When I was 11 years old, I would constantly tell my parents that their cigarettes smelled bad. When I was 13, I smoked my first cigarette. I’ll not bore you with the reasons or how peer pressure made me do bad things. I smoked that first cigarette, nobody else. By the age of 16, I was smoking almost a pack a day, and by 30 I was up to almost two packs per day. I started having some health issues; multiple bouts of bronchitis, sinus infections, heart palpitations, anxiety and without a doubt shortness of breath. I tried to quit at the age of 32, by sheer willpower alone. What followed the next nine years were multiple trips down failure lane as I tried every conceivable way to quit smoking. Nicotine patch? Hives, severe anxiety attacks and heart palpitations. Nicotine gum? Projectile vomiting and a lovely case of swollen tongue. Pills? Night terrors, suicidal ideation, paranoia and mood swings that would make a menopausal woman look at me with a mix of pity and fear. Acupuncture? Migraines and facial twitches. I won’t even bother to mention hypnotherapy, as with all the money I threw down my trachea, three hundred dollars of my hard earned cash wound up in a snake oil salesman’s wallet just seemed like a bit of a karmic ‘GOTCHA!’ I gave up on giving up smoking. I was doomed to live out the rest of my days smelling like an ashtray, wheezing like an old VW going up a six percent grade, and most likely dying from self immolation while trying to smoke with my oxygen tank turned on. (Google it-it happens WAY TOO OFTEN.) Then, I read an article in my local newspaper about a new store that had opened up that sold electronic vaporizers and nicotine juice exclusively. My wife asked me if I’d 1)read the article, and 2)had I thought about trying e-cigarettes to curtail my smoking? Curiosity got the better of my apathy and off to the shop I went. After questions, answers, taste testing and a smoke break I left with some e-juice, a cartomizer,a battery and above all else, HOPE. I could get my nicotine and satisfy the psychological cravings while getting away from traditional cigarettes? Count me in! It took some getting used to, I will admit. There were certain cigarettes that I just couldn’t seem to get past. The first smoke of the day with my coffee. The after meal smoke. The cigarette I’d light as soon as I started the car. Little by little, I worked at replacing those with my trusty pen-style e-cigarette, until one night I reached the end of a pack of cigarettes. After deciding I didn’t want to walk out to the car to get a new pack, I went to bed with an idea. I would play a game of How long can I go vaping? After one week, I asked a friend for a drag off of his smoke. It tasted like utter garbage, like I’d taken all of the butts from a urinal, heated them to plasmic proportions and sucked the resulting mess down my windpipe. I handed him his cigarette and for the first time in TWENTY SEVEN YEARS I said; No thank you. It’s been a year since that day, and as I’m typing this I have tears in my eyes. Let’s just say that those tears are from the not-smoke that is in my eyes. They’re from hope. Hope that one day soon I will be nicotine free. I started with 18 mg e-juice and I’m now down to 6 mg. I haven’t had any bronchitis. My sinuses are clearing up. My cardiologist is happy, my wife is ecstatic. Best of all? I’m free.