Hello all,
I've been lurking here for quite a while. For about four years, I was smoking Eclipse from RJR, which, if you're unfamiliar with it, is likely the closest analog thing to vaping - you light a piece of charcoal at the front of the cigarette, which then heats air you suck through it, which then passes through tobacco to extract the volatiles - you don't actually burn tobacco.
Over the past year, Eclipse has become harder and harder to find, and they've always been the same price as "premium" cigarettes - about $7 a pack now, here in The People's Republic of California. As a pack-a-day guy, that's over $2500 a year I was spending on them.
About two months ago, Eclipse became impossible to get down here - I'd built a relationship with a smoke shop who cleaned out the local distributor's stock. Thanks to that, and a now-defunct relationship I was in at the time, I switched over to a mainstream brand, which saved me $3 a pack... but I really couldn't stand "real" cigarettes after smoking the Eclipse for so long. My lungs just didn't like them.
I remember vaguely that, sometime in the past year, I ran across the e-cig phenomenon - I'm not sure where - and started reading the various message boards and seeing more and more YouTube reviews being posted, and, of course, I ended up here. I'd made a mental note to look into it further and actually invest in it at some point, and lurked here on and off, but somehow kept forgetting about it. Last week, something in my head clicked, I ended up back here again, and, thanks to various recommendations and reviews here, I ended up ordering a 901 kit from BestEcig. Amazingly, it showed up on my door yesterday (all the way from China, via Denmark!), but I missed the delivery. I picked it up about 7 hours ago, and I am absolutely hooked.
Cigarette smoking for me has always been a procedural stress-reliever: the nicotine does absolutely nothing for me, really - I can take it or leave it. It's really the procedure of smoking that I enjoy. In my business (IT), it's also a huge social activity because of the stress that's endemic in this industry. Well, I'll tell you - this is absolutely the best solution for me that I ever could have imagined.
I'm already brewing up my own flavored no-nic juices: as a hobby I make candles, incense, and lip balm, and also do minor organic chemistry work, so I have a large number of food-grade, edible natural essential oils on-hand as well as propylene glycol. So, I've started throwing some together and am, at this moment, enjoying a peppermint-PG mix that gives great vapor and smells and feels wonderful. I have my last pack of analog smokes here, half-finished, and I haven't felt the desire to have a single one since I "lit up" this 901 at 10am. I'm already breathing better and my lungs feel wonderful again for the first time this year.
So: between the cost savings, ease of use, great feeling, and infinite variety of flavors available to me now, I expect that I'm going to be off analog smokes forever. Thanks so very much to all of you who've posted so much great information here - you're the ones who guided me on where to go, what to try first, common "gotchas", and all the rest.
Regards,
Tom / zxcasd
I've been lurking here for quite a while. For about four years, I was smoking Eclipse from RJR, which, if you're unfamiliar with it, is likely the closest analog thing to vaping - you light a piece of charcoal at the front of the cigarette, which then heats air you suck through it, which then passes through tobacco to extract the volatiles - you don't actually burn tobacco.
Over the past year, Eclipse has become harder and harder to find, and they've always been the same price as "premium" cigarettes - about $7 a pack now, here in The People's Republic of California. As a pack-a-day guy, that's over $2500 a year I was spending on them.
About two months ago, Eclipse became impossible to get down here - I'd built a relationship with a smoke shop who cleaned out the local distributor's stock. Thanks to that, and a now-defunct relationship I was in at the time, I switched over to a mainstream brand, which saved me $3 a pack... but I really couldn't stand "real" cigarettes after smoking the Eclipse for so long. My lungs just didn't like them.
I remember vaguely that, sometime in the past year, I ran across the e-cig phenomenon - I'm not sure where - and started reading the various message boards and seeing more and more YouTube reviews being posted, and, of course, I ended up here. I'd made a mental note to look into it further and actually invest in it at some point, and lurked here on and off, but somehow kept forgetting about it. Last week, something in my head clicked, I ended up back here again, and, thanks to various recommendations and reviews here, I ended up ordering a 901 kit from BestEcig. Amazingly, it showed up on my door yesterday (all the way from China, via Denmark!), but I missed the delivery. I picked it up about 7 hours ago, and I am absolutely hooked.
Cigarette smoking for me has always been a procedural stress-reliever: the nicotine does absolutely nothing for me, really - I can take it or leave it. It's really the procedure of smoking that I enjoy. In my business (IT), it's also a huge social activity because of the stress that's endemic in this industry. Well, I'll tell you - this is absolutely the best solution for me that I ever could have imagined.
I'm already brewing up my own flavored no-nic juices: as a hobby I make candles, incense, and lip balm, and also do minor organic chemistry work, so I have a large number of food-grade, edible natural essential oils on-hand as well as propylene glycol. So, I've started throwing some together and am, at this moment, enjoying a peppermint-PG mix that gives great vapor and smells and feels wonderful. I have my last pack of analog smokes here, half-finished, and I haven't felt the desire to have a single one since I "lit up" this 901 at 10am. I'm already breathing better and my lungs feel wonderful again for the first time this year.
So: between the cost savings, ease of use, great feeling, and infinite variety of flavors available to me now, I expect that I'm going to be off analog smokes forever. Thanks so very much to all of you who've posted so much great information here - you're the ones who guided me on where to go, what to try first, common "gotchas", and all the rest.
Regards,
Tom / zxcasd
