The doctor talked me in to buying a dry herb vape. I didn't buy one from him but I did buy one. It's really good but it uses a lot more weed than smoking a pipe. I also found myself vaping more and more and found myself being affected by it less and less.
I've switched in part to vapes but still find the draw of smoking terribly hard to resist (and have copd so shouldn't smoke at all). I've tried a few different types of vape over the last few years, and found it hard to get one that satisfied me anywhere near as well as smoking. You don't say what type you got, but you should be using more like
half as much flower than with smoking (for one thing combustion degrades about half of the terpinoids (including the cannabinoids)).
I found the portable electric one's, even including one of the most powerful one's, still couldn't extract the weed as well as I needed it to, and (for me in particular) was too hard to draw on, not an adequate air flow.
It wasn't until I started trying the much newer ball-vapes, which use a heat capacitor that is externally heated by butane or an induction heater that I found a match to what I wanted (or as near as). Some of these beasts will extract almost every shred of volatile oil from the plant matter, with one or two draws on maybe a quarter gram. They can be configured for high or low airflow, can do mouth to lung or direct to lung, 'micro' dose or maxi dose, one hit wonders or slow sippers - very flexible.
The downside is they aren't the cheapest by far (though will likely come down in price gradually), and with no try before you buy on the whole, it can be expensive finding what the one you like best. Also, harder to use outdoors, needing an external heat source, and you do need to be a little careful of it, as it's easy hot enough to give a nasty burn if touched in the wrong place.
Also, the temp you run at affects the effects, lower temps give more flavoured taste/smell and a more buzzy effect, higher temps a more soporific one.
But even the other vapes should be far more economical than it sounds like yours is. It may well be you're not extracting as much as you should, and the remaining vaped bud is still partly active (some people make edibles with it)? Here again the airflow (and temp) can have a fair impact. Maybe try loading it very loosely with less so you can draw through it much easier? Also, the draw speed can effect the heating of the flower and thus how well it's extracted. But it all depends on the type of vape you have as to how it behaves.
This is one of my two portables (and I have a mains powered desktop one for more serious sessions).
You heat the left hand 'head'. It unscrews to expose the bowl which is simply filled with shredded flower.
The stem is a complex cooler inside with about 6 major different settings, that works amazingly well (usually most people use glass bubblers/bongs instead to cool it down). But it costs about £210 for the cheapest version, although in terms of value, the quality, engineering and design are top notch. It'll outlast me!
Use it like a joint, or hammer the hell out of it with a single draw full extraction (and a hit to match). But there are so many other types out there, it's hard to know which is best for any one person. Also, getting used to not having the toxins as part of the effect took some getting used to, especially (I think) the carbon monoxide.
After near a life time smoking hash and tobacco together, it's not been easy to minimise that (never mind cut it right out), so as I'm not particularly consumeristic normally, it's been painful spending so much on devices that ultimately didn't do what I was after, but most of them have been good products, just not suiting what I wanted/needed, and in the end the result was worth the effort and cost (i.e. extending my life at least a bit).
