Real Person: How I Quit Smoking and Started Vaping

“How to Quit Smoking” – this has always been one of the most frequently used search phrases online. People are desperately seeking ways how to finally quit smoking, and, thankfully, there are a lot of options, including nicotine patches, nicotine chewing gum and also electronic cigarettes. But the fact is that a lot of people fail on their way to a smokeless life. Why? They miss the process, the smell, the nicotine and the taste; at the same time mismotivation, misknowledge, pressure from peers and the hectic way of modern living isn’t helping either.

When smokers just want to take a break at work or school, they can have a „cigarette break”, where also the real conversations and discussions take place. After a hard day, you just sometimes want to get home ASAP, sit alone with your thoughts and light your cigarette, but in the morning you understand again how unhealthy and unpleasant of a vice that is: cough and headaches in the morning, sleepless nights etc. Below I would like to share my experience – how I quit smoking and started vaping.

Real Person: How I Quit Smoking and Started Vaping

First of all, I would like to introduce myself:

Name: Martins

Gender: Male

Age: 24

Zodiac: Taurus

Smoking experience: 8 years

Cigarettes smoked per month: 600-700

Monthly expenses on cigarettes, EUR: 150-250

Vaping experience: 2 years

E-liquid used per month: 55-60ml

Vaping expenses per month, EUR: 25-35

Yes, I know, I started smoking when I was really young – I simply met the wrong crew back then. But let’s not go into details about my past – I just want to share how many times I tried to quit smoking.

With nicotine patches: 1 attempt

With nicotine crewing gums: 2 attempts

Reading books about how to quit smoking: 2 attempts

On Sunday deciding to quit cold turkey on Monday: 15+ attempts

At least 20 unsuccessful attempts total, or 5+ attempts per year, which is not little – especially for a 20 year old. So let’s take look into details why my attempts failed.

Nicotine patches

There were no process. Of course, I took in the nicotine, but I had already used to recieving it by inhaling and exhaling smoke. When I applied a nicotine patch I only felt that I have a patch on my arm and there is no nicotine into my body. Felt stressed out and always craved a cigarette. That’s why I failed at the 2nd day, and the nicotine patches ended up in the bin. By the way, my friends had similar experiences.

Nicotine chewing gum

Again – no process. It seemed like it was just the same as quitting cold turkey – saying ‘no’ to a daily habit, which is very important for you. Also, these chewing gums taste awful – at least I hated the taste. When I chewed them for too long, I sometimes started vomitting. And it was really easy to chew them for too long because you don’t think much about the gum in your mouth and you just chew, chew and chew. Then, after a year or so, there came the 2nd attempt, and results were the same. Maybe there is just something wrong with my body.

Reading books about how to quit smoking

After reading a couple of books I started smoking already after 3 days. Only by reading Allen Carr’s “Easy way to stop smoking” I didn’t take a cigarette in my hands for a month, but then something else happened – I started drinking on weekends more. Than I comforted myself by saying: it’s okay to smoke while you drink alcohol. Then, if I really wanted to smoke during workdays, I just bought a beer, and again my nasty friend – the cigarette – was in my hands. After that month I understood that I will probably quit smoking, but at the same time will become an alcoholic, so I stopped this weird, one month long therapy.

On Sunday deciding to quit cold turkey on Monday

Really huge will power is needed here, and the first 2 weeks are simply terrible. A smoker’s life can really turn into a nightmare and become super complicated without nicotine and the process of smoking. Of course, a lot of my attempts were disasters, but the last one was great. I quit for at least 6 months. How? I quit drinking, got a new job, moved to a new city, bought a new car and started to do a lot of sports. All of these factors helped me quit, but during the first month I had barely any conversation with my family, friends and girflriend, because WITHOUT any rational reason I just went from a peaceful person to a super angry and stressed out man in a blink of an eye. I was swearing all the time when sitting in traffic jams, and almost got into several accidents. But if you have enough will power then this IS possible.

How I started vaping

It was a really great and pleasant feeling when I quit smoking. After the 3rd month I really started to feel free from cancer sticks. But, still, sometimes when I was having a drink, after a hard day at work or just in some special moments I wanted to “celebrate” with a cigarette – I just missed the process so much. But I never wanted to start smoking again – I already hated that smell and the general feeling. Then I started to read about electronic cigarettes and decided to try them out. Of course, I read a lot of bad news articles stating that electronic cigarettes are really harmful for your health, as well as other silly stuff.

Then I bought my first electronic cigarette for around 30 EUR, which was enough for a beginner. And quite soon I already wanted to enjoy higher level of vaping, and bought my first real mod – an Innokin iTaste SVD.

From my experience, for the body, there is no difference between vaping and not vaping at all. I can’t feel any bad or harmful changes. No nasty side effects as from smoking cigarettes: cough, headaches, etc. But as I have tried a lot of electronic cigarettes and EC related products, I can honestly say – in most cases, higher prices for the main components (mods, clearos and e-liquid) mean higher quality and therefore better vaping experience.

As I spend a lot of time in the office or in the car, I love that I can vape where I want to and nobody is complaining about the smell or other things, which is a norm with traditional tobacco cigarettes. I really love that I can do something very similar to smoking without damaging my health so much. At least I feel great and can’t complain that I started vaping.

Final thoughts

Nicotine replacement therapy (patches/chewing gums), as well as book reading and other “alternatives” of smoking all have the same problem – there is no process involved. But I have always loved the process of smoking. By using an electronic cigarette, I can get into this process (or at least a very similar one) whenever I want to, and I can even vape an e-liquid with no nicotine content. I also feel that vaping is not harming my health in any way; I have never been as fit as I am right now, and my lung capacity is much higher – I can feel that in every breath.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in comments – I’ll try to answer.

If my experience was not enough for you, just look for more information on Ecigclopedia.com and check out our Cost Saving Calculator to find out how much money can you save by vaping instead of smoking tobacco cigarettes!

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Martin B.

Ex-smoker, passionate vaper who loves to tell the world about the life-changing potential of vaping. Co-creator of Ecigclopedia with a background in Business & Finance. Prefers a dessert flavored vape and loves to innovate.

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