How to pick your nicotine strength.

Nicotine isn't measured in cigarettes, but cigarettes are still the most useful comparison anyone has. One cigarette delivers about 1 mg to your bloodstream over a few minutes. A pack a day works out to roughly 20 mg total. The number on the bottle isn't your dose. It's the concentration in the liquid. The higher you go, the closer your daily intake gets to what you're already used to.

Pod kits and disposables are designed for high-mg salt nicotine. Low wattage, short pulls. Sub-ohm tanks and refillable mods do the opposite. High wattage, longer draws, way more vapour. Run a 20 mg salt bottle through a sub-ohm tank and you'll get a nicotine punch most ex-smokers find unpleasant. Run a 3 mg freebase bottle through a pod and you'll feel almost nothing. Match the chemistry to the kit, not to whatever's on sale.

Salt nicotine is the same molecule, mixed differently so it feels smoother at higher concentrations. It absorbs slower, it hits gentler. That's what lets a 20 mg pod work without scorching your throat. Freebase is the older format. Sharper at high mg, cleaner-tasting at low mg. Built for tanks and mods that push much more vapour.

Everyone moves over time. Most ex-smokers start at the highest their kit supports and taper down across months. A common path is 20 to 10 to 5 to 0. If you're reaching for the device constantly, you're under-dosed. If you feel light-headed or queasy, you're over-dosed. Either one fixes with one bottle.

Buying the highest mg available because more must be more for the money. It isn't — over-strength is wasteful and uncomfortable.

Mixing salt nicotine into a sub-ohm tank because the flavour bottle was on sale. The tank isn't the problem; the chemistry is.

Treating 0 mg as a 'next step' rather than the destination. Many people stop at 3 mg and stay there for years; the only metric is whether you still want a cigarette.

Forgetting that nicotine is a stimulant. Pairing a 20 mg bottle with three coffees is a fast track to the jitters.

If you're vaping to quit smoking, your doctor knows your history better than this guide does. NRT (patches, gum, lozenges) is the medically proven path. Vaping is a harm-reduction tool, not a treatment. We're happy to help you pick a bottle. We're not your doctor.