What's your Vaping story?

[diche]

Why did you start vaping?
How long have you been a vaper?
Are you a smoker, an ex-smoker or a non smoker?
How has vaping effected you?



Tell your story!

Add it to the thread and it will be added to a growing body of stories from across the world in many languages and from every continent. Plans are afoot to create a database where every story can be found. Your story will be included in this database. Our vaping stories are some of the most powerful weapons we have when it comes to convincing politicians, medical professionals and the general public about how effective vaping can be.


If you are happy to leave your real name and which town you live in that would be fantastic. It would help make sure these stories cannot be ignored by the sceptics, but the important thing is your story, so if you aren’t able to leave your name, PLEASE still leave your story.

[Raffles]

I'd smoked since my early teens, in the late 50s... can still remember taking my first puff in a bus shelter waiting for the school bus. Smoked then for the next 50 years, with the occasional attempt to cut down/give up but never achieving it.

One day I'll do it, I said to myself, mainly for the monetary saving as they were getting ridiculously expensive, and I still enjoyed the experience. Then, about 5 years ago I started to see articles online about 'electronic cigarettes' and laughed as I thought it was just a gimmick for someone to make a quick buck.

About 4 years ago, a regular driver to my place of work, kept on about how he had 'given up' with this device he showed me, and for weeks I resisted until he talked me into trying it, and I thought that's OK, not what I'd expected. So, he gave me the address of where he got it, and that freaked me out even more (won't mention it here, but a big player).

But it had tweaked my interest, so I researched on the web, and was amazed as to how it was growing... found a few forums, one of which I made my home (but others are available)... bought an eGo kit for about £20 and waited to see what I'd wasted my money on.

Well, now over 3 years later, I've never touched a 'real' cigarette since that very first vape, and still have the half packet in my kitchen drawer to remind me of what a prat I had been. I know it won't happen so quickly for others, but for me it did.

[hijack]

I started smoking the odd cigarette when I was 12...By the time I was 13, I was smoking 10 a day, which is not easy on paper-round money.
I started thinking about giving up smoking when I was in my mid 30's and had been smoking 20 a day for the best part of 20 years. I never made it past the 2nd day, so continued to smoked until, at 40 I started trying the gum,sprays and finally the patches.

The patches got me off smoking for the 6 weeks or so that I was using them, but as soon as I stopped using them the thought of smoking started to go around my head again. So it was inevitable that after 3 months I was back to 20 a day.

This was a bit of blow to me considering quitting again, so continued I smoking for another 5 years.

At work one day, on a break, a colleague who like me was a smoker, I saw using an ecig. So I asked him how he was finding it, and he told me he hadn't smoked or wanted to smoke since he started a couple of weeks ago. So I thought I would give it a go and found the was an ecig shop in my high street.
I went there and the staff were helpful and advised I get a starter kit that consisted of 2 pen type batteries and had disposable atomizers that you filled with a liquid that you like the flavor of. They let me try put lots of flavors until I found a few that I liked, and I left with the new kit.

I haven't smoked a cigarette since that day, which was 2 years ago.

When I started vaping I was using a liquid that had 24mg of nicotine in it, but over time I have reduced that to 6mg.
I feel fitter than I have for a long time, being less breathless and now do regular exercise, like playing badminton, which I had not done since my late teens as I lost my fitness from smoking.
Its been easy for me to give up this time by vaping and I would say 'Give it a go' if you are still smoking.

Neil Piggott
Bournemouth.

[Deleted]

My Wife and i both smoked for 37yrs, tried all the stuff they throw at you from patches, to sprays, tablets and even NHs cessation sessions, never once did you lose that feeling of still wanting to smoke.

We started vaping after having tried it a year earlier with one of those crap ciga like thing's that did not even last 1 day, back on the cigs, around the end of July 2014 one of my pals started raving about how good e cigs were now and advised us to get Spinner v2's and i think two Kayfun lite clones, that was it, we were off!

Started at 18mg nic, now down at 3mg at just over a year tobacco free! No cravings in that time at all, even when reducing the nic level down as we took it fairly slowly.

[diche]

I suppose that as I am asking for stories, I ought to tell you my own.

I started smoking at 14, and was an occasional smoker for the next few years, it was when I was 17 that I started smoking on a daily basis. I enjoyed smoking, I smoked for 24 years, and except for a couple of half hearted attempts to give up I smoked daily though not heavily. I liked the way it broke up my day and gave me those little rest breaks, chill out time to get my head together or to zone out. Each time I tried to quit (normally due to pressure from my then husband) I missed what smoking did for me, I found life far more stressful and I missed the effect nicotine had of making me more focussed in some way.
Now I am no idiot, I knew smoking was doing me harm, but I had pretty much resigned myself to dying from a smoking related disease, the benefits I gained outweighed the dangers I perceived (though this might have changed as I grew older).
I bought my first ecig for a laugh, I had no intention of quitting smoking, though I did think it might let me cut down a bit. I had heard of ecigs from a work colleague and my hairdresser, and thought little of it until I was passing a shop in a town centre that had a ego/CE4 and two juices for £10 advertised. It was cheap, and I thought it would be a giggle to try a few flavours. When I walked in the shop I thought the tobacco flavours would be where it was at, but I didn't like any of them, after a mammoth tasting session I walked out with Honeydew Melon and Cherry flavour and still had zero intention of quitting smoking.
So I smoked when I wanted to smoke and vaped when I wanted to vape, and 10 days later I had my first smoke free day in 20 years. I just forgot to smoke, the vaping hit the spot so well, that I didn't even realise I hadn't had a cigarette until I reached for my tobacco at 11 o'clock at night and it was still where I had left it the previous evening.
I didn't quit smoking, I switched to an infinitely preferable way of enjoying my nicotine and my way of life. I have done the research, I know it is better for me, but if it didn't hit the spot that wouldn't really be relevant. I'm not a vaper because it is healthier or cheaper or smells less, though all of these are true. I am a vaper because it is better. As I write this I haven't had a cigarette for 15 months, and I don't see myself ever going back. It would be like throwing away my phone and going back to semaphore.

Abi Cottrill
Bradford, West Yorkshire

[baron]

Well, for me I started smoking around 10-11 years old (1956/57) by nicking my Mum's Kensitas ciggies, and then flogging some of my Dinky toys to a local second hand shop so that I could buy 10 Batchelors/Woodbines, then find somewhere quiet to have a smoke.
Luckily I lived at a place called Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight (I now live in Ryde) after a spell of living in England for about 25 years. I lived near enough on a beach and had nearby woods, so it was dead easy to disappear with my mates to smoke in peace.
 In the woods there was a sort of vine about the same thickness as a ciggie, and we used to cut and clean up short lengths of it and 'smoke' that....as yes, the ingenuity of youf.

Anyway, in November 2013 a friend came round to our house for a natter and to drink my tea/coffee, as she used to be our next door neighbour. She was using this device which intrigued me, and we talked about it and convinced me to try it myself. So the next day I spent about £25 in our local vape shop, and the chap showed me all the different devices, how to vape etc. and I chose a starter kit which was a 650mah battery, one of those CE4 type tanks, wall charger, USB cable and a free bottle of 10ml juice of my choice.
He spent about an hour with me before I parted with my money, and from that moment I gave up the ciggies.

Then using the interwebz I came across a whole industry with lots of shiny things for vaping, and realised there is a whole lot of fun to spend my Pension on.

However, my No.1 son came to stay with us for a couple of months about 7 months later (marital problems, all sorted now), and he left his packet of baccy on the kitchen worktop, and the little man on my shoulder whispered in my ear "Go on, go on, try a roll up, it won't hurt you....just the one."

So I did while I was waiting for the kettle to boil. But it tasted pretty rough, but, it was enough for me to get back into the habit again, whilst also vaping.

I decided that I needed new and shiny mods to try and confuse and be rid of the little devil man on my shoulder who leads me astray.
So, I got my MVP2 (brilliantly repaired with flat 510 connector, by a very fine chap on this forum), VTR2 (first purchase from China) bought the Cloupor Mini 30W (which I have lost interest in and rarely use), then the Coolfire IV 40W (lurve it), then the MVP3 Pro 60W, and finally a Smok XPro 80W (which I also lurve - I don't use TC, I just wanted an 80W mod) which I bought from another fine gentleman on this forum.

Also some new tanks, like the Atlantis v1 + v2 and the iSub.

So after smoking for about 58 years, stopping for about 8 months, and then restarting smoking to now, albeit more vaping than smoking thank goodness (trying to give up completely the second time is a damn sight harder, for me anyway) so I am still struggling to kick the habit completely - if only I could dispose of the little devil man on my shoulder whispering bad things to me.

Roy - ruler of my Kingdom the Isle of Wight, from my fortress in Ryde.

Nurse says I have delusions of grandeur, and dunno why.....

[diche]

Here are the stats so far 128 stories have been collected and the breakdown is as follows:

Facebook: 58
POTV: 28
UKV: 18
Vapers in Power Blog: 11
TVF: 8
AAEC: 4
ECF: 1


Keep the stories coming, every single one is important

[mart166]

Mines in a nutshell as typed it to many times, to summerise 7 years ago GF hated me smoking, I got chest infection, stopped smoking, 2 days in no wallpaper left in house, found cigalikes on internet, 2 days later it's all history here I am, one of the older supporters of vaping and still loving it, and despite others still on the same juice that I found 6 years ago.
As that meerkat says "simples"

MP