I started smoking when I was around 15-16 and have been smoking ever since. I am now 31 and have 3 beautiful children. My wife and I knew we couldn’t keep up the habit forever and had to quit for our children, our health and to save money. My parents both smoked when I was growing up and having parents telling you not to smoke while smoking doesn’t work. I was not going to allow that to happen to my children so we decided to quit almost exactly a year ago. To increase our chances of quitting we began the prescription drug Chantix along with acupuncture and hypnosis sessions. In addition to all that we decided to take a family vacation to the beach on our quit date. The beach trip would reiterate to my wife and I the reasons we wanted to quit. However, even with Chantix and all the support in the world we only managed to stay quit for 4 months. My wife and I both we’re pretty disgusted with ourselves for not having the willpower to see it through. But we decided to give it another go as soon as we could save up some money again. At the time I knew I needed to have a lot of money to quit. You see, Chantix, which is not covered by my insurance, is very expensive. We also needed/wanted money for hypnosis, vacations and anything else we needed to successfully quit. Unfortunately that time never came but we still knew we had to quit. Fast forward to about a month ago and we started another prescription of Chantix. We knew we wouldn’t be able to go on a vacation so we planned a lot of stuff for us to do the day we quit. Everything was going great until about a week after I quit. The Chantix started to literally make me crazy. I was having horrible mood swings, I would get very upset with my wife and kids and would often just go to bed as soon as I walked in the door from work. I had to stop taking Chantix because I couldn’t deal with what it was doing to my mind. The day I decided to stop taking Chantix, by some miracle, a friend introduced me to electronic cigarettes. I was absolutely amazed about what he was telling me and knew this could be my ticket to successfully quitting. So that very day I picked up a disposable electronic cigarette from the convenience store. It was fairly expensive but I knew I was just trying it out. My wife and I had our reservations, however, because were we really quitting by still using nicotine? If all the information about e-cigs is believed to be true then we knew it was a much safer alternative to smoking cigarettes. It also costs a lot less. So we started out with a simple EGO battery and cartomizer and are in love with the product. My wife and I aren’t as into the hobby as others I’ve met and we plan on cutting back our nicotine to eventually quit it altogether, but until then I am enjoying the hell out of vaping and the community of ex-smokers that surround the products. Only time will tell if we stay quit but I can’t ever see myself wanting another cigarette, and I couldn’t say that the last time I quit. I always had cravings, but now I can just vape instead. It’s been a life-changer for myself, my wife, and most importantly, our three children.