First, I'd like to say "congratulations!!!" on being willing to try to quit again.
(Second- this post got way, way longer than I intended. Way longer, lol. So I'm going to mark where my personal experience begins/ends so you can skip that part if you're not interested. It starts now, lol.)
I'm similar to you in terms of age, and I also quit once for a whole year before making a bad choice and becoming addicted again. Every day I was beating myself up in my mind for making that stupid mistake and buying that pack of cigarettes after a year of being smoke-free.
I had never tried ecigs before though, so I was figuring out how to vape while I was still smoking cigarettes.
I saw a commercial on TV for the cigarette look-alikes, and drove straight to a gas station and bought one to try it out. I figured they couldn't be any worse for my health than smoking, so I had nothing to lose. I'd heard horrible things about ecigs, but I was back to coughing like crazy every morning from the regular cigs, and I really wanted to find a way to quit smoking again. I wasn't getting the exact same feeling from it as I did from smoking (I wasn't getting the nicotine "rush" feeling that I was used to), so I decided maybe I could just try to use one of those devices in between cigarettes and in places I didn't want tainted by the smell of cigarettes (my house and car, mainly).
I did a Google search for ecigarettes and found that there was a vape shop nearby. I thought maybe they would have higher nicotine products and a bigger selection of the look-alikes, so I went the next day. Needless to say, I was overwhelmed when I walked in at all the different options, and I was shocked that they didn't look anything like cigarettes. After talking with the owner for awhile about the different options, he suggested buying a starter kit to begin with so I could see if I liked it. I tried a starter kit tank inside the store, and I thought it was way better than the stick I had bought at the gas station. The walls in the store filled with different juices were completely overwhelming. I started out testing the tobacco flavors, but I couldn't find an exact taste-match to the menthol cigarettes I had been smoking. I thought the taste would be a huge part of it for quitting cigarettes, so I almost decided to just throw the idea away entirely and not buy anything. The owner suggested trying some menthol-only flavors (no tobacco taste), but, again, I couldn't find a close match to my old cigs. As I kept trying all the minty flavors though (gosh, there were more than 10, lol), I realized that some of them tasted really, really good. I never got used to the bad taste of cigarettes when I started back up again, so I decided to get a plain mint flavor that I thought was tasty, even though it didn't resemble my menthol cigarettes. I really didn't think it was going to work, but for $50 bucks it was worth a try. I bought the highest nicotine level they sold, even though I was only smoking a half a pack a day, because I didn't want to go through any nicotine withdrawal (I knew it wouldn't work for me if I did).
Anyway, I'm rambling now. They set up the tank for me inside the store and it worked properly and I took it home. I tried reaching for it when I wanted to smoke a regular cig, but I still wasn't getting the same feeling from it I was used to, so I kept smoking cigs at the same time. After refilling the tank for the first time, I couldn't get it to stop leaking eliquid. After a couple hits on it, I was getting eliquid straight into my mouth (ewww!) and I was convinced this vaping thing was a load of crap.
I did a Google search for the tank that I bought, to see if there was any way to stop the leaking. This forum was the first thing to pop up and information overload began, lol. I went back to the vape shop the next day and bought a better, more expensive tank. Now that I'd invested even more money I was really set in my mind that I had to try to make this work. The new tank didn't leak, even when I refilled it at home, and that was a huge relief.
I kept smoking and vaping, about half and half. After about a week the taste of cigarettes was so much worse that I was brushing my teeth immediately after each one. There were times that vaping wasn't satisfying enough to stop my craving though, so I did some more searching on here to figure out how I could get vaping to be enough for me to finally quit smoking altogether. In the mornings, I would try vaping a few hits and not get the instant satisfaction that I did from cigarettes, and I would go and have a regular cig. I couldn't figure out why vaping didn't give me the same head-rush/satisfaction that I got from cigarettes, when I knew what I bought had even more nicotine than I was used to.
(Note: Personal history/story ends here. Sorry for the wall of text!)
The key thing for me was finding an explanation on here about how vaping works for delivering nicotine vs. regular smoking. It doesn't work as quickly as smoking, instead of immediate delivery it said it took something like 30 seconds to feel the full effect of a hit. Also it said that vapers usually had to vape for longer than they used to smoke a cigarette, because the nicotine being delivered isn't absorbed the exact same way. I think it mentioned something like 10+ minutes of taking hits, and I was used to only taking 5 minutes to smoke a regular cig. The last key for me was reading a post describing how to take puffs on an ecig. Long, slow, gentle drags, instead of the quick hard ones I had been used to. And also inhaling the vapor first into the mouth, and then at the end inhaling from the mouth into the lungs, because nicotine absorbs very well inside your mouth (hence chewing tobacco!), so that allows you to get even more nicotine in a hit.
Those were game-changing for me. As I was practicing each new piece of information I was reading, I finally got the nicotine "rush" feeling that I craved. And instead of taking a hit and expecting instant nicotine feelings, I waited 30 seconds and then realized that yes, the feeling was there, I just hadn't been waiting for it because I thought it was the same delivery as regular smoking.
Right then I decided I would start vaping only for a couple days (or as long as I could last), and see if I could get used to the difference now that it was much less.
I kept trying cigarettes off and on while I vaped, mainly so the packs of cigs I had wouldn't have to all be thrown out, lol. The taste and smell became unbearable after a week though, so I gave up on cigarettes and got over the money I had wasted on packs I'd never finish.
If I had quit trying to vape after that first tank I tried, I would still be smoking right now. It's so important to find something that works properly, and to research the differences with how to vape vs. how you smoke a cigarette. That's the only way you can be successful, IMO. Also, you need to have 2 batteries before you decide to try to quit the regular cigs, because you'll need to have one that you can use while the other one charges. (They do make batteries that you can use while they charge- but they're more expensive, and I think it's more important to invest in a good tank than a good battery when you're starting out, if you can't afford both.)
Vaping is not identical to smoking, even if they look the same. But if you get the info on the differences first, and then make a serious attempt at trying to make vaping work for you, there's no reason why you can't switch. You won't go through any withdrawl, if you can wait a few more seconds after taking a hit you will feel the exact same feeling as you did while smoking, and it's sooo much safer.
The bad press about vaping is being put out there by the cigarette companies (they're the ones who have a financial interest in keeping people addicted to cigarettes, and they're the ones funding faulty research studies to try to make vaping sound dangerous.) They take ecigs and run them on machines in ways that a human would never be able to do on their own, and then take what happens when they're misused in that way and say, "Hey! Look over here! Vaping is bad for your health, too! Don't bother quitting smoking!" The worst part is that even when they go through all that to try to prove the lies, the test results still can't confirm that vaping is more dangerous than smoking, because even with those crazy, never-could-happen to you conditions, smoking has already been proven to kill you: and they'll never be able to prove that their crazy tests are harmful to anyone in real world usage, because it's impossible for a human to actual vape in the ways they come up with. You really have to look at how some of these attention-getting headline studies were performed instead of taking the title at face value. I can't believe the underhanded things they're resorting to, but the cigarette industry makes their money off of steering people toward smoking, and even the government has a financial interest in it because of the insane taxes they collect off of the people who are addicted. I'd highly recommend doing research on your own before deciding whether you feel vaping is a safer alternative for you than smoking. If any information you find has you worried or confused, come back to this forum and do a search on it or create a post and ask questions. The people here are helpful, and can be objective, even if they enjoy vaping. They don't have a financial interest in keeping you smoking cigarettes or talking you into vaping, so you get a much more honest discussion here.
There are still concerns that pop up with newly released products about what some companies are using to make them, but the vaping community has done a damn good job about holding the ecig creators accountable by taking their money elsewhere until answers are given and changes are made, if need be. I'm surprised all the time how often I see requests from vapers being implemented by the ecig companies. Not the ones who are created by the cigarette manufacturers and sold in gas stations, but the companies who focus solely on vaping and making safe vaping products.
Sorry this was so long, I went into way too much detail and I don't have the time right now to go back and make it shorter/easier to read. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to toss them out and I know you'll get answers here.
Whether you decide to vape or decide to just quit nicotine altogether, I wish you the best of luck! After a few weeks of coughing up all the tar/junk, I feel just as great now as I did the first time I quit smoking.
And this time I'm not looking back, lol. (And with vaping, I don't ever miss smoking like I used to when I quit completely the last time. But that's just me!)
Take care.
