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Hello All,

I hope it's okay to post a sort of diary here as a noob charting my e-cig introduction.

My “problem” is that I love smoking, not just the nicotine hit but the actual act of smoking – as proven by the failure of various NRT products I’d used in the past. I don’t just crave the nicotine hit; I crave the ritual of smoking. But as a 40+ cigarettes a day smoker (who has been smoking for 25 years) I know it’s killing me, it’s affecting bone density and my body’s ability to heal itself, it’s turning my house yellow (I hate yellow walls – even when they’ve been deliberately painted that colour); it turns your light fitings yellow; everything smells. Don’t get me wrong I love the smell of fresh tobacco smoke, it’s the stale smoke that lingers that I don’t like; even as a smoker if I’ve had a heavy smoking night in the lounge, even I hate the stale smell in the morning.

And to cap it all it’s costing me so much – ignoring the more expensive premiums for all types of insurance as a smoker e.g. life; home etc, the immediate cost of buying cigarettes is putting me into debt! 40 cigarettes is just shy of £12.50 a day, that’s £87.50 a week, £4550 a year – that’s a lot of money – it’s getting scarily near to 20% of my take home pay. That is so wrong - £1 in every £5 I spend is on cigarettes!

So after spending many hours of the day yesterday browsing this and other e-cig forums and websites and feeling very confused much of the time, I finally took the plunge at 10pm last night and ordered a RIVA 510 starter kit and 3 different flavour juices. They’ll be delivered by first class post so hopefully I’ll receive them Tuesday (but I think I’m being a tad optimistic).

I’ve created a spreadsheet this morning to keep a check on how much I spend on e-cigs and stuff and how many cigarettes I don’t smoke to see what savings I get in the long term. I only have to “not” smoke 120 cigarettes to break even on the cost of the order – that’s just 3 days. I hope I like e-cigs! Actually I’m praying I love them.

Putting the health issues aside, which smokers normally do – according to Allen Carr for those of you that haven’t read his book it’s not because we are ignorant of the risks or uneducated; it’s because we realise what it’s doing to us only too well but the stress and anxiety it creates in our mind just causes us to reach for another cig to calm ourselves – catch 22!; I just can’t afford to keep smoking regular cigarettes. I’m only a few hundred pounds away from getting into debt each month and by debt I actually mean breaking my overdraft and credit card limits – I want to get back to being in credit at the bank not living on an overdraft and not having a balance on my credit cards.

So I’m compiling this diary to “keep me strong” and provide a record of why I’m doing this - £1 in every £5 used to kill myself. I could do so much more with that money and who’s to say it would stay at that level, what if my consumption of analogues increased and as likely cigarette costs continue to increase it could be £1 in £4 / £3 / £2!!

Bizarrely I’m feeling very nervous / anxious right now – I wish the e-cig was here already, I dread it arriving and me deciding I hate it and it was all a waste of money; money I haven’t got to waste because I’m wasting what I do have on analogues.

Sorry for the waffle - I do tend to do that!