I’ve been vaping every few minutes for the last eight years, I just have no idea I’m doing it anymore (Photo: Getty)

This January, my new year’s resolution is to give up smoking.

I haven’t had a cigarette for eight and a half years, so having to quit for a second time is decidedly inconvenient. In fact, it’s an absolute pain in the arse.

I last smoked in April 2010. I was laid up in bed for a couple of weeks with the double whammy of a slipped disc and a chest infection. The chest infection gave breathing the feel of rubbing my insides against sandpaper, and within hours I’d convinced myself I had lung cancer.

It was a dark fantasy I indulged to finally scare myself into quitting the fags for the first time in 15 years. Also, given that I couldn’t so much as fart without feeling like an ice pick had been driven into my vertebrae, not going out to buy them was relatively straightforward.




For three or four days I was nicotine free for the first time in my life. Job done. Or so I thought.

All addicts have three voices vying for their attention: the good guy, the bad guy, and a second bad guy cunningly disguised as a good guy.

The good guy cares, he sees the logical flaws in continuing with the addiction, the damage it’s doing to your health, relationships and finances. He can be angry with you, kind and supportive, and he’s always there when you know it’s time to stop.

The bad guy wants what he wants and he wants it now, then again, and again and again for the rest of time. His catchphrase is ‘f*ck it!’ and sometimes he only need raise his voice for a split second to ruin an entire life.

And then, then there’s the third voice. He’s reasonable, level-headed and often walks into the room when the other two voices are at war and offers a compromise.

He’s the sort of guy who’ll say, ‘Well, how about this… you can drink, but only on weekends,’ or ‘if you don’t buy your own cigarettes, you’d still be cutting down,’ or ‘you can bet but no horses’.

And so the drinker keeps drinking, the smoker keeps smoking and the gambler keeps gambling. That third voice’s sound advice keeping you hooked.

And with this very voice in my head, after nearly a week free of nicotine, I decided to properly give up smoking, by getting some nicotine.

This lead to patches, gum and an embarrassing incident with a nurse at my GP surgery where we discovered that a nicotine spray can cause chronic hiccups within seconds of application.

Successfully having kept myself addicted to nicotine I then saw a BBC News story about ‘electronic cigarettes’. To the uninitiated, all electronic cigarettes use a battery to heat a coil which then turns a glycerin solution into vapour. This solution is available in various strengths of nicotine and a mind boggling array of flavours.

I’d never seen one before, and though at very early stages, it seemed like a miracle cure. What better way to quit smoking, than… smoking!

And so eight years as a committed smoker of e-cigarettes commenced (‘vaping’ wasn’t even a word when I started).



From the early days when you couldn’t buy them in shops and people would do double takes when they saw the end light up blue and ‘smoke’ escape, through changes in design, bigger batteries, tanks, mods, coils, variable OHMS and wattage.

Through changes in the law, tutting, security guards not quite sure what the policy was, stage techs saying it would set off the fire alarm (while simultaneously making sure enormous smoke and haze machines were working properly for the show), polite notices, passive aggressive notices, aggressive notices. Right up to now, where vape shops line our high streets, staffed by countless thousands of identical men who look like paintball instructors with exotic pets and a Vauxhall Nova they’re doing up.

I wonder how many others like me will be trying to kick the habit they once used to kick the habit.

I’m not that guy. I will not leave behind an enormous cloud of vapour for you to walk through as I pass you in the street. Nor will I fill the room with the sickly scent of watermelon (I was never addicted to watermelons).

But you might see me hunched in the corner of a pub, always facing away from the sharp-eyed barman, lips pressed into my fist as I hide the device I’m chugging on. Or you might hear an odd crackling sound as I turn towards the window on a flight far more than is ideal for a man as scared of flying as I am. And if I come to your house I will just take it out and start puffing away without asking. Not out of rudeness you understand, I’ve been vaping every few minutes for the last eight years, I just have no idea I’m doing it anymore.


It was said of the poet Patrick Kavanagh, that in his later years, as alcoholism began to destroy him, he kept a whisky bottle under his pillow, one that he could unscrew, drink from, and close, without even waking up. For this reason alone I keep my e-cig out of arms reach from my bed. If I could do it continuously with some ingenious circular breathing device I would. And that, alas, is why I have to stop smoking… again.

Public Health England has released a video to encourage people to use vaping to help quit the fags. Research is finally proving that the health benefits of vaping over smoking are enormous, e-cigarettes provide nicotine without the harmful smoke and tar that causes cancer and heart disease. Most figures put vaping at between 95-98% safer. And, as something of an early adopter I might be the ideal vaping guinea pig, if it were bad for you, I’d be the first to cop it.

Our animation shows the difference between e-cigarettes and cigarettes. Read our blog on our latest evidence update here: https://t.co/cXLh82thcd #EcigEvidence pic.twitter.com/OpgCZ3aSbD — Public Health England (@PHE_uk) February 6, 2018

That said, it hasn’t been without its drawbacks. My throat gets irritated sometimes, my voice is becoming almost gravelly enough to do the voice over on Masterchef, and I’ve become prone to lose it entirely if I don’t look after myself.

I once got some very dodgy e-liquid off a stall that gave me mouth ulcers like you wouldn’t believe and, such as seems to be the bequest of all technological advancements these days, I’m drowning in f*cking wires. I’m sick of the chargers, batteries, power packs and USB cables I need to cart round to fulfil this addiction.


We all know how bad smoking is, how anti-social, how damaging, how expensive. But something only a smoker will understand is just how sad I will be to stop.

Cigarettes punctuated my days for 15 years; highs, lows, morning cups of tea, pints, gigs, parties, reading, long empty afternoons, essays, dates, midnight walks, exams, drives, crises, sleepless nights. I’ve smoked cigarettes, roll ups, pipes, cigars, cigarillos, shisha.

The scent of each one carries associations, sense memories, nostalgia so intense it stops me dead in the street. And vaping, well… it’s just always been there, everywhere, every minute. I will miss it, literally, like air.

This January I wonder how many others like me will be trying to kick the habit they once used to kick the habit. How many will once again do battle with the most insidious of withdrawal symptoms.

The only way I can explain it to a non-smoker is by telling them to hold their breath. Now imagine that panicked, minute-long desperation to inhale was stretched out for half an hour, and wasn’t satisfied by air. That’s what needing nicotine is like.

If only I had realised all those years ago, that being addicted to nicotine is just as annoying as being addicted to fags, even if it is less dangerous.

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