I wasn't looking to quit smoking in late 2012 when my best friends (a married couple) came for a visit from Dallas. To my surprise, they were coming up to one year free of cigarettes, having discovered vaping when their friends opened a vape shop. I was asking questions of course, and he stuck his vape in my mouth and said "here, just try it". Wow what a revelation. It was hard to know just how to pull on it at first, so it hit hard, but a big cloud came out on the exhale. It was like smoking. It was strong. It made me giggly.
So my friends offered to buy me a starter kit. In 2012 the kit was a pair of Ego-T batts, a pair of Stardust plastic clearomizers, charging cable, a wall plug. That was state of the art for mass market open systems. I didn't want my friends to take the cost of my failure if I couldn't quit smoking, so I declined their kind offer, and bought my own, same stuff they were using, and a 30 ml. bottle of eLiquid in a custom sweet tobacco blend he was using.
It took six weeks of dual use, both smoking and vaping, somersaulting through bunches of flavors. I got stuck on fudge brownie for a while, mmm. Eventually, in November of that year, when the weather turned cold, I looked forward to getting home, getting warm and having a vape (not a smoke). On the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving I had my last cigarette with coffee. The rest of the day I vaped my brains out, as the demons kept saying "you can have a cigarette, nobody is making you quit. Have a cigarette". I resisted, and at bedtime I knew I was a nonsmoker forever. I never again craved a cigarette, though even now the smell of it when someone walks by with a lit one, is a pleasant memory.
Around 2014-2015 I graduated from the Ego-T to the eLeaf iStick, and the Aspire glassomizer, my equipment still today. Clove is my all day vape, but I use unflavored when I'm around other people. There is a flavor from ECBlend called "Writers Den", a mix of clove, bourbon and tobacco, that I indulge in now and then. You need a glassomizer for clove, teaberry and other spice flavors that will etch a plastic clearomizer.
That's my journey. The journey is over, with the stability that came with the right equipment, the right flavor, an apartment that smells nice. I used to have bronchitis all winter every year. I haven't had it since vaping, ever at all.
A final note: 18 mg. nic in my liquid was like a strong arm around my shoulder during my cig quit journey, but about two weeks after my last cigarette, suddenly 18mg was too strong. I was waking up in the middle of the night, and feeling wired in the daytime. I dropped my nic to 12 mg., where it has remained for all the years.
