I started smoking when I was 11 years old. My step brother used to take cigarettes from his dad and we would go out back and smoke them. I continued to smoke even after I moved in with my dad and my step mom. During my 8th grade year my dad found out I was smoking and tried to force me to quit by making me smoke a pack of lucky strikes before school one day. I felt sick to my stomach, but it didn’t work. I kept smoking, and did so all through high school. A couple years after high school I tried to quit smoking and tried using the gum, as well as tried quitting cold turkey. The gum did not help but I was able to quit for about 6 months until I started hanging around some friends from high school. When this happened I started smoking again. It wasn’t till the beginning of this year that I decided that because of my health problems I needed to quit. Last year I was injured on the job, I spent all of last year trying to find out what was wrong with me. This year in Jan I found out that I needed surgery on my right shoulder, I was told if I didn’t quit smoking I had a 90% chance I would have to go back in for surgery because it would not heal right. Well to my dismay, even though I started vapeing I ended up having a second surgery anyway. But after the first surgery, about 2 maybe 3 weeks later, my wife’s parents had me try their Vaporizers. It was nothing fancy, just a Ego 650 mah battery with a CE5 tank. But I liked it, had good flavor, made me cough like crazy, but I figured I would give it a try. So after almost 17 years of smoking here I am, 8 months cigarette free. I used both my vapor and cigarettes for the first 2 days, I was told to use both for a week. That didn’t work, after 2 days smoking cigarettes tasted nasty and hurt my chest. I stopped smoking cigarettes after the second day and my chest stopped hurting and things have been great. Since I started vapeing I have gotten my sense of smell and taste to come back stronger then when I smoked. I started with the basic stuff, Ego style battery with a Evod tank, moved up to a MVP with a pro tank. Now I am using mechanical mods (Nemesis) and RBD tanks (Smoktech RSST) and am going to get into RDA’s ( drip atomizers). I started out using 18mg nicotine juice, I am now down to 6mg and sometime here in the near future I will drop to 0 nicotine. This has turned into a hobby for me, I enjoy the tinkering and trying different flavors. For me its like having desert all day long. I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world, and I certainly will NOT EVER.. go back to smoking cigarettes. I tell as may people as I can who ask me about my mod, what it is and what it does. I have taken smokers to my local Vape Shops and helped them get started, and those people quit smoking and only vape now as well. I don’t think I would have found a way to get of cigarettes if I had not found vapeing. I know in the end vapeing will have saved my life, and the life of my wife who quit smoking and switched to vapeing after I did. I have met many great and wounderfull people in the vapeing community. People support each other and help keep them on the right path so they don’t go back to smoking. I have seen people buy juice for another cuz they didn’t have the money till payday and didn’t want to see them relapse. At one point I had a friend, buy a bottle of juice for me because I ran out between paydays, so they helped me out. Not once have I had someone do that while I was smoking. There is no bound between smokers the way I have found there is between vapers. I am proud to be a vaper, im proud of the people who I have met and now call friends. Without them, and the people who want vapeing to continue to help save lives, I would still be smoking and not feeling as good as I do now. And I know that I am only going to continue to feel better and better the longer I stay away from cigarettes.