16 year old me was kind of an idiot. 22 year old me is less so. I started smoking on the cross country trails behind my high school with my idiot friends. Not from them pressuring me or telling me I would be cool, but because I had issues and was rebellious and depressed and didn’t care about myself. Over the last six years, I have quit on and off, for a few months at a time, A big part of that was that I just never wanted to quit. Despite everything, let’s be real. I just like smoking cigarettes. I like the simple habit of it, the easy do this, then do that. So little of my life is uncomplicated, smoking is like the control in a scientific experiment. Too bad it’ll kill me, that I am hopelessly addicted to nicotine now, and I am constantly bombarded on all sides by guilt trips and dirty looks. Fast forwarding through six crazy, depressed, amazing, angry, scary, roller coaster years of wonder and disappointment. A few weeks ago, after having lost the job I love due to hey, we’re closing your office in a week, sorry, I found myself stuck in bed with a paralyzingly painful illness and out of my beloved coffin nails. What’s a girl to do, when she needs the one thing her roommates refuse to pick up for her? Well, my roommates are great and care about me, for all my faults. During a gas station run, one of them got a cheap Logic e cigarette for me. Without having to move from my bed of pain to go outside, or abuse my tonsillitis-ridden throat with smoke, I was able to perform my habit of put to lips, inhale, put down, exhale. I got my nicotine fix. Being bed-ridden for 9 days, completely unable to move without pain beyond all belief, gave me a lot of time to do some serious googling on ecigs. It is now 13 days since I first used an ecig. I have smoked about 3 analog cigarettes in that time, and they are my reward after a good heavy lifting session. I now own variable voltage batteries, Pyrex tanks, and a slew of different delicious 12mg/ml eliquids. 16 year old me smoked more than a pack a day. 22 year old me smoked 1/3 pack a day. 22 year old, 5 month and some day old me smokes three cigarettes a week. I bet that 23 year old me will smoke one cigarette a month. Maybe 25 year old me will smoke just one cigarette a year. It may not be a perfect solution, but I’ll take it.