Continuing the posting of selected contributions to the CASAA THR success stories testimonial collection (more info about that in the previous post)…

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Daniel

Like most people, I picked up the habit of smoking cigarettes at a young age while still at school. Call it peer pressure, call it wanting to look cool, call it anything you want but for me it was the start of a long battle to quit.

I always said to myself that this will be the last pack and sometimes I even went as far as throwing a 3/4 full packet of smokes in the bin vowing never to smoke again. Sometimes I would last a day but most times it was only a couple of hours.

At 18 years of age I joined the army. Just before I joined I thought to myself If anything is going to make me quit it will be this, I will need to be fit, and in order to be fit I will need to quit. Well once enlisted I found myself head deep in a culture of smokers, It seemed like every second soldier was a pack a day smoker and I found it even harder to kick the habit.

My first real attempt at quitting came at the age of 23. The army sent a message out stating that if anyone wanted to give up the smokes they would supply NRT in the form of patches or gum so I jumped at the chance and took up the offer. To my surprise it didn’t work, in fact I just ended up smoking while taking the NRT. This cycle continued on and off for the next few years.

I left the army when I was 26, still a smoker and moved back home. Over the next couple of years I tried hypnosis, acupuncture, Champix, patches, nicotine gum, nicotine lozenges and continued to smoke on all of these. Nothing I tried worked.

When I was 30 years old my father was diagnosed with smoking related lung cancer and upon hearing this news, I went outside and lit a cigarette to calm myself down. As soon as I finished it, I threw the 3/4 pack of smokes in the bin once again vowing never to smoke another one. This lasted about a day and a half.

Dad fought strong for a while, and at one point the doctors thought they were winning the battle but only 6 months later I was holding his hand as he passed away peacefully in hospital. Again, I stepped outside and had a cigarette to calm myself and threw out the 3/4 packet of smokes – lasted 2 days this time.

32 days ago I was driving home when I saw a sign on a shop – “Electronic Cigarettes” so I pulled over and went inside. The guy who runs the shop spent about half an hour talking to me, showing my some gear that he had and explaining things to me in great deal. I ended up buying a start up kit which included a clearomizer, two batteries, some 12mg Nicotine E-liquid and some accessories. He told me that I should continue to smoke cigarettes for the first week while slowly transitioning into using just the E-cigarette.

Well 2 days later I was using nothing but the E-cigarette and loving it. I was amazed how it completely took away the craving. I threw out another 3/4 packet of cigarettes. This time its been 30 days and I’m still going strong. I honestly can’t imagine ever buying another packet of those cancer causing death sticks.

In the month that I have been vaping I have converted my best friend, my mother in law and 2 work colleagues and am more that happy to convince others to give it a shot as this is the ONLY thing that has worked for me. I have upgraded to a VAMO VW VV device and am still on the 12mg nicotine liquid. My plan is to slowly drop down in nicotine strength over the next 12 months but I feel at ease knowing that I am not inhaling 4000 chemicals while I do it.

I feel as though the vendor that I spoke to 32 days ago has saved my life, without seeing his shop while driving home I would still be smoking today, so thanks Phil. I feel better, I smell better, I am sleeping better and waking up easier and its only been 1 month! I cant wait to see how much better I feel in 6 months!

This is my story.