Ash Huggybear Hugget now manages the Manabush Vape Café in Nottingham but used to smoke 20-30 a day. This could easily ramp up to 40 per day at stressful moments. He tried quitting cold turkey but then a friend got him a load of tobacco from Spain.
Ash then discovered an underlying medical condition and the smoking was making it worse – leading to the potential of lose of sight. “I started vaping on a whim, now I'm stuck with it. Met so many great people via the POTV forum, and had some lovely help from members of this community. Strange in this day and age values still exist. It's ace.”
All too often those encouraging smokers to quit forget that we actually enjoyed the act of smoking – we never saw it as an addition. Forum moderator JustDave speaks for many of us: “Let me get this out of the way. I loved smoking. I mean really loved it. I started at a relatively late age compared to some. I was 16 and (at the time) could legally buy cigarettes in the shops. I was pretty much a regular smoker from that point on. In good times 10 a day but up to 60 a day when I was living in London in 2008 when I had access to lots of good quality Duty Free from the Polish guys I worked with.”
Dave struggled with quitting, “I knew that my family history of smoking/heart disease was probably going to kill me, so I kept trying to stop, everything from gum to Champix, but it never stuck, probably because I never really wanted to quit.”
Dave managed to reduce the amount he smoked, down to a few cigars, but then it began to ramp up again. By 2011, “I made the decision to quit again, but found it way harder than I imagined. I had seen some people vaping around the Tattoo shows so thought I would give it a go. It was the era of carto tanks and the dawn of the early ego/ce4 style devices (early 2012), although they weren’t easy to get hold of. But it worked.”
“I haven’t had any form of combustible tobacco since 2012. I think it is the best thing I have ever done. I have made some fantastic friends and rediscovered a love of food that I can taste. I have put on some weight, but I can still walk up and down stairs without getting out of breath and I am happy to take that compromise.”
“Give it a go. It just might work for you.”
Resources:
- POTV forum: planetofthevapes.co.uk/forum
- National No-Smoking Day - https://www.todayistheday.co.uk
- Manabush Vape Café, 153a Breck Hill Road, Nottingham NG3 5JP https://www.facebook.com/steamteaandvape/
