My name is Amber, and I am 25 years old. I started smoking at a ridiculously young age, and smoked for nearly 10 years, off and on. When I was a teenager, I tried the nicerette inhaler – and it just caused me to want a ‘real cigarette’ more. I stuck with this for about a month before giving it up for the ‘real thing’. When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I gave up smoking because it made me feel sick – than once my child turned about 6 months old, I started again. it only took that one smoke. The same thing happened with my second child. I quit, than started again once she was about 6 months old again. I tried the gum around age 23, and was chewing up to 3 at a time, got angry with the lack of result (other than a numb mouth), and had a cigarette. I stuck with this for 3 months before giving it up as a bad job. When I was 24, My grandmother brought back with her from USA an electronic cigarette. I was smoking about two packs a day at this point, generally Export’A Green, Dunhill, John Players Special, anything heavy and ‘full flavour’. Most of these are nick named Green Death, Black Death – you get the idea. I tried the electronic cigarette, and at first simply substituted my morning smoke and random throughout the day cravings with it, though I did end up switching over to it completely within 2 weeks. As I used the e-smoke more, the cigarettes tasted worse and worse, until they tasted so foul to me that I started gagging after one puff. Within TWO weeks, I had switched over to an e-smoke, and have been using one since the beginning of November of 2012. I went through all the same sensations as I have each time I have managed to quit – coughing up the black stuff, feeling dizzy with all the oxygen making it in, upset stomach, etc. And after about a month of this, I was able to breathe, laugh without coughing, keep up with my children at the park, and I am not so tired anymore. I also find I am no longer depressed. I always felt terrible while I was smoking, because I ‘Knew I shouldn’t, and thus beat myself up mentally. I don’t do that anymore, because I know I am not endangering anybody around me with the vaper, nor do I smell terrible, nor am I destroying my body anymore. It is not near the end of June, 2013. I have been Vaping for 8 months, and won’t ever go back to smoking. I can even smell the flowers in bloom again – who would want to give that up ever again?