It’s 7 am and the very first thing that comes to mind is where your vape is. The anxiety builds as you search through your bedside table, your bag, and finally the bathroom, where you see it charging. Filled with relief, you take your first hit, and then second, while you start to get ready. You get to school and leave your vape in your glovebox because you know you should quit, but by second hour, the headaches are starting and you can already tell you’re getting irritable. You have friends who throw up when they withdrawal, so when someone offers you a hit before lunch, you accept and the cycle begins again. You can’t focus in class even if you want to. You can’t think of anything but your next hit.
As the popularity of vaping increases, this narrative is becoming familiar to many. One Saline student in particular was honest enough to share her story and struggle with nicotine addiction.
“Sophmore year was the first time I ever did any drugs,” she tells me, explaining how she and her friends vaped for the very first time the night after a school dance. “Everyone was doing it and we just went to an afterparty and there were people doing it and someone offered and then we went into the other room, and we’re like oh my gosh are we actually going to do this?” I asked her what it was like the first time she vaped. “I hated it, it hurt my throat.” She told herself, “I’m not gonna let an addiction take over my life and now here we are.”
Because of the seemingly overnight sensation of vaping with high schoolers, I needed to know how easy it is for people to obtain them. “It’s so easy,” she says, “ I went into Petsmart and you have to be 18 to get a fish. I can go get cocaine easier than I would be able to get a fish at Petsmart.”
This student used to leave her vape uncharged so she would be less likely to use it, but she says now she always keeps it charged. She uses it while getting ready, while driving to school, “It takes over your life. It’s just crazy how 16 year olds are already addicted to nicotine.” When she isn’t addicted, she’d think about it maybe 5-10 times a day but now being addicted she thinks about it over 60 times a day. “It’s almost constantly in my head if I’m not doing anything.” The student’s had over 8 vapes from losing them or getting them taken away and has spent over $200 on vape juice alone, she estimates.
Asking how vaping has affected her health, she responded, “I have a constant cough now and I’m not sick.” It also affects her ability to play sports,.“I get out of breath really easily now, and I cough so much that it’s hard for me to work out because it affects my breathing so much.” She’s had to quit sports because of the toll it has taken on her body. “It’s like having asthma, induced by nicotine.” With all of these consequences already, I wondered if she wanted to quit. She told me, “Whenever I get super badly addicted, I try to stop, but the difference this time is that I don’t care.”
When she has withdrawals, she tells me that she gets shaky and vaping is the only thing she can think about. In addition, this Saline student emphasised how she is often on edge and can get bad migraines. Her advice to people who vape is as follows: “I let myself slip, and then I slipped a lot, and now I really messed up and it’s really hard to get out of that hole.” She goes on: “If I didn’t start sophomore year, I wouldn’t be in this spot right now. I’d have hundreds and hundreds of more dollars and so much more time. I’d be mentally better off and physically better off. It’s just something that is always in my mind and I can’t get it out. I just wished that I never would’ve started.”