I can’t remember the last time I smoked a real cigarette. To be honest, I don’t want to. If I’m out with friends and they ask me to hold one for them, even for a second or two, I say no. I don’t like holding them anymore, they smell bad and the smell lingers on my fingers. I’ve been using e-cigarettes instead of cigarettes for eight months now, and sometimes it makes it easier to forget what it was like to smoke. My life has gotten to the point where I don’t even think about what it was like to smoke anymore—until I’m reminded of what life would be like without them.
The other day, I took my dog to the park for a walk. I had my trusty Vapor Zeus, the e-cigarette that helped me quit smoking. My dog, Maggie, is a whippet mix, and she has a lot of energy, so I wanted to get her moving to burn it off. I haven’t been on a walk in about a year. The last time I walked, I think, was when I was trying to catch a CTA bus in Chicago. The ones that had “Vaping: Still an Addiction” stickers on the back back then were part of the Chicago anti -vaping campaign. I should thank those buses.
I can walk my dog without feeling out of breath.
When I first started walking my energetic dog in the park on Sunday, I noticed that I planned to stop before my body wanted to. My brain was preparing me to stop and stand breathing heavily after a little more than a mile, but I didn’t have to. I kept going, and going, and going until I was more than halfway around the pedestrian path around the park. I didn’t have to push my body, my body pushed me to keep going.
By the end of the walk, I was breathing hard, but I wasn’t out of breath. I felt my chest expand, the blood pumping in my legs. That’s when I noticed the difference. When I was smoking, I couldn’t run more than a block without getting out of breath. I was out of breath running up the stairs to catch the train. I know science in the United States hasn’t fully grasped the potential benefits of e-cigarettes. I’m not a scientist, but I can tell you: I can run and bike without getting out of breath or having trouble breathing. And those are things I couldn’t do when I was smoking.
Have you changed anything since switching to e-cigarettes? I’m not just talking about your clothes smelling better, and your mouth not smelling like a full ashtray. Have you noticed any surprising benefits of e-cigarettes? Tell us about them in the comments. Because if science can’t tell these stories, we will.
This article was posted on vapor4life by Lady Vapentine and translated by The Vape Club.
