hi there! i started smoking at 13 years of age, back in 1973. my problem was,(& still would be if it were not for my ecigs) that i love to smoke! and that is putting it mildly. over the preceding years my habit really took off leading to the point were i was smoking up to and sometimes cover 60 cigarettes a day not a particularly difficult thing to do as my job entails long hours in a truck driving all over the country, only problem is that the cigarettes where finally getting the better of me as i was beginning to suffer basic health problems,such as shortness of breath, coughing fits,asthma,lung pain my health was slowly getting worse.but even this wasnt going to stop me from my god given right to smoke no way! but about 3 years ago my employer decided to crack down on in cab smoking to the point of dismissing anyone caught smoking in the cabs and this included any smoking smells or any incriminating smoking paraphernalia found in the cabs as you can imagine i became his number one pet project he wanted to make an example of someone and he had his eyes firmly set in my direction, as i was the company chain smoker. first of i tried all the usual things to avoid smoking at work , dummy fags that tasted more like smoked mackerel than real tobacco,nicotine gum that supposedly made real fags taste awful (trust me you can get used to the taste if you really need to!!)plus a myriad of other things that also did not help any. but then one evening i was watching the television and on the news there was an item on this strange new idea the electric cigarette and this for me was an revelation and i had to find out more, and so i did i bought my first cigarette style ecig and only used it at work for about the first 6 months smoking normal fags at home with the wife but it worked i managed to keep my job and actually had the boss thinking i had packed in smoking completely because of the clean cab syndrome in that there was nothing to detect because i actually did not smoke in the day until i had returned home all thanks to my ecigs. the real breakthrough for me personally though was that because i was using my ecig for work i was actually getting my nicotine fix anyway,plus i really felt that i was actually smoking even if it was only vapour, and because of this i would really build up my first real fag of the day when i got home on an hourly countdown 8hrs 7 hrs 6 hrs to go to my first REAL fag of the day and wasnt that first drag going to be bliss, pure release and ecstacy!! but it never was, the damned ecig did its job and totally robbed it of its pleasure leaving me smelling like an old ash tray with a tarry burnt taste in my mouth WHAT an anticlimax after all that anticipation! so after 6 months of this i finally had a tool that could do the unthinkable and i stopped smoking and took up vaping full time! haven’t took a cheeky drag since! up sides are i hardly ever need to use my asthma medication these days i finally have a silent chest,i can now do a whole flight or two of stairs without running out of steam,(really!) my wife seems to think my skin pallor and plumpness has improved(she says i look fresher for my age!) i most certainly do not suffer with as much aches and pains as i used to and i believe that when i do come down with colds and the like i seem to recover much more quickly from them than i used to, also not every cold seems to include a bad chest infection requiring antibiotics which when i was smoking at my heaviest seemed to be every time. the real upshot of this is simple after changing from tobacco cigarettes to electronic cigarettes i can honestly say that although i know i am both fitter and healthier than at any time in the last 10 years based on the quality of my life in comparison, i don’t particularly feel fitter, and i don’t feel particularly healthier, i can actually say that i do feel well within myself in a way i have not felt for years so all i can tell you is that for me my ecig revelation has worked a minor (very minor) miracle.