2.5 years ago I was at rock bottom. Not only was I scrounging to buy any booze I could get my hands on and any narcotics available I was scrounging to buy loose tobacco and rolling papers. I was suicidal and at what I thought was the end of my journey on this planet.
I went to rehab and got sober, I learned a lot all while picking up my cigarette habit in full force. I moved to a transitional living home and quickly picked up my cigarette habit to around 2 packs a day.
For those that don't know, for roughly the first year of being drug and alcohol free you have to essentially learn to live life all over again. You have to learn how to have fun and in all reality learn yourself all over again. This means finding new hobbies and new ways of enjoying life. This included learning the ins and outs of vaping, mods, coils, juice and all things vaping related.
For about six months I smoked cigarettes and vaped, not really trying per se to stop smoking cigarettes just treating it like a hobby because I liked how it tasted. I felt like holding on to the idea of having one addiction/vice since I gave up all the other stuff.
I slowly got into DIY mixing(shoutout to /r/DIY_eJuice) and enjoyed how passionate(some might say addicted) it was for me. I started showing people recipes I came up with and considering I was spending less and less money on actual cigarettes and filling my free time with something constructive the thought of picking up a bottle of liquor or a drug dealer or stopping at the store to buy a pack of cigarettes the thought of smoking or using slowly vanished, of course not with the help of my sober friends and community.
One evening while mixing I went to get up to smoke a cigarette and thought to myself, "well shit, I've come this far, let's see if I can throw this pack of smokes away and go solo vaping."
So, one year ago today I tossed my last pack of smokes and haven't looked back. If I smell one after a nice meal I kind of get the urge but one hit from my homemade juice and that goes away.
I want to say thank you to this community and /r/DIY_eJuice for the indirect encouragement via seeing other success stories and hopefully inspire someone else that is toying with the idea of quitting cigarettes. I have much more money now (that I end up spending on more mods/batteries/tanks/DIY supplies) and my respiration system is so much healthier now than it was before.
Thank you to everyone and if I can quit anyone can!
p.s. If anyone has any recovery related questions or anything that it seems I can assist with please don't hesitate to send me a PM
Congratulations, friend. Two years off the stinkies after smoking for 15 years here. Nothing else worked, but vaping has. And while I haven't become an alcoholic (yet?) or been hooked on hard drugs, I can say that having DIY to occupy my mind and this community to encourage and support the hobby has gotten me through some dark days.
Congrats! Similar story here, 5 years clean time, and 4 years cig free (thanks to vaping). It's really uncanny how many vaping DIYers are also recovering addicts!
edit: Makes me wonder if nicotine, on it's own, reduces the odds of relapses, somehow. Mostly because I have never been sober, for this long, in over 2 decades.
Congrats on your sobriety! It's a great feeling man. It's amazing to find a great community who is there to help and not judge. Stay with it and don't let the past get in the way of the future. Everyone here is there for you!
I love post like this. I've been sober for 4 years (April 2012) and I haven't bought cigs in over 1.5 years. ( I do bum one once in a while considering I'm a bartender at a smoking bar!! But I was never a big alcohol guy just the pain pills and other assortment of drugs. But congratulations and keep up the hard work. I've found out that most local people are not happy with my sobriety (drugs and tobacco) but online is a great place to feel encouragement so if you have the negativity around you like I do just thank them and walk away.
I love this post, and thank you for sharing it, because it importantly illustrates everything that's great about vaping and DIY specifically, and how it's reach is so much further than just helping people quit smoking.
Anecdotes like this make a strong case against everything the FDA is doing to crush vaping, and are valuable advocacy tools in and of themselves.
Our stories are important. Never stop sharing them.