Ah, my journey began 2+ years ago, similar to yours.
Started on a Blu "Starter Pack" -- that never did jack in terms of helping me quit, smoked cigarettes the whole way through owning that hunk of garbage. Ditched it for about a year before being introduced to..
A junk eGo fixed voltage battery and a gurgly, burny, leaky plastic CE4 clearomizer. Still smoked cigarettes during this phase, but started to cut back. Got enthusiastic when I finally moved to..
A MVP2 + a couple of ProTanks that I'd switch between. I was still smoking cigarettes, but way less, down from 2 packs a day to about 1 pack every 2 days. Was able to really start enjoying flavors and vaping in general, started researching gear and other alternatives. The final blow to my cigarette addiction was...
An Igo-L RDA and a SMOK Magneto (mech) mod. Once I switched to dripping it was pretty easy to get off the cigarettes. I was able to get a really solid lungful of vapor, it felt good and it tasted amazing. Really started to immerse myself into the hobbyist aspect of vaping, building coils, custom box mods, the many chips and PCB's that control our regulated devices, etc... It was only logical that I eventually switched to..
A regulated high-wattage box (OKL-T20 chip) and a nice open-airflow RDA (the Doge). Nowadays I'm vaping at .55 ohms pretty much all the time (for the last year at least) at around 6V. This is sort of my "final form" or "end-game" -- for me, it doesn't get much better than this. I'm not into chucking clouds specifically, but this setup gives me a really nice amount of vapor, the flavor's on-point, maintenance is easy as heck (dual battery box mod for the win), and it just feels normal and nice to me.
I'll admit, along the way I've slipped a few times (most of us would be lying if we said we managed to quit and never looked back, not even that one weekend that you got sloshed at your buddy's house and you left your mod in your other pants or whatever) but I've made serious strides towards bettering my health, I think. I've even cut out most flavorings due to the questionable nature of their ingredients. I vape mostly unflavored VG w/ nicotine now (2 years ago I didn't care what was in my juice, primarily because we weren't aware of the potential nasties in there), and I occasionally spruce up an unflavored batch with some pre-mixed flavored juice (I like MtBakerVapor) or use my own flavorings. Saves money and gives me greater peace of mind.
Anyway, I hope that wasn't too rambly. Welcome to the ECF.