I was a regular cigarette smoker, but LOVED a good cigar once in a while.
I have three humidors full of various premium cigars that I keep maintained at the proper humidity and temp. I haven't had the nerve to try one since I switched to vaping, but I may just have to break down and have one to celebrate my one year mark.
Cigarettes were the addiction, cigars were a pleasure and an indulgence, so I really can't see having one now and again being a problem.
Somebody mentioned cigars...
Fine Cigars are one of the most amazing pleasures that life has to offer. For me, the time spent enjoying an exquisite cigar with friends cannot be traded away for a PV... While I enjoy spending times with vapers at gatherings, I see no harm in partaking in the occasional cigar under special and memorable circumstances. Perspective is a good thing! A couple cigars per year doesn't turn anybody into a bad person... Quite to the contrary!
Besides my perpetual backsliding into cigarettes, I'm also a cigar smoker. I have a humidor the size of a bureau with over 1000 cigars and have averaged close to a cigar per day for many years. I started vaping because after 22 or so years of pack-a-day cigarette smoking I stopped for over 3 years and then, like an idiot, started again and have not been able to fully stop since. From Day 1 of vaping, I haven't smoked a cigarette, smoked a pipe, or used the Snus (Swedish chewing tobacco) I used with some regularity as well. I simply stopped getting nicotine from analog-style sources and started getting it from vaping.
The amazing thing to me is that, quite unintentionally, vaping has also nearly eliminated my cigar smoking as well. Since mid-December I've had 4 cigars and those were at a weekly meetup with a bunch of friends I've been smoking stogies with for years. I had no intention of giving them up but the truth is that I have virtually no desire for them anymore. In fact, I am in the process of inventorying my collection so that I can sell it. I expect I'll keep 100 or so of my best, rarest, and most well aged cigars to enjoy now and again like Brewzz and Zen~ mentioned above, but I'm going to part with the rest as well as around 75 aging tins of pipe tobacco and about 30 tins of Snus.
I know we all have our own stories and each is important and unique but I can hardly describe how stupefying this process has been for me. To have vaping basically instantly remove my desire for all products based on tobacco in its natural (and, in the case of cigarettes, decidedly unnatural) form is so shocking that I sometimes don't believe it myself. And yet it's true. Amazing.
Anyway, each of the 4 cigars I've smoked in the past 2 months or so has been enjoyable but, honestly, a bit less so than before I started vaping. Mostly this is due to the fact that it is winter in Minneapolis so we are relegated to smoking inside and the sheer volume of smoke, even in shops that have excellent air exchangers, is far more noticeable to me now than it was before. But part of it is that I simply don't
quite enjoy them as much as I did before. That I am not sad because of this is perhaps the strangest revelation of all.
So Brewzz: have a cigar, see how it works for you, and let us know.
- Tim