There I was, 55 years old with COPD and fearful that this winter will be my last or at best, the last winter of any quality as far as my health is concerned. I was mentally battered into submission by smoking itself and even the thought yet another failed attempt at stopping the evil weed. A lose-lose situation. My last attempt to stop was through an Allen Carr clinic (about the eighth, I think). I was a “happy” non-smoker for a week before succumbing yet again. They did have back up sessions and I contacted my “therapist” promptly. Yet, in spite of my desperation, she took weeks before contacting me and in her e-mail I could recognise a frustration and a sense of “oh not him again!” I really didn’t want to respond to her and I thought too, that she deliberately delayed contacting me so I suffered just  a little more. There was something a little incongruent about that last session also. I was taken to one side and “told” not to mention that I had failed with them in the past (as it may disrupt the others). I was however free to mention failures with other methods. The session gave me nothing new. In fact, I could have run the session, word for word, myself. The talk was on how the tobacco industry, your addiction and other methods brainwashed you. True but I began to realise that the brainwashing was a two way street. I will not knock Allen Carr’s “Easyway To Stop Smoking” book, clinic or brainwashing. I have had my best stops through them. However, if you fail continuously with them, the attitude changes. They say that any failure is “their” failure but that was certainly not the impression I got on my eighth or ninth attempt and hundreds of pounds spent.

As for other established methods such as patches, inhalators, gum and drugs that the NHS prescribe, alongside with the message of “how horrendously difficult stopping is” – every failure is “yours”. I could no longer face that, not again, not in the state I was in.  I also noticed on various social media sites, poor souls beating themselves up for failing with the usual methods and even doing so whilst struggling to stay stopped – a nightmare prospect. I was at a loss – a person can only take so much! I was facing the gallows, with a drop that wasn’t quite enough to kill me quickly (which would have been a preference). A slow, painful and long winded (or maybe “windless”) death was on the cards for Stu until I clumsily came across what are stupidly named “e-cigs”.

My first e-cigs were “cigalikes” at their max strength, which wasn’t much. They cut me down for a short while but I was left wanting. At the same time, I was getting loads of confused information on the e-cigs and more so, the non-cigalikes. “We don’t know if they are safe” was the mantra, that, for a second, I blindly accepted.  People still said it was smoking too! I was well baffled but the state of my health pushed me into getting my first proper device. I had not quite stopped smoking at that time but was cutting down on proper cigarettes with relative ease. I was doing okay until a camping trip where I had no electricity to re-charge my battery. It was disposable cigalikes or the real deal for a few days. It ended up with me smoking for England having binned the cigalikes promptly. Oddly, this time though, me and my lungs were looking forward to getting home and using my proper vaporiser.

Following an embarrassing “drop out” from a walking event, I decided that I needed to switch fully to vaping. Of course, I would get the strongest nicotine level I could find (3.6 ml) and it was going to be “tobacco flavour” as I assumed that burning tobacco tasted the same as the tobacco plant, such is the twisted thinking of the smoker. I had decided that the pack of 19 cigarettes were to be the last and with hours between them, I realised that the taste changed depending on how long you did without one. When chain smoking, you don’t think of the taste. When there is the usual gap between them, they taste good. A good few hours apart and you smoke one, they taste awful. Nothing to do with taste, really.  An orange still tastes like an orange whatever time elapses between that and your last one. It is in the mind.

I couldn’t actually finish the full packet, which lasted almost a week. I gave the last 4 to a homeless person and that was it. I really felt confident that I may have kicked the filthy weed this time.  I was vaping for England –so what!?  The reader who smokes, or empathic non-smoker may, at this point, feel happy for me. However, sadly some still see vaping as “smoking” and therefore dangerous. At 5 years old, a child may say, “Mum the kettle is smoking” and that is cute. Of course they may be corrected with nothing else said. However, when you have “adults” telling you not to “smoke” when vaping in a shop, it is not so cute. I accept that a shop owner has the right to ban vaping, dogs, smoking etc from their establishment. It is the abandoning of reality that really gets to me. The media has a lot to do with this distorted thinking about vaping. A sort of moral panic has greeted this new development. I read somewhere that the response to vaping was similar to the response to Rock and Roll in the 1950s. A “devils gadget” I guess. Weird because I would have thought that tobacco cigarettes had more to do with the devil and evil and fire and destruction!!  Otherwise intelligent people are turning into misguided moral entrepreneurs over something that is little more than vapour, a few flavourings and the very same nicotine The NHS actually prescribe to help folk – wait for it…….. stop smoking! Fair enough, there may be stuff in the e-liquid that could harm one’s health if imbibed in enough quantity but come on- do you really think they would be as dangerous   as cigarettes? Some health officials sound like a dithering Mavis with, “I don’t really know” when it comes to dangers that “maybe” there.  Amidst all this adverse kerfuffle though, I have been enjoying a freedom from smoking that I wasn’t ever expected to have. I have felt very little desire to smoke again. I am actually the “pink” colour God meant me to be. My lungs struggle less and I have to remind myself to take my inhalers.  Of course I am still addicted to nicotine but nicotine does not do the damage that 30 or 40 mini tobacco bonfires do or am I missing something?

I am glad to be vaping for now. I do believe that I have a far greater chance in quitting nicotine once my body and more importantly, my mind recovers from 40 odd years of destructive smoking and being scared by how difficult stopping is. I would finally  like to suggest to the NHS and naysayers, that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to actively encourage those who really struggle with stopping cigarettes to at least vape rather than smoke.  Admit defeat when your established patches, champix, inhalators etc don’t work for a person, rather than putting them through failure after failure with your narrow mind and equally spurious products. You have a duty of care and being driven by the need to peddle products that you see as failing a patient is neglect of that duty. Please don’t ignore nor poo poo those who are succeeding to stop smoking through vaping. Remember, you always defined the enemy as “smoking” not nicotine (or why the patches and gum?). Be happy for me and be there when I want to drop the nicotine and “if” I am struggling to do that. Vaping may not be perfect but take a good look at the alternatives for many like me.