Yeah, it's been really hard for me. I've been smoking for over 50 years. Yes, I am old, but I'm still on the right side of the dirt, so I haven't given up yet. I had been smoking about a pack and a half of Wildhorse Red Box 100's daily for some amount of years. I won't bore you with how many times and ways I've tried to quit. But one try did include an ecig years ago when they first came out, it was a really crappy version and went belly up after a couple of weeks. I wasn't sorry to see it go. So about 3 months ago I cut down to five cigarettes a day wearing nicotine patches. Then I developed a sensitivity to them and my skin started to blister and itch like crazy. I needed another way, that brought me here.
So I bought a Halo G6, which was smart, and then for balance I did something stupid and selected 12mg cartomizers. My starter kit arrived, I was all excited, got it charged up and started vaping. I vaped on that poor thing like it was trying to run away. When I had it hot boxed to the point of burning my lip I finally sat it down. Some hours later I was washing dishes and my husband wandered in and made the mistake of asking me how I was doing. I was slamming dishes around and washing stuff that wasn't even dirty. I started telling him how I was doing and that I was about ten minutes away from ripping something to shreds. He hot footed out to the truck and down to the near by tobacco shop and brought me a pack of Wildhorse. Basically he'll do whatever it takes to shut me up, he's a good husband. He quit smoking ten years ago, cold turkey. He was real sick at the time and couldn't breath, which apparently works better than the patches do. I ripped open that pack of cigarettes and smoked two in a row.
I did some research of my cigarettes, after hours of searching I discovered the nicotine level of what I've been smoking is 1.2 per cigarette. So with the 24mg patch, plus the five cigarettes a day, I had been getting 30mg of nicotine daily. Using 12mg ejuice I'd have to vape with the dedication of a monkey on a cupcake from sunset to sundown, without stopping to eat, clean, bath or brush my hair. I'd have to revert to being an unwashed hippy which was cool in the 60's, not so much now.
So my advice is to find out what the nicotine level per cigarette of your current brand is. Times that by how many you smoke a day. Get ejuice or cartomizers matching that level, or as close to it as you can get. If you go with something like the Halo G6, or the Volt from Smokeless Image, get the manual style rather than the automatic, and get the Low Resistance cartomizers. That combination will produce the most vapor you can get from that type of ecig. I don't know if Smokeless Image has the low resistance cartomizers, but Halo does and their cartomizers can be used on the Volt too. It will use up your battery faster, so you'll need to charge it more often. So it's best to have at least two batteries, so you'll have one to use while the other is charging.
It takes time for some of us to bond with our ecig. I didn't think the Halo was going to work for me. So I got an Ego Twist, it does produce vapor, but I only had 18mg juice for it, so it didn't quench the craving either. And it's kind of big and bulky, but it is pearlized pink. I'm actually bonding more with my Halo now that I have it filled with 24mg juice. I am still smoking a few cigarettes everyday too. But this evening I smoked part of a cigarette and put it out and said to it, "If your were an ejuice, I wouldn't order you again." It wasn't that it tasted so bad, it just didn't taste as good as the Ripe Banana I got in the mail from Vapor God.com today. So I picked up my Halo instead to enjoy some more of that.
In time that will happen for you too. Once you find the right setup, the right nicotine level, and a good flavor of ejuice you really like. Eventually you'll find yourself smoking part of a cigarette and thinking about the flavor in your ecig. Just let it happen naturally in its own time. I think the folks that write how they started vaping and haven't smoked since, were just very lucky and hit on the right combination out of the gate. I personally wandered around bumping into one wall after the other, but it doesn't matter how we get there, we all end up in the same place. So you hang in there and I suspect from your message that you absolutely will.
Cindy
