I still can't get over my feeling that vaping is too good to be true.
In classic movies, smoking is glamorous, cool, sexy, heroic. This, of course, is a bill of goods. Just as movies portray the pre-industrial age while omitting how everything was pretty much buried in animal excrement, classic movies showed cigarettes without the ash or the smell or the ashtrays full of butts or the burn marks on clothes and carpets and upholstery or the disease or the funerals. Actors and actresses who looked stunning with their cigarettes were always healthy and robust. Humphrey Bogart appeared so frequently holding a cigarette that it's difficult to imagine him without it. Bogart never appeared in movies as someone too frail to climb the stairs of his home, as he was after doctors removed his esophagus due to cancer.
As you may be able to tell, I have something of a sentimental attachment to smoking. Everything in life has a catch, right? Butter tastes great, but it also makes people fat and clogs their arteries. Vegetarians may live longer than meat-eaters, but is that enough to entice most people to forgo a juicy steak or a tasty burger? Life is full of trade-offs, and such was the way I viewed smoking.
When I would talk to people who were experimenting with e-cigarettes, my first (and only question) was "Is it really satisfying like smoking is satisfying?" I never received an enthusiastic positive response to this question -- something that makes more sense now that I've learned a bit about the brands of the devices they were using.
So when I purchased an njoy King disposable on a whim, it wasn't like I was trying to confirm my belief that it couldn't match smoking. It wasn't even out of curiosity. It was just an impulse buy along with a pack of gum and a cold, 1-liter bottle of Diet Coke.
And when I was utterly floored by how much I enjoyed it, I didn't know what to think. When it lasted only part of an afternoon, I thought to myself, "Well sure, at $8 a pop, that's the catch." Even so, I was curious enough to go online to check out whether there were other vaping possibilities.
Everything I found indicated that I could get an e-cigarette that I'd enjoy even more than the NJoy for very little long-term cost. I was incredulous. "Surely," I thought, "these sites are just shilling for their sponsor's brand, like the numerous sites devoted to hoodia diet pills and other ineffectual products designed to exploit the vain hopes of the benighted masses."
Then I found this site, with its plethora of information and personalities. And thanks to what I read here, I made the leap of faith to spend $47 on a starter kit, extra batteries, and prefilled cartos. But still, I was unwilling to release my skepticism until it arrived, I unpacked it, and then smoked it for the next several days solid.
That was a magical experience for me. I've bought more heavy duty equipment since then, and I'm still new to this, but in those initial days I realized that I'd found something that captures everything that's great about smoking, but with none of the downsides – not one! In my excitement, I dashed off my first post as a thread in this forum: http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...tential-questions-why-smoke-e-cigarettes.html, which explains in detail why I believe vaping is no mere substitute for smoking, but a decisive move beyond it.
So I'm grateful for the existence of this forum. Whether you authored something that influenced me or not, you've contributed to a community that made that influence possible.
And vaping remains one of those things in my life that continues to make me wonder if it's too good to be true, right up there with air conditioning and convertible cars.
In classic movies, smoking is glamorous, cool, sexy, heroic. This, of course, is a bill of goods. Just as movies portray the pre-industrial age while omitting how everything was pretty much buried in animal excrement, classic movies showed cigarettes without the ash or the smell or the ashtrays full of butts or the burn marks on clothes and carpets and upholstery or the disease or the funerals. Actors and actresses who looked stunning with their cigarettes were always healthy and robust. Humphrey Bogart appeared so frequently holding a cigarette that it's difficult to imagine him without it. Bogart never appeared in movies as someone too frail to climb the stairs of his home, as he was after doctors removed his esophagus due to cancer.
As you may be able to tell, I have something of a sentimental attachment to smoking. Everything in life has a catch, right? Butter tastes great, but it also makes people fat and clogs their arteries. Vegetarians may live longer than meat-eaters, but is that enough to entice most people to forgo a juicy steak or a tasty burger? Life is full of trade-offs, and such was the way I viewed smoking.
When I would talk to people who were experimenting with e-cigarettes, my first (and only question) was "Is it really satisfying like smoking is satisfying?" I never received an enthusiastic positive response to this question -- something that makes more sense now that I've learned a bit about the brands of the devices they were using.
So when I purchased an njoy King disposable on a whim, it wasn't like I was trying to confirm my belief that it couldn't match smoking. It wasn't even out of curiosity. It was just an impulse buy along with a pack of gum and a cold, 1-liter bottle of Diet Coke.
And when I was utterly floored by how much I enjoyed it, I didn't know what to think. When it lasted only part of an afternoon, I thought to myself, "Well sure, at $8 a pop, that's the catch." Even so, I was curious enough to go online to check out whether there were other vaping possibilities.
Everything I found indicated that I could get an e-cigarette that I'd enjoy even more than the NJoy for very little long-term cost. I was incredulous. "Surely," I thought, "these sites are just shilling for their sponsor's brand, like the numerous sites devoted to hoodia diet pills and other ineffectual products designed to exploit the vain hopes of the benighted masses."
Then I found this site, with its plethora of information and personalities. And thanks to what I read here, I made the leap of faith to spend $47 on a starter kit, extra batteries, and prefilled cartos. But still, I was unwilling to release my skepticism until it arrived, I unpacked it, and then smoked it for the next several days solid.
That was a magical experience for me. I've bought more heavy duty equipment since then, and I'm still new to this, but in those initial days I realized that I'd found something that captures everything that's great about smoking, but with none of the downsides – not one! In my excitement, I dashed off my first post as a thread in this forum: http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...tential-questions-why-smoke-e-cigarettes.html, which explains in detail why I believe vaping is no mere substitute for smoking, but a decisive move beyond it.
So I'm grateful for the existence of this forum. Whether you authored something that influenced me or not, you've contributed to a community that made that influence possible.
And vaping remains one of those things in my life that continues to make me wonder if it's too good to be true, right up there with air conditioning and convertible cars.
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