I started smoking cigarettes when I was a teenager, somewhere around 14 years old (about 1996). I tried to quit many times, never with any success. The longest I have ever been able to quit was about six months, but I relapsed.
I’m very passionate about health and fitness (eating healthy, heavy weight training, etc.), and in 2010, a friend said to me, “for someone who cares so much about your health, I don’t understand how you can smoke,” and that comment flipped a switch in my head.
I immediately decided I wanted to quit and tried electronic cigarettes. I was serious about this, so I figured that if I got a cheap e-cig from the gas station, I would probably be disappointed and end up going back to cigarettes, so I ordered an expensive kit online (I think it was $120).
I went with an e-cig rather than nicotine gum or a patch because I felt like what I needed to quit was something that closely resembled smoking.
And it actually worked!
I started with high-nicotine cartridges, worked my way down to zero MG nicotine over several months, and then quit three months later. I had no desire to smoke again, and I’ve been smoke-free since August 2010.
After quitting, I rarely used my e-cigarette anymore, but I carried it around just in case, for example, if I went to a poker party or if I went out with friends. But even on those occasions, I found that I didn’t really feel like using my e-cig. And after a year or so, I stopped carrying it around entirely.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve always been adamant about health (I also run and operate a health and fitness website), and in 2015, I started researching nootropics (cognitive enhancers). In my research, I learned that there were significant benefits of using nicotine to improve focus and increase energy.
So, it was at this point I wanted to give nicotine a try again. It had been five years since I quit smoking, and I saw that vaping had come a long way in those five years. That made it even more enticing to me because I’ve always been a big tech nerd. I bought a 20-watt iStick and a Nautilus Mini tank, and I absolutely loved it. Vaping became a hobby from that point on, and now I do product reviews and run this blog. I even hosted a weekly podcast for two years.
Quitting smoking was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. It’s important to me to offer advice to others so that I can help anyone going through the same struggles as I did.
Using an electronic cigarette was the best thing I could have ever done for my health.
Vaping saved my life.