As a kid of 14 or 15 I remember my first cigarette or half cigarette taken from a friend who quickly informed me not to bum it and then pass it to someone else anxiously waiting for his few drags before (if the original owner was lucky) it got passed full circle. It was clandestine and edgy helped somewhat by there being well developed girls in our school who smoked that we hoped to impress by smoking ourselves (ohhhhh we were naïve).

 

That sense of enjoyment about doing something not quite social was further enhanced by hunting out and keeping a mental note of all the shops that would happily overlook a scruffy afro haired white boy in school uniform asking for 10 B&H and a box of matches in his deepest put on adult voice he could muster while trying to suppress the glee he felt when the vendor actually handed them over and took his 1.50 (ish). The desire to try as many brands and ways of smoking what would inevitably have me coughing up big brown phlegm lumps of indescribable nastiness later in life led me through the vast range of silk cut' B&H L&B as well as superkings hell I even enjoyed a rare capstan full strength and loved the head rush they gave me.

 

Vaping for me appeals  for pretty much the same reasons that smoking once used to as a kid. There always seems to be something new to look forward to in the vaping world. Some new mod or atomizer or someone has just bought out this minutes must have flavoured juice of choice that vape forums are buzzing over. Blink and the next best thing would have been replaced before you could even manage to re-open your eyes. Vaping in a word is fucking (or two) fantastic. When you first discover a cigarette that is both electronic and …..cigaretty you have to give it a try. The bonus of (at the time) being able to smoke it practically anywhere you wanted in spite of a public smoking ban was a revelation. To me an e-cigarette was a way of circumventing what I thought was an unjust rule levied on a minority of people who were choosing to do something legal and not only getting shat on from a great height by the moral majority (who really should keep their fucking nose out of other peoples business) but paying through the nose for the privilege to do so as well.

 

Now exclusively e cig only I still get those kid in a cancer shop moments I used to when I smoked. When I first looked beyond the cigalikes to reviews and things called mods I was in a world of brain hurt from all the options available to me. In many ways those options still exist. From an outside perspective you might see a tube or a box and that’s yer lot. From the perspective of a vaper there’s mech mods' regulated mods' coiling, cloud chasing/sub ohming' mixing your own juice and those mods are getting bigger and putting out more watts/volts. Its very much like a 15 year old looking at the row of cigarette brands behind the counter and having to pretend you know exactly which one you usually smoke to fool the cancer dealer that you’ve done this for years when in reality your giddy with the choice and maybe you should have gone for marlboro instead of B&H.

 

Im not exactly sure where I’m going with this write up. I’m certainly happy that I’m now choosing a way to get my drug of choice in a less harmful way to how the delivery method of choice used to be. Im not even trying to make this a judgemental write up of a vaper lording it up over another human being who is still pretty much doing something legal when he pays uber fucking dollar on a pack of smokes just to be kicked to shit by a society that is telling him/her they are a bad person for doing so.

 

I think im just more trying to draw a parallel between smoking and vaping of which there are many regardless of  what some vapers would like to think. After all there is only one thing worse that a self righteous holier than thou sanctimonious toss pot non smoker. And that’s a self righteous holier than thou sanctimonious toss pot of an ex smoker.

 

 

                                                      Especially if they happen to be a vaper............

 

 

                                                      Coz realy we should know better than that :)