# A different perspective on vaping



## Alex (5/11/14)

Came across this post on reddit, thought I'd share..

by MeltyGoblin

Hey guys, so I'm a relatively new vaper, and I figured I'd share my story since it's kind of unique.

Essentially I started vaping around 2 months ago, but I didn't start to quit smoking. Now when most people hear that and see that I vape 6mg nic juice they tend to look at me as if I were foolish. I hear all the time "why would you want to get addicted to nicotine?" but I actually have a pretty good reason. I grew up with Tourette's Syndrome (TS). It's pretty mainstream knowledge now, but for those of you who don't know it's a neurological condition that makes you do involuntary movements such as shaking your head, blinking in an odd way, shaking your hands, and in more severe cases yelling swear words or using obscene gestures in inappropriate situations. This can often come along with anxiety, depression, and OCD. I am fortunate enough to have a fairly mild case of TS, as well as some symptoms of anxiety and OCD, but I am not diagnosed with either of those. Because my case is fairly mild it has subsided quite a bit in my adult years, but it has always existed, and the symptoms of OCD and anxiety never really go away, but the physical motor tics have reduced from being large and elaborate, such as shaking my head violently, to being fairly small and unnoticeable things such as wiggling my fingers in a specific way.

Now how this relates to vaping is that there have been studies out for a while that prove that nicotine helps suppress symptoms of TS, such as this scholarly article here. This made me consider smoking when I was old enough, but decided the health risks just weren't worth it. but one day I learned about vaping from a friend and figured maybe a light dose of nicotine could do me some good, and vaping seemed like a much healthier alternative that tastes good too. I must say I have felt a real significant improvement in my daily life. Even my mild tics have gone down significantly and, while it may just be placebo effect, I feel as if my other symptoms have gone down too. So I just wanted to post this because most people really don't understand that nicotine could have some actual health benefits for certain people. That and I just thought it was a cool story that you guys might appreciate. Thanks for being such an awesome sub and helping improve my quality of life!

Reactions: Like 9 | Winner 2 | Informative 1


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