I started smoking cigarettes when I was around twenty-five-years old, which is later than most. It was more of a social thing. Something to do at parties or when hanging out with friends. Something other than eating, as I was trying to lose a few pounds at the time as well. Apparently oral fixations run deep because I had smoked a pipe for a few years before picking up the cigarette habit. Things went well for awhile. I didn’t feel addicted, but later I noticed I really had to have a cigarette after a couple hours… three at the most. My consumption increased as the taxes and social stigma increased simultaneously and it put me in a rather uncomfortable position. I wanted to quit or even just reduce my use of cigarettes, but it was harder than I thought. I tried nicotine gum, but learned you have to bite it and hold it between your cheek and gum like chewing tobacco. You cannot just pop them all day and chew them like regular gum or you wind up ingesting way too much nicotine. On top of that, gum, patches, and all the ƒ??approvedƒ? nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) just cost way too much money. Smoking was cheaper and easier… so I continued smoking for over twenty years. When I got married, my wife, Jen, and I agreed to quit smoking together… on our wedding day. That was to be the last day we smoked. Well, at first we were going to stop on that day, but we changed our minds. That was a tip off right there! Already we were making excuses to keep smoking, but we bit the bullet the next day and toughed it out for two months. There are those that will tell you that after a few days, and certainly after two months, that all the nicotine is out of your system and you are no longer addicted. I dare not write what I would like to say to those people, but suffice to say they are not looking at the whole picture. That simple truth (?) didn’t seem so true for either of us. My sweetheart of a wife got grouchy and downright mean at times. I found my patience running thin at as well and did my best to bite my tongue, but I was not always successful. After two months of this we were both ready to start smoking again in the interest of tranquility, so we did… and we continued to smoke for another five years before we tried to quit again. This time we signed up for an online smoking program where they would suggest ways to break the smoking ƒ??triggersƒ? and stop the desire before it got started. They also suggested switching to a brand we didn’t like to make it even less desirable to step out for a cigarette. All of this made sense to us at the time, so we gave it a try. Having smoked Marlboro 100s and my wife smoking the same, but menthol, we switched to Pal Mall menthols. Frankly they were pretty nasty, though not as bad as some generics I had tried. We even took it a step further and we would go outside to smoke together and share one cigarette between us. It didn’t really work for us, I think in part because Pall Mall cigarettes burn almost twice as long as Marlboros. It did save us some money, but we were no closer to quitting. Paying attention to the things that trigger a desire for a cigarette did make us more aware of the situation though. Like after meals, getting into the car, that first cigarette in the morning while waiting for the coffee pot to finish up. All those things were triggers for us… as were phone calls. There is just something about talking on the phone and smoking. They just seem to go together. Being more aware of these triggers just made us more determined to quit, but cold turkey was out of the question. Having just lost my job, and my insurance, there was no way for me to afford any of the NRT products on the market, so I started looking for something else. Nobody had ever mentioned electronic cigarettes to me before, so I had no idea what they were. They were just something I ran across online and I was immediately intrigued with the idea. Nicotine, but without the tar. No soot coating my lungs, yet somehow it looked like smoking. All the videos I watched on YouTube seemed to indicate it felt like smoking. These people seemed to really enjoy ƒ??vaping,ƒ? as they called it, and I began looking at all the different e-cigs that were coming to market. After almost a year of researching them online and learning all I could I decided to give them a try. Being on unemployment meant I had to watch my money closely. I couldn’t afford to fork out $150 for something that wasn’t going to work, but I couldn’t afford to keep smoking either. I could, however, afford $25 at the local mini-market, so I picked up a kit with a battery, three cartridges, and a charger and prepared to give it a try. When I got it home I showed my wife and quickly put it together. She was not enthused about this gizmo initially, so I went first. Not too bad. It wasn’t exactly like smoking, but I could feel the craving for a cigarette abate a little, though not completely. It was still remarkable though! Now, it was far from the best experience because you don’t get what you don’t pay for, as they say. The flavor was a little funky, but tolerable. I had opted for menthol because it seemed like a safer flavor choice, and that was all my wife would smoke anyway. It was more like sucking on a sock full of mints than smoking. I still wanted a cigarette afterwords, but it was a beginning. That first e-cig claimed that one cartridge was equal to a pack of cigarettes. Yeah, well… that was a complete lie. Frankly they were rather dry and didn’t produce a lot of vapor, but I would have to say that one was equal to maybe three or four cigarettes at best. I was on the right track, but this was not going to replace my smoking habit so I kept looking. All those videos I watched seemed to hold one e-cig in the highest esteem. That was the Silver Bullet from AltSmoke.com, and no… I do not nor have I ever worked for them. The cost was high and by the time I got two batteries, a charger, some atomizers (low-res, of course), cartomizers, and some liquid it came to over $130. Still, I figured that if this worked I would save more than that in the first month alone. More, if this worked for Jen too! So, I did it… I went online… ordered it… and waited. Two days later, it came. I was so excited! It really didn’t have much in the way of directions, but it couldn’t be that hard to figure out! I put in a battery, threw on an atomizer, dropped some juice in the top, hit the button and sucked it in. I about died! I didn’t know they pre-soaked the wick inside the atomizer with plain glycerin and all I got was a hot, nasty, dry vape. Man, that was awful! Still, I was determined and I knew I had to be doing something wrong. This was the beginning of my learning curve. Looking at the packing slip, there was a hand-written note inviting me stop by the store if I had any questions. Yeah, right. Where were they? Hundreds of miles away, or more? Damn! I hadn’t even looked at their address when I ordered online. They were only thirty miles from my house! I tinkered with the Silver Bullet and finally got some decent results before allowing Jen to give it a shot. She was overwhelmed by the amount of vapor at first. Frankly I think the size of it is what scared her because it was nearly as big as a two-cell flashlight. C-cells… Not Ds. She was intrigued, but not in love with it… but it was a start. I put the batteries on the charger and continued to tinker with it over the next week or so. I was finally getting decent vapor, but the Marlboro-flavored liquid was kinda nasty, at least to me. I knew there were more flavors besides Marlboro and strawberry, so I decided grab Jen and drive over to AltSmoke’s store and see what they had. The store was very sparse. Just a few showcases in front of a wall less than fifteen feet from the front door. Clearly they were more of a mail-order business and the storefront was more of an afterthought. The staff was friendly and they let us both try different flavors of juice, either in our Silver Bullet or by putting a ƒ??condomƒ? of sorts on a pre-filled cartomizer. The flavors were great! Especially the Mt. Dew flavor, which I swear felt as though it were carbonated! Amazing… and I was finally getting enough vapor that I didn’t feel like smoking after all those samples before we left the store with our bag of flavored liquids. I learned a lot from that short visit and, most of all, it gave me hope. Hope that this e-cig thing could actually end my smoking habit. A couple weeks later we returned and bought Jen her own e-cig, an Alpha, and she used that for several months without ever wanting a cigarette. Within six months she had even quit vaping, but I continue to enjoy it and I’m just relieved to no longer be a slave to cigarettes. I could write a few more chapters on my early experiences and the friends we have made in the vaping community over the last two years, but that is for another time. Right now I just want to assure people that the learning curve is almost gone now! New e-cigs are simpler, easier to use, and require much less fiddling than they used to. I usually recommend an eGo Twist battery (It even lets you adjust the voltage for the best flavor!) or something similar and what is called a ƒ??Clearomizer,ƒ? which is basically a small tank you fill with liquid and vape until it’s gone. No more ƒ??dry vapesƒ? required! It just works right out of the box! Now you can get into this as much as you want, just like any other hobby… and a hobby it can become! You may find you prefer a rebuildable atomizer where you wind your own coils around your own wicking material and customize the whole setup to your particular taste, or you may just stick with a basic setup. It’s all up to you! Just a couple suggestions from me to you: I do NOT recommend the cigarette-sized e-cigs because the battery life is too short and they don’t produce enough vapor to suit my tastes. Also,if you smoke over a pack a day I suggest starting out with 24mg juices. That usually eliminates the ƒ??needƒ? for a cigarette completely and you can drop down to lower nicotine levels later as you see fit. There is no right or wrong here, those are just my suggestions. You are free to find what works for you, and no matter what that is, any vape is better than a cigarette… just don’t give up! I hope I have been of some help to you. Good luck on your journey to being smoke-free!