My Vaping Story
It's been a very long journey, becoming the happy vaper I am now — 39 years of smoking, various problems through my entire first year as a vaper, including an emergency appendectomy that nearly derailed the entire effort...
But let me start at the beginning...
I started smoking in 1975, at the tender age of not-quite-14. Throughout the next 39 years, I tried four times to quit smoking, with very little success: in 1984, a cold-turkey attempt lasted three months, before I could not stand the suffering another minute and started smoking again. In 1987, I became pregnant with my son, and tried very hard to quit smoking, but succeeded only in cutting down to three or four cigarettes a day. In the following years, I tried twice more, using the patch, and neither attempt lasted much more than a week before I simply could not stand it another minute, and went back to smoking. I can attest from personal experience that "the patch" simply does not work, because merely replacing the nicotine is the smallest fraction of what is required to make a non-smoker out of a smoker.
By January of 2014, I had lost all hope of ever quitting cigarettes, despite having watched my father die of lung cancer in 2006; I had no interest whatever in the suffering which I believed was required in order to become a non-smoker. However, we were in the middle of the coldest winter in 30 years, and as an outdoors-only smoker, I was sick of freezing to death just to satisfy my habit, so I became interested in electronic cigarettes -- e-cigarettes. None of the drugstore disposables I tried -- Fin, Njoy, and Blu -- were even slightly tolerable, so I grew angry enough at the weather and my stupid habit and those extremely lame e-cigarettes, and went to Google, to find more information about e-cigarettes; what I discovered was a whole new world.
But let me start at the beginning...
I started smoking in 1975, at the tender age of not-quite-14. Throughout the next 39 years, I tried four times to quit smoking, with very little success: in 1984, a cold-turkey attempt lasted three months, before I could not stand the suffering another minute and started smoking again. In 1987, I became pregnant with my son, and tried very hard to quit smoking, but succeeded only in cutting down to three or four cigarettes a day. In the following years, I tried twice more, using the patch, and neither attempt lasted much more than a week before I simply could not stand it another minute, and went back to smoking. I can attest from personal experience that "the patch" simply does not work, because merely replacing the nicotine is the smallest fraction of what is required to make a non-smoker out of a smoker.
By January of 2014, I had lost all hope of ever quitting cigarettes, despite having watched my father die of lung cancer in 2006; I had no interest whatever in the suffering which I believed was required in order to become a non-smoker. However, we were in the middle of the coldest winter in 30 years, and as an outdoors-only smoker, I was sick of freezing to death just to satisfy my habit, so I became interested in electronic cigarettes -- e-cigarettes. None of the drugstore disposables I tried -- Fin, Njoy, and Blu -- were even slightly tolerable, so I grew angry enough at the weather and my stupid habit and those extremely lame e-cigarettes, and went to Google, to find more information about e-cigarettes; what I discovered was a whole new world.
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At ECF, the E-Cigarette Forum, I began learning about all the many kinds of hardware, from the small, cigarette-like true "e-cigarette" to the larger and much more powerful personal vaporizer "mod," as well as all the different vendors of both those devices and the nicotine "juice" which is used in them. Starting around the 1st of February 2014, using one of the "cigalike" devices on a regular basis, my smoking declined from about 15-20 per day to just 2 or 3, and by the end of February the actual cigarettes tasted so extremely, bitterly foul to me, that on February 27 I smoked my last, and on February 28, 2014, I enjoyed my first smoke-free 24 hours in 39 years (I refuse to count the 3-month cold-turkey quit, because I certainly didn't enjoy that!), savoring my e-cigarette and barely noticing the lack of cigarettes.
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My eRoll, by Joyetech
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I persisted in being a smoke-free vaper for over three and a half months — 110 days — and then, in the middle of June, I became extremely ill, suffering such unendurable abdominal pain that I knew I must get to the hospital — and sure enough, acute appendicitis. And just let me add, as agonized as I was, it was delightful telling the nurse taking my history that I was a 110-day non-smoker.
So, they took out the wretched appendix via laparoscopic surgery, I suffered absolutely zero complications of any kind — including breathing, which delighted me, as asthmatics generally always have some breathing problems after general anesthesia — so they let me go home the very same day as the surgery. I felt fine — which apparently was an after-effect of the morphine and anesthesia, because in the days that followed, I grew so nauseated that I did not eat — or vape — for four days. When I finally emerged from that hell, everything tasted foul, including vapor, so even though cigarette cravings were lashing me unmercifully, vaping just made me sick again. So I smoked, with the full intention that it was a temporary solution, not a complete abandonment of vaping.
I really thought I'd smoke a little for maybe a week or two, and I'd lay them down again. But on my fourth day back to smoking, I smoked an entire pack — barely even noticing I was doing it, till I suddenly realized the pack was almost gone; the habit got its hooks back into me that fast, and it really scared me. So I resumed a technique that had been very useful when I quit cigarettes back in February, keeping a tally of cigarettes smoked daily, in order to not be unpleasantly surprised by how much I was smoking, and competing with each previous day's total, to go lower each day. It took a while, but by the time I had been smoking again for a month, I was down to five per day — and I laid them down again when I went to bed on the night of July 24, 2014; July 25, 2014 is the date I celebrate as the beginning of being a non-smoker, and (as of this writing), I have now been smoke-free (again) for two months — twice as long as my relapse into smoking.
NO ONE can tell me that e-cigarettes don't work for quitting smoking, because THEY ABSOLUTELY DO; they did it for me not just once, but TWICE. I smoked for 39 years before I found e-cigarettes, and I am living proof:
So, they took out the wretched appendix via laparoscopic surgery, I suffered absolutely zero complications of any kind — including breathing, which delighted me, as asthmatics generally always have some breathing problems after general anesthesia — so they let me go home the very same day as the surgery. I felt fine — which apparently was an after-effect of the morphine and anesthesia, because in the days that followed, I grew so nauseated that I did not eat — or vape — for four days. When I finally emerged from that hell, everything tasted foul, including vapor, so even though cigarette cravings were lashing me unmercifully, vaping just made me sick again. So I smoked, with the full intention that it was a temporary solution, not a complete abandonment of vaping.
I really thought I'd smoke a little for maybe a week or two, and I'd lay them down again. But on my fourth day back to smoking, I smoked an entire pack — barely even noticing I was doing it, till I suddenly realized the pack was almost gone; the habit got its hooks back into me that fast, and it really scared me. So I resumed a technique that had been very useful when I quit cigarettes back in February, keeping a tally of cigarettes smoked daily, in order to not be unpleasantly surprised by how much I was smoking, and competing with each previous day's total, to go lower each day. It took a while, but by the time I had been smoking again for a month, I was down to five per day — and I laid them down again when I went to bed on the night of July 24, 2014; July 25, 2014 is the date I celebrate as the beginning of being a non-smoker, and (as of this writing), I have now been smoke-free (again) for two months — twice as long as my relapse into smoking.
NO ONE can tell me that e-cigarettes don't work for quitting smoking, because THEY ABSOLUTELY DO; they did it for me not just once, but TWICE. I smoked for 39 years before I found e-cigarettes, and I am living proof:
VAPING IS THE EASIEST AND MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO QUIT SMOKING THAT HAS EVER BEEN INVENTED.
Period.
Period.
February 2019
I wrote all the above in September 2014, so it has now been five years since I started vaping, and about four and a half years since I quit smoking -- and I'm still a very happy non-smoking vaper. However it must be noted that my return to smoke-free in July 2014 became rather complicated, when the horrible cravings, just like the ones that initially caused the relapse, came back, ten days after I had finally put the cigarettes down again. Luckily, I had already acquired some WTA, for "just in case" -- and it was soon quite apparent just exactly how fortunate that was.
On to WTA... What is it, why use it?
I wrote all the above in September 2014, so it has now been five years since I started vaping, and about four and a half years since I quit smoking -- and I'm still a very happy non-smoking vaper. However it must be noted that my return to smoke-free in July 2014 became rather complicated, when the horrible cravings, just like the ones that initially caused the relapse, came back, ten days after I had finally put the cigarettes down again. Luckily, I had already acquired some WTA, for "just in case" -- and it was soon quite apparent just exactly how fortunate that was.
On to WTA... What is it, why use it?
