Hello, my name is Chris and I am an EX-SMOKER! 

That’s right, after 27 years of smoking and I am done! I have tried to quit dozens of times. I have tried the patch, I have tried gum, dipping, Wellbutrin, and well… nothing has worked until e-cigarettes.

In 2009, I was attending CES in Las Vegas. I was there covering the mobile tech industry, but I ended up talking with a vendor that was showing an ecig that looked like a real cigarette. He handed me a sample and I took a puff and was like, “woah… that’s bad!” I proceeded to tell this guy that I smoked menthol and he gave me a menthol version. It was bad too, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him a 2nd time though. Since I was press, he handed me some additional samples to take back with me. I never used them. The experience (taste and feel) was so awful that I swore I’d never give them another chance. I don’t even remember the name of that company. It was cool how it did look like a real cig and even had an led in the end to look like a real cherry. That same week, I actually picked up a couple of other e-cigs at CES, but none of them tasted good enough to use.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago. A friend of mine in Memphis was telling me how he quit smoking using e-cigs. I wasn’t interested. He ended getting so excited about e-cigs that he started selling products at a flea market. Eventually he opened one of the best brick and mortar shops in Memphis, Zooks Vapor. I still wasn’t ready to try them.

In January 2014, I saw a couple of contractors that work in my buildings with some fancy crack pipe looking e-cigs. They told me how awesome they were, but I wasn’t interested. One of their co-workers and I went outside to smoke our REAL CIGS and they followed us out and enjoyed their big old e-cigs!

3 months after that, April 13th, 2014, I ran into the same 3 contractors. All 3 of them were using e-cigs now. Craig, the one that was smoking real cigs with me 3 months earlier had also converted to e-cigs shortly after I saw them last. I’ve known him for years and I said to myself, “If he can quit, so can I”. On that day, I decided I wanted to give them a go.

The 1st thing I did was to call my friend at Zooks Vapor. He told me some things to look for and some to look out for. I was going to order a kit from him but found that there was a local store where I live that had just opened 3-4 months earlier. The store is Ikonic Vapor in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I decided to check them out in hopes of finding what I need without having to wait a couple of days for a shipment. I headed in and the owner recommended the same device for me that my friend Todd had suggested. I purchased the MVP 2.0 and a Kanger Unitank and a couple of ejuice bottles and headed home to try it out.

Awesome!

I haven’t craved a real cigarette since that day.