I first tried cigarettes at age 12. I was addicted at age 14. Until this last time on ecigs I had smoked 35 years, 1-1.5 packs a day. Notable quit attempts were at age 18 for 9 months with cold turkey/habit replacement. Eventually college pressures got the best of me. I had a 2 year cigarette quit by replacing them with uninhaled pipe smoking. That one was destroyed by buproprion (Zyban/Wellbutrin) it had me so messed up in the head I had to have a cigarette. Other memorable but very short lived attempts were the step down cigarette filters, NRT gum and cold turkey attempts. I have used every traditional US tobacco product there is, all kinds of chew/American snus, cigars, pipes and snuff in addition to cigarettes. I tried ecigs in ’09 but there weren’t many affordable options and what there was wasn’t good. I gave it up after a month, I still hate modern cartridges and cartomizers because of the filler. I kept an eye on ecigs waiting for something substantially different to come out. In ’12 I saw a tank ecig with no filler and a line of liquids I wanted to try. My first night without a cigarette was by accident, and with my old ecigs, the watermelon tasted too good to put down for burning tobacco. When my new and better ecigs arrived I only had half a cigarette each of the next two mornings. After that I was smoke free and haven’t seriously wanted a cigarette since, at least nothing I couldn’t vape away. It was not completely easy but it was the easiest quit I have ever tried, as was the time I tried ecigs in ’09. My intentions were to quit nicotine and then quit ecigs keeping them and nicotine handy for when the desire to smoke got to be too much, then I would go back to ecigs instead of smoking. I was down to 5mg in a month. I was also bleeding pretty bad with what was ultimately diagnosed as Ulcerative Colitis. I think the flare had started months before I switched to ecigs, it definitely got worse as I cut out nicotine. I stayed at 5mg nicotine in the morning and 0mg through the day for the summer while I went through testing so it would be easier to cut out the nicotine if it was determined to be Crohn’s or cancer. When it was diagnosed as Ulcerative Colitis I got the approval from Gastro and my GP to add nicotine back into the mix, it may help and I didn’t have any health issues to say I should avoid nicotine. I’m on IBD medicines in addition to the nicotine and I’m doing good. I can’t say for sure but it sure seems that nicotine abstinence was bad for my health. Like all the other IBD treatments I will continue using nicotine until something with my health causes the risks to outweight the benefits. I should also point out my first Gastroenterology testing was around the same time I started smoking as a habit at age 14. The time my college quit ended was around the time of my second series of GI testing. I even think the buproprion episode was at the time of a flare. I may have not known I had UC or the beneficial effects nicotine had on it, but I think I was unknowingly self medicating making it very unlikely for me to ever completely abstain without treatment for IBD. I have been without a cigarette for 14 months and I have not had any traditional tobacco products in that time. Not my longest cigarette quit but my longest time without tobacco.