Although all the Success Stories I receive mean very much to me, every now and then there’s one that deserves to be posted here as well.
Simon, I can’t tell you how appreciative I am to you for sharing your story with all of us.
I’m wishing you continued success and many MANY more smoke free years in you future.
And to Simon’s daughter… GOOD JOB!!!
Hi Phil,
Firstly, a bit about myself. My name is Simon. I live in England and I’m now 48 years old. I never used to watch vaping videos on youtube because the vast majority of them just didn’t appeal to me. The first ones I did start watching were Daniel’s (DJLSB) because I found those were informative, Daniel mentioned you in one of his videos so I decided to check out this ‘Phil Busardo’ bloke. That was a very important day for me, as someone who’s always mouth to lung vaped at low wattage (even lower than you usually!) I was instantly captivated by your videos, all the reviews of fancy European tanks I knew nothing about and TC vaping, the ‘mini’ mod series etc etc. It felt like I had finally found someone who I felt was talking to me and people like me.
My vaping journey started on the 11th of March 2016, that date was my daughters 16th birthday and that is not a coincidence. A month or so earlier I had asked her what she would like for her birthday and she turned around and looked straight and me and said “I just want you to stop smoking Dad, I don’t want you to die”
As you can imagine, that was hard to hear, if you have kids you’ll understand how I felt that day. For years I had been really suffering because of my smoking habit, I’d been smoking since I was 14 and a regular smoker since I left school at 16 and started earning a wage, So 30 odd years. I was smoking about 30 or 40 roll ups a day the week before I stopped and for about 10 years I was having breathing difficulties, coughing like crazy in the mornings, and without wanting to exaggerate too much basically almost dying every winter from a common cold, it would take me months to recover from a cold, getting chest infections almost every year. I was in a pretty bad way. If I had continued to smoke I don’t think I would be in the place I am right now.
I had tried all manner of things to stop, last time I got a bad chest infection I tried to quit cold turkey and I spend 2 days curled up in a foetal position literally crying from the mental torture I was going through. In the end I caved in because I just couldn’t bare the withdrawal and continue to function as I needed to, I had already taken a week off work.
So where was I? Right, so after my Daughter had said that to me, I knew I needed to do something. I talked to a friend who had recently started vaping, I knew he had a device but at that time I didn’t know much (anything) about it and I didn’t realise that he had not had a smoke since he had got it (I thought he was just using it for times when he couldn’t smoke or whatever) I couldn’t believe it when he told me, I asked him “really? it works?”
That was the moment I decided I needed to try this for myself, I prepared myself mentally over the next few weeks and I told myself that on my Daughter’s birthday I would go to my nearest vape shop and invest in a set up, if my mate could do it I could too right?
On the 11th of March 2016 I stubbed out my cigarette and walked into the shop and told the young man behind the counter “I need to stop smoking today, right now” it’s funny, I could almost cry now retelling this, as this day was one of the most amazing days of my life and I will never forget it. Thankfully the guy in the shop was really helpful and I owe a lot to him. First thing he said to me was “No worries mate, I have a customer who’s 75 and he’s stopped now, he was smoking for 60 years” He let me try out several tanks, the one I picked was the Kangertech subtank nano with a 1.5ohm coil and I got an eleaf 20w to go with it. He also gave me 3 small bottles of 12mg liquid, coffee, menthol and something else I can’t remember. He filled the tank up with the menthol (as yeah, I had one of my ‘colds’ as usual) and I walked out of that shop an ex-smoker. I can’t say it was easy but it was easier than I imagined it would be going on past experiences of giving up smoking.
For the first few days I vaped that thing hard, but I kept telling myself that if I could do a day, I could do two days and if I could do two days I could do 3. On the 4th day I couldn’t stop saying to my family “I can’t believe it, 3 whole days, I can’t believe it” and after a week I knew that I was never going to smoke again, before I started vaping I couldn’t have gone more than a couple of hours without a cigarette.
Not long after than I joined an online vaping forum, I found support, knowledge and friends but most importantly I found many many people with stories similar to mine. I joined that forum thinking that what I had done was rare, I soon realised that the fact was that this ‘vaping’ thing had helped many many others in exactly the same way. I discovered liquids that I enjoy way more than I ever enjoyed cigarettes, I discovered re-buildable tanks, I started going on long walks with my family without needing to stop for ‘rests’ and I stopped getting colds and chest infections all the time. I saved almost £1,500 in the first year. I also found the guy on youtube (you!) who would keep me entertained, amused and informed and I would learn to trust his opinion and his judgement as I would trust any of my friends when they told me something.
So I’m just about to hit 2 years of being a non-smoker on my Daughters 18th Birthday and that feels amazing, no it IS amazing and what you do for people like me and smokers who still have yet to make the decision that I did, is also amazing.
I just wanted you to know that you are doing the right thing and in the right way and it means a lot to people like me and will mean a lot to many more people in the future.
Thanks for everything and thanks for listening.
regards
Simon
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