My story begins at age 15 when I first started smoking. I don’t know why I started, maybe peer pressure, maybe I wanted to fit in. Who knows. I smoked 1 1/2 – 2 packs of Winston Lights a day for 20 years. I couldn’t breath as well as I used too, and always seemed to be sick, so I decided it was time to quit. Over the next 10 years I tried everything I could think of: hypnosis, snuff (yeah I know, gross for a girl especially), prescription drugs, the patch, and quitting cold turkey. Nothing worked, so I continued to smoke. Then several years ago I bought an electronic cigarette. Initially I thought it was pretty cool, and it did help cut down my smoking. After a while it really became a hassle and messy dealing with the cartridges and stuff, not to mention having to order from the other side of the country and wait for refills to come in. This was the old school, cigarette look-a-like type e-cig. When it finally became more trouble than it was worth, I dropped it. Last year about Thanksgiving, I heard a commercial on the radio talking about a local Vapor shop that had opened. Since it had been a couple of years, I thought I’d give the e-cig another try. I mentioned it to my girlfriend a few times, but with the amount of travel I was doing with my job, I never had time to stop in the store. Christmas morning rolls around, and one of my presents was a new e-cig. This time it was different. It looked absolutely nothing like a cigarette, and there were no messy cartridges to deal with, and the flavor of the e-juice was so much better than the last one I had used! Needless to say I was still skeptical, but since my girlfriend had been so thoughtful as to get it for me, I gave it a try. At first I continued to smoke, and only vaped at home. Over time I realized I was smoking less and vaping more. After a little while longer, I didn’t even want to smoke anymore. During this time, vape shops had started popping up all over the area I live in, and one was about a mile from my house. I had become a regular there, purchasing new, upgraded e-cigs and tasty e-liquid (e-juice or juice). One day after work, I looked at the partial pack of smokes sitting in the console of my truck and realized I hadn’t smoked in a few days, so I stopped by the local shop and dropped the pack in the quitters box, and haven’t looked back since. I started vaping a nicotine level of 24mg and have dropped that down to 6mg. My doctor is very happy with my vaping, and has deemed me a non-smoker! Now I go to the gym regularly, and am out of breath from a butt kicking workout and NOT because my lungs are all full of gunk. I can smell things I couldn’t have smelled a year ago, food tastes so much better, and I haven’t been sick once since I quit smoking. I can honestly say my electronic cigarette saved my life!