Hi all,
still a newb here, but like most of you I'm sure, I'm brimming with inspiration since I started to put some serious distance between me and my two-faced old friend tobacco. It's amazing how finally finding a convincing means of setting yourself free of something that's dogged your progress in life, can cause so much inner reflection. Please forgive me if I bore you with the following tale, or steal 10 minutes of your life that you'll never earn back. If nothing else, this represents little more than catharsis in words. And I say that with tongue only slightly in cheek!
I'm 41 years old. My very earliest memory is of my dear great granny bathing me in her old, battle-scarred butler sink. But what really evoked that earliest recollection for me was the long and precarious tail of grey ash hanging off the Capstan Full Strength unfiltered cigarette that was invariably clamped between her teeth. I remember that jumbo dog end landing in the tepid water with an alarming hiss, and watching as it fragmented among the clouds of soapy water. I recall her throaty, phlegmy chuckle, and looking up at that merry, weathered face and thinking how scary and lovely she was, wreathed in a thick, sinuous halo of acrid blue smoke.
Mid- 70s Britain was a time of general strikes, constant power cuts, flock wallpaper,heatwaves, brown corduroys, fatty meat, tinny longwave psychedelia, and endless regimental lines of badly pointed chimneys belching out great plumes of coal soot, the caustic stench of which accented the slow steady procession of winter. Literally everyone I saw seemed to have a cigarette dangling from their mouths. My mum would brush my hair before taking me to infant school, and I wriggled and fussed as all little boys are prone to do. I had extra incentive in escaping, my eyes smarting, tears rolling down my face as she chugged away on her stubby little Players Number 10.
I remember early autumn evenings, still drenched with sunshine and muggy heat in late September. The Waltons theme tune always made me feel impossibly happy. I sincerely believed we were sort of an English version of the Waltons ourselves. Paler and a bit more suburban perhaps, but similarly close and happy in sharing moments of togetherness, gathered in front of the telly. My place was on the floor next to the dog, cross legged as everyone contentedly slurped hot tea out of thick brown mugs, all of them lighting up with unerring synchronicity during the ad breaks. The dog and I would breath in all that earth bound smoke but I don't remember either of us coughing or spluttering. We were both pros.
When I was 9 or 10, I had what I considered to be my first taste of adulthood. My mum, distracted by some pressing grown up task would sometimes hand over tatty, dog eared pound notes and say "go down to the news agents and get me some ciggies please love, ask for Players Number 10. Tell Roger I said it was okay". She always looked slightly troubled in doing this, I'll grant her that. I would return triumphantly brandishing the loot, mission well and truly accomplished. I would stand over my Mum's shoulder and marvel at the opening ceremony, the crackle of cellophane, the heady and illicit scent of papery foil and dry tobacco.
At 11, I'd learned how to steal cigarettes,seemingly without detection. My Grandfather would hang his big old work coat in the cloak room, a fresh deck of Craven As in the inside pocket, ready for the next day's toils. I would carefully cut a little notch in the gummed corner flap of the bottom of the pack. I would slowly, oh so carefully ease a cigarette out with my Mum's eyebrow tweezers. I had the steady hands of a heart surgeon, I imagined myself diffusing a bomb. The following day, I would meet a fellow dare devil friend at a prized and secluded spot of sea shore where we had constructed a makeshift fort out of tar streaked driftwood among the shifting sand dunes and long gorse grass. Being an adventurous young lad, the eggy sulphur smell of a struck match was hardly new ground, but the anticipation of putting it to my very own cigarette filled me to the brim with excitement and trepidation. We inevitably coughed and spluttered with every drag, as the world spun around us and our poor tender lungs seemed about to literally collapse. But we still managed to rib each other for "bumming" the filter, not really knowing what that even meant.
By 14, I was at secondary school. My mum gave me £1.50 a day for my dinner. My friends and I would gather before school began, 7 or 8 push bikes clustered around a public bench,tobacconist conveniently close by, an aladdin's cave of delights awaiting therein. We'd very rapidly worked out that we could split a pack of 10 Benson and Hedges three ways and still have the 99 pence we needed for the burger, chips and coke deal at a local cafe we all frequented. One of us had a light halo of sandy bum fluff on his chin, and that seemed sufficient enough in convincing the shop keeper. We even had smoking rituals. A girl I had long hidden a desperate crush for, dared me to "do a blow back", which involved putting the lit end of a cigarette stub in my mouth and blowing smoke through the filter and into hers. This superficial act of derring-do was invested with all the eroticism an adolescent boy on the cusp of adulthood could bear without entirely turning to jelly. So naturally I was only too eager to not only comply, but seek to repeat as often as possible.
By 15, I was on 10 a day of my very own with money I'd earned weekends at a local pub, clearing bottles and glasses and washing down tables. Around this time I discovered rolling tobacco, but it would be another 20 years before I'd see the economic wisdom in learning to roll one without losing most of it down my shirt. And it's about this time that I began to harbour brand loyalties. My poison of choice was Marlboro Red. I imagined that those brilliantly flashy and iconic packets made me seem pretty hardcore, my lungs certainly felt like they'd endured a nuclear assault, and that was a very good thing. By now, cigarettes and sophistication were inextricably entwined. I'd had all the lectures about the dangers, and what smokers lungs looked like and how it would more than likely steal at least 10 years off me. I'd already lost my great grandmother to cancer. Some 5 years later, my grandmother too. A short time after, my Father.
The rest is an endless litany of utter mind and body enslavement, of not being able to go more than two hours without a cigarette in my hand. Of slowly but surely giving up on sports I was pretty damned good at just because smoking had become more precious to me than physical achievement. Of strategically planning each and every day around my habit. I don't recall exactly when I became aware of my body starting to rebel, of my lungs losing their zip, or when I stopped noticing the scent of apple blossoms or freshly cut grass as it carried on a light spring wind. Or when I began to feel like vomiting after climbing a short flight of stairs. All of these things were predicted by others wiser than me, often rather smugly too. But still these things came to pass with monotonous predictability. My life became punctuated with the occasional half-hearted attempts at giving it up. The Allan Carr method, patches, gum, the lunacy in a pill that is Champix. I trotted out the usual lame excuses about why I persisted with something that was killing me, how I enjoyed it, how I wouldn't be forced to stop doing something I wanted to do. I began to feel harassed, hunted, labelled as someone who was unwholesome, as the noose of prohibitive smoking laws began to tighten, and as smoking peers began, one by one, to desert the ranks. Even my dear Mother had long since kicked the habit, and while she had sympathies, even she had become something of a born again quitter.
In the last 3 of my 41 year life, I have endured 1 serious bout of Pleurisy, an illness that sounded to me like something only Dickensian street urchins suffered with. After two vicious relapses, and increasingly desperate pleadings of a doting wife who had endured the sight of me being wired to an ECG for the third time, I finally, slowly began to wake up. One day not so very long ago, I typed two fateful words into Google - "Nicotine Inhaler". And at some stage that fateful evening, I stumbled upon this very site.
And so, I'm going to end this overly long and extremely self indulgent tale with a toast - a few long toots of my Tornado tank, loaded as it is with Granny Smith Apple e-juice. Here's to the ECF community, for playing a rather significant part in my putting an important part of my life back together again in helping me to discover the wonderful world of vaping. Thanks guys.
still a newb here, but like most of you I'm sure, I'm brimming with inspiration since I started to put some serious distance between me and my two-faced old friend tobacco. It's amazing how finally finding a convincing means of setting yourself free of something that's dogged your progress in life, can cause so much inner reflection. Please forgive me if I bore you with the following tale, or steal 10 minutes of your life that you'll never earn back. If nothing else, this represents little more than catharsis in words. And I say that with tongue only slightly in cheek!
I'm 41 years old. My very earliest memory is of my dear great granny bathing me in her old, battle-scarred butler sink. But what really evoked that earliest recollection for me was the long and precarious tail of grey ash hanging off the Capstan Full Strength unfiltered cigarette that was invariably clamped between her teeth. I remember that jumbo dog end landing in the tepid water with an alarming hiss, and watching as it fragmented among the clouds of soapy water. I recall her throaty, phlegmy chuckle, and looking up at that merry, weathered face and thinking how scary and lovely she was, wreathed in a thick, sinuous halo of acrid blue smoke.
Mid- 70s Britain was a time of general strikes, constant power cuts, flock wallpaper,heatwaves, brown corduroys, fatty meat, tinny longwave psychedelia, and endless regimental lines of badly pointed chimneys belching out great plumes of coal soot, the caustic stench of which accented the slow steady procession of winter. Literally everyone I saw seemed to have a cigarette dangling from their mouths. My mum would brush my hair before taking me to infant school, and I wriggled and fussed as all little boys are prone to do. I had extra incentive in escaping, my eyes smarting, tears rolling down my face as she chugged away on her stubby little Players Number 10.
I remember early autumn evenings, still drenched with sunshine and muggy heat in late September. The Waltons theme tune always made me feel impossibly happy. I sincerely believed we were sort of an English version of the Waltons ourselves. Paler and a bit more suburban perhaps, but similarly close and happy in sharing moments of togetherness, gathered in front of the telly. My place was on the floor next to the dog, cross legged as everyone contentedly slurped hot tea out of thick brown mugs, all of them lighting up with unerring synchronicity during the ad breaks. The dog and I would breath in all that earth bound smoke but I don't remember either of us coughing or spluttering. We were both pros.
When I was 9 or 10, I had what I considered to be my first taste of adulthood. My mum, distracted by some pressing grown up task would sometimes hand over tatty, dog eared pound notes and say "go down to the news agents and get me some ciggies please love, ask for Players Number 10. Tell Roger I said it was okay". She always looked slightly troubled in doing this, I'll grant her that. I would return triumphantly brandishing the loot, mission well and truly accomplished. I would stand over my Mum's shoulder and marvel at the opening ceremony, the crackle of cellophane, the heady and illicit scent of papery foil and dry tobacco.
At 11, I'd learned how to steal cigarettes,seemingly without detection. My Grandfather would hang his big old work coat in the cloak room, a fresh deck of Craven As in the inside pocket, ready for the next day's toils. I would carefully cut a little notch in the gummed corner flap of the bottom of the pack. I would slowly, oh so carefully ease a cigarette out with my Mum's eyebrow tweezers. I had the steady hands of a heart surgeon, I imagined myself diffusing a bomb. The following day, I would meet a fellow dare devil friend at a prized and secluded spot of sea shore where we had constructed a makeshift fort out of tar streaked driftwood among the shifting sand dunes and long gorse grass. Being an adventurous young lad, the eggy sulphur smell of a struck match was hardly new ground, but the anticipation of putting it to my very own cigarette filled me to the brim with excitement and trepidation. We inevitably coughed and spluttered with every drag, as the world spun around us and our poor tender lungs seemed about to literally collapse. But we still managed to rib each other for "bumming" the filter, not really knowing what that even meant.
By 14, I was at secondary school. My mum gave me £1.50 a day for my dinner. My friends and I would gather before school began, 7 or 8 push bikes clustered around a public bench,tobacconist conveniently close by, an aladdin's cave of delights awaiting therein. We'd very rapidly worked out that we could split a pack of 10 Benson and Hedges three ways and still have the 99 pence we needed for the burger, chips and coke deal at a local cafe we all frequented. One of us had a light halo of sandy bum fluff on his chin, and that seemed sufficient enough in convincing the shop keeper. We even had smoking rituals. A girl I had long hidden a desperate crush for, dared me to "do a blow back", which involved putting the lit end of a cigarette stub in my mouth and blowing smoke through the filter and into hers. This superficial act of derring-do was invested with all the eroticism an adolescent boy on the cusp of adulthood could bear without entirely turning to jelly. So naturally I was only too eager to not only comply, but seek to repeat as often as possible.
By 15, I was on 10 a day of my very own with money I'd earned weekends at a local pub, clearing bottles and glasses and washing down tables. Around this time I discovered rolling tobacco, but it would be another 20 years before I'd see the economic wisdom in learning to roll one without losing most of it down my shirt. And it's about this time that I began to harbour brand loyalties. My poison of choice was Marlboro Red. I imagined that those brilliantly flashy and iconic packets made me seem pretty hardcore, my lungs certainly felt like they'd endured a nuclear assault, and that was a very good thing. By now, cigarettes and sophistication were inextricably entwined. I'd had all the lectures about the dangers, and what smokers lungs looked like and how it would more than likely steal at least 10 years off me. I'd already lost my great grandmother to cancer. Some 5 years later, my grandmother too. A short time after, my Father.
The rest is an endless litany of utter mind and body enslavement, of not being able to go more than two hours without a cigarette in my hand. Of slowly but surely giving up on sports I was pretty damned good at just because smoking had become more precious to me than physical achievement. Of strategically planning each and every day around my habit. I don't recall exactly when I became aware of my body starting to rebel, of my lungs losing their zip, or when I stopped noticing the scent of apple blossoms or freshly cut grass as it carried on a light spring wind. Or when I began to feel like vomiting after climbing a short flight of stairs. All of these things were predicted by others wiser than me, often rather smugly too. But still these things came to pass with monotonous predictability. My life became punctuated with the occasional half-hearted attempts at giving it up. The Allan Carr method, patches, gum, the lunacy in a pill that is Champix. I trotted out the usual lame excuses about why I persisted with something that was killing me, how I enjoyed it, how I wouldn't be forced to stop doing something I wanted to do. I began to feel harassed, hunted, labelled as someone who was unwholesome, as the noose of prohibitive smoking laws began to tighten, and as smoking peers began, one by one, to desert the ranks. Even my dear Mother had long since kicked the habit, and while she had sympathies, even she had become something of a born again quitter.
In the last 3 of my 41 year life, I have endured 1 serious bout of Pleurisy, an illness that sounded to me like something only Dickensian street urchins suffered with. After two vicious relapses, and increasingly desperate pleadings of a doting wife who had endured the sight of me being wired to an ECG for the third time, I finally, slowly began to wake up. One day not so very long ago, I typed two fateful words into Google - "Nicotine Inhaler". And at some stage that fateful evening, I stumbled upon this very site.
And so, I'm going to end this overly long and extremely self indulgent tale with a toast - a few long toots of my Tornado tank, loaded as it is with Granny Smith Apple e-juice. Here's to the ECF community, for playing a rather significant part in my putting an important part of my life back together again in helping me to discover the wonderful world of vaping. Thanks guys.
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