I had started smoking when I turned 18. It started as a cigarette a day, if that. After a while it evolved into a very important habit for me. Long story short, 4 years later I decided it was enough. I tried quitting cold turkey, but I didn’t make it past a week. My escalation into forming cigarette smoking into a habit started as a way to reduce stress, even if it was purely psychological. I was a complete mess. I decided to give an e-cigarette a go, and it wasn’t long before I put it back on the shelf and went back to regular cigarettes. It was apparently a lower-end model, and it didn’t really help supplement what I liked about smoking. After four or five months of being back to cigarettes, I decided to quit again. I happened across a store near my house that sells a variety of e-cigarettes and noticed that these were higher quality models. After a discussion with an employee, I walked out of there with a new e-cigarette. The very first time I turned that thing on and took a puff, I knew there was absolutely no reason to go back to cigarettes again. It took what I liked about cigarettes, and eliminated what I hated about them. They had a good taste to them, they don’t smell, and it’s a relaxing experience (as opposed to the occasions when I was smoking where it seemed to actually increase my stress). The thing to really understand about this is I didn’t need to ween myself off cigarettes. I didn’t go 50/50 with my e-cig and my regular cigarettes. Granted I had been of cigarettes for a week-or-so already, but I was at that breaking point where I was desperate for either this to work, or I’d start smoking again. I also was not on any other ‘quit smoking’ method, nor have I tried them yet. As far as Chantix and similar medications goes, I’m a bit wary about the side-effects (an ex-cigarette smoker worried about side effects, go figure), and I hadn’t tried anything else. I enjoy the routine that comes along with cigarettes/e-cigarettes. For example, if I’m working on something for a long time, it’s nice to stand up, pull my e-cig out, and take a few puffs on it before returning to work. My life has taken a turn for the better since I’d started using these. I don’t crave or even think about cigarettes anymore. You could argue that I’m still addicted to it in some form, and you would be right to an extent. I took my cigarette addiction and used e-cigarettes as a replacement, but frankly, I’m not sure why anyone would try to make that a negative. My body has been healing from the damage cigarettes have done. I can breathe better, I can taste things again, and I don’t smell like I was just shot out of a volcano. You wonder if e-cigs can help you get off cigarettes? My answer is absolutely, without a doubt, all of my yes. Once I had found the right model, all the misery and awfulness that quitting induces had disappeared. I find myself being less reliant on my habit. If you had hidden my cigarettes from me when I was a smoker, I would have torn down walls-or entire worlds-to find them. If my battery runs out, I can actually just wait for it to charge. It’s been an amazing experience for me, and I’m happy I gave them a chance.