Yeah, smoking's even more horrible in retrospect, for me.
I remember waking up one morning that seems like eons ago (under 2 months) with the big familiar lumpy feeling in my throat that I was sure was esophageal cancer, and the usual raw breathing, and hearing that creepy wheeze in the lungs, and not being able to get a sweet lungful of morning air, and noting once again that I felt like crap and was already halfway thru my first cigarette before my eyes had fully opened (pat pat on the bedside table), and thinking about all of the stuff that everyone remembers, and thinking, as usual, "I need to stop this. Now." And, as usual, "Right." And something dimly resembling a prayer on that.
And then (this is true) playing with StumbleUpon (the random searcher-of-good-sites app) while having my coffee-in-bed, and after looking at photos of cool strange houses, and playing with a vector thingie, and looking at a video of an orangutan who is friends with a dog, it landed me at a site called Bizarre Inventions or something, and there was a little thing about an e-cigarette. Twinkle twinkle.
So I googled it, and wandered a little, and landed on ECF. And somehow spent my first hour in there in what must have been the modders section. This led me to believe that ecigs were extremely complicated things that kids who had garage bands and guys who built their own motorcycles were deeply into. Poop. Still. Still...
Then off to work. Was up all that night, and a lotta nights, finding out about it all. By the time I ordered my first kit from V4L, with confidence in my choice (I DO research everything, and speed read) I was already an idiot savant on the topic. Sort of. I even had twenty zillion gallons of Vita Water on hand.
And it was an immediate huge easy YAY. The end of all that, wow. Zero sweat and absolute enjoyment (that DID surprise me).
One thing I know is that I'll never go back again, because all of those memories pop up all the time. And within a week the wheeze was completely gone, the lumpy swallow was gone, the breathing was big and beautiful, and like everyone else in here, it feels like life itself. Like the man says. (I REALLY do love you, Steve.)
If they ban them, I dunno what I'll do - I'm stocked up and will be getting a taper down emergency stock for the closet, but it's just not ever going to be cigarettes again.
Snus? Just let it go? Whatever. Cross it when and if I come to it.
Not worried about vaping at all at this point (hospice doc, who's been riding me for years, noted that it's a brilliant invention and that nicotine isn't much different than coffee, and not to sweat the small stuff - I about fainted, as he's pretty conservative). Those memories are no joke.
And oh, OK, here's one that not too many will share. I've been a very terrible but serious Zen student for about 30 years. Try sitting a sesshin (a 3 - 9 day or longer sit) when you've been smoking 2-4 packs a day forever. Very ... .... .... .....
One of my favorite Roshis (that's a Zen Master) was a smoker. He wouldn't much talk about it, was just OK with it. Died this year of lung CA, in his 50's. Wrap yer ephemeral mind around that one, glasshoppah.
Cigs seemed like an indispensable friend while wrenching my wretched way thru a divorce after 30 years married, and a string of subsequent related and unrelated catastrophes that would sink the Queen Mary (and the death of my wonderful mom, chain smoker, lung CA)... some decade this has been, oy. And a very smoky one.
And then there was the vaguely sometimes-appealing idea of maybe possibly finding another guy... but I was chain smoking all day and half the night, and at my age, and in this anti-smoking age, and in my subculture whatchcallit, well, it ain't a pretty thang ...
So it's not just the thousand little things, it's the big things, too.
This is the first Dr Pepper I've vaped. Freebie. Hey, it's nice!
Plus, every time they light up, i can smell it from a mile away, and i start getting very sick at my stomach.. 
I guess all of that crap is out of my system, and it has put up heavy defenses to prevent another attack.. 
