself satisfaction during high-stress moments. Instead try to swap an after-meal smoke for a vape, or the first puff of the day.

If you still feel you are getting the lion’s share of your craving satisfaction from the cigarettes rather than your vape, then it might prove useful to step-up your ae-liquid nicotine level.

By increasing the amount of nicotine delivered by your vape, you may find it satisfies cravings more easily, and therefore allow you to spend less time smoking to compensate.

Another great tip is to experiment with different e-liquid flavours. One of the best things about choosing vaping is the massive selection of flavours you can enjoy.

You aren’t stuck with tobacco or menthol, if you have a favourite sweet, drink or dessert, it’s very likely that it has been recreated as a vape already. Try picking a flavour you simply can’t get enough of, and you might find you want to vape a lot more than you smoke for the taste alone.

Want to Switch With EDGE? 

If you are looking to start your journey for the first time, or if you are a dual user and want to shift your habits in favour of vaping, we’d love to help.

Check out our Making the Switch hub area to discover a whole range of impartial information, designed to help guide people of all different needs towards a smoking alternative that will truly work for them.

If you want to hear the experiences of real people who have used EDGE e-liquids and devices to achieve their quitting goals, you can head over to our Switch with EDGE area where we tell our champions’ stories so you can find advice you really relate to.