So here's the story about how I came across vaping.
It all started over a thousand years ago with my GREAT ancestor, a woman whom we'll refer to as Numb Gums. Numb Gums was the apprentice to the shaman of a group of peoples indigenous to the lands now comprising what we know as the Americas.
One day while gathering sage brush, she discovered a strange leafy plant whose leaves caused numbness to the soles of her bare feet. Curious about the plant and hoping to impress her master shaman, she decided to taste the leaf. She discovered that chewing on several leaves of this magical plant caused her to hallucinate and allowed her to communicate with the great spirits. With this newfound ability to commune with and consult the great spirits, she won the respect of the peoples of her tribe and she quickly became the sole matriarch of her tribe.
Numb Gums eventually passed on the knowledge of the magical plant to her disciples as well as neighboring tribes. The effects of the plant were such that the plant, later known as tobacco, became regarded as sacred, and its leaves were only to be chewed (and later smoked) on special occasions.
For the ensuing hundred generations, the tobacco plant remained sacred.
But in 1492, everything changed.
When the first foreigners arrived in the Americas from Europe, they discovered the magical tobacco plant offered to them as a gesture of friendship by the indigenous peoples.
In return, the European invaders manipulated, infected, and eventually, slaughtered their hosts as they enclosed the lands that were once communal. They also stole the secrets of the magical and sacred tobacco plant and returned with it to Europe, where people haphazardly smoked and chewed it for its intoxicating effects.
It was not long before the Europeans began to commercially cultivate the once sacred plant. It was grown on massive plantations, where slaves stolen from Africa and free White landless men were exploited for their labor.
The growers profited. They knew that once people started using the tobacco recreationally outside of its sacred purposes, they would not be able to stop.
The growers also knew that the magical plant was evil.
The unholy use of the tobacco unleashed unholy spirits within those who used it recreationally, and the evil gripped people's souls, grasping tighter and tighter until they took their last breaths. And those who tried to stop were plagued by coughing spells that slowly released the dark brown evilness as phlegm from their chests, but rarely could people fully escape from the seductive embrace of the evil once it had sunken into their bodies. And because of this evil, the growers became massively wealthy, while people seduced by the evil plant slowly withered under the plant's curse. And because of this wealth, the growers wouldn't allow new generations to discontinue use of their products.
So it came to be that I, at the beginning of this millennium, over a thousand years after my great ancestor discovered the magical properties of the sacred tobacco plant, became haplessly enticed by the allure of the great spirits and the promise of my great ancestors, only to become corrupted by the dark unholy spirit world. And now, a decade after losing my ability to speak with the great spirits, but still caught within the tendrils of tobacco's smokey grasp, I have come across hope. Hope where other tools failed to dupe the wily evils within. Hope that I can placate the cravings until I can retrain my mind and spirit so that I no longer am victim to the rituals sustaining that which has drained me for too long.
This "New Hope" arrived unexpectedly like a meteorite from the sky above. You know how sometimes you start reading a Wikipedia article for some quick information about something relevant to whatever it is you're doing in your life, say "George Orwell", and then suddenly you realize that it's 3 hours later and you somehow ended up watching a youtube video of someone blowing vaperings? Well that is pretty much what happened to me, and was how I ended up on this forum asking myself what the big deal was with e-cigarettes. A few days later and I'm over anxiously waiting for my Volt starter kit to be delivered by the mail person (shipment tracking says tomorrow!!!), twitching with anxiety about trying to finally rid myself of the smokey haze that has enshrouded me for the past decade.
Um yeah, that was 3x longer than I had anticipated. Sorry...
[tl;dr: wikipedia click-throughs for 3 hours until I hit a youtube video of someone blowing vape rings]
