The year is 1987. I am 8 years old and every adult in my life smoked. I was with some friends and one of them had a cigarette they stole from their parents. We are behind the school and decide we want to be cool like our parents so we light it up. That was my first experience with a cigarette. Throughout the next 7 years I would experiment with cigarettes here and there thinking I was cool. At age 15 in high school i started smoking full time and continued to do so until 20 years later.
What changed in my life that made me decide i need to make a change? 
My son. Even with becoming a dad it took me until he was 4 to decide I needed to stop. He was diagnosed with asthma. You would think the fact i had chronic bronchitis and came down with a case of it 5-7 times a year would have been a clue. You would think that my wife being allergic to cigarette smoke would gotten me to stop. Nope nothing worked until my son came up with asthma. Knowing my smoking could trigger a attack that could potentially severely harm my child finally made the light bulb go off.
I tried cold turkey. That did not end well. I tried njoy and blu and those did not work. What did finally work was when I walked into a vape shop. At the time the vaping industry was just beginning to take off. The concept has been around for many years but the industry did not blow up until about 3 years ago.
This is where my vape story begins. At the time these are top of the line devices. They do Mouth to lung cigarette like inhale. I would guess 95% of smokers start with this type of device when they first decide to stop smoking and start vaping.
The industry blew up so fast and technology advanced so fast that in less than 6 months I moved on up to high wattage devices. You see for me the changing technology and potential for more vapor is what kept me from smoking. If technology never advanced I am certain I would not have kept doing it. I would have gotten bored with it and went back to smoking. At this point I have started making friends who also vaped and the local scene started turning into a cultural movement of sorts. This is the point where vaping turned into a hobby.
I started building my own coils. At the time I was so proud of these. I had no idea about the things to come. looking back I almost feel bad for even taking pictures of this lol. Shortly after this I discovered Instagram and my hobby went from building coils to turning vaping into a art form.
So I started playing with filters and Camera angles and Backgrounds. This new hobby kept me interested and thus I continued to improve my skills in photography and building all while never smoking again.
And then came Sub Ohm tanks.
These tanks you could just swap out the replaceable coils and keep going. This changed the industry in a big way. Finally people who did not know how to build coils (or for their own safety should never build coils) had a option that would allow them to "blow clouds" This would also end up helping people quit smoking who just weren't getting enough out of their mouth to lung vapes. These tanks produced at their inception 3-5 times the amount of vapor normal non sub ohm tanks would produce. This gave people a much more satisfying vape and helped a lot of people kick the cigarettes for good. You also used a significantly less amount of nicotine in these tanks so they helped in getting you off of the nicotine. For the ones of us that enjoyed a lot more output "cloud chasers" as we started calling ourselves these tanks did good as far as using them at work or while driving. Times where dripping weren't a good option. They were not at a level high enough to get us to stop building and dripping.
Then this came along.
This is a rebuildable sub ohm tank. This for me Changed my Vaping style. Finally I had a option of building the coils I love and still get almost the same production I love and still have the juice capacity of a tank. For me I don't need drippers anymore because I can get the same thing out of a tank. I still build drippers once in a while but mostly just for fun or nostalgia. I cant remember the last time i used one on a regular basis. Drippers are still immensely popular in the competition scene of vaping.
Right before the FDA dropped the hammer on innovation and progress with their regulations this came out.
This is the newest innovation in sub ohm tanks. This tank uses replaceable coils much like the original sub ohm tanks but will give you the production to rival any dripper. The Production of this tank has never been seen in a tank that had replaceable coils before. This is currently my all day vape. Since this tank came into my possession I haven't really had a need to build coils. I still will just because I like it and its fun but I don't have to anymore to get the production and flavor i want out of my vape.
Unfortunately this is where the innovation stops. the FDA has put a stop to innovation with the release of their regulations in may. If you would like to know more about how the FDA is effectively regulating a entire industry out of business simply to satisfy the demands of the corporations signing their paychecks check out my very good friends @jessamynorchard blog. She just posted a blog discussing this in detail. Follow her for updates and detailed post about the regulations and vaping in general.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog about my love for vaping. In future blogs I will be be focusing on troubleshooting devices, setting up products for the new vapers, coil building tutorials, DIY juice making, and more.
Nice post. My current setup is a Innokin MVP3 pro with a Innokin iSub S Tank running .5 coils. Claptons use too much power and juice lol. I had that same aspire tank before I gave it to a friend. ↓
Thanks @slickwilly the Atlantis was game changer in its time.
@slickwilly What do you think about the iSub? How long have you been running it?
@dburklen what a great testimonial and thank for the shout out. I hope we, as vapers, can unify here on Steemit. Both on the educational side, as well as coil and cloud art.
We don't all have hipster neckbeards, and we aren't all vapeholes. We are regular people who kicked a habit with a healthier alternative. Damn, it feels so good to say that.
Thank you @jessamynorchard you are a very large part of the reason I stuck with it like I have. Knowing our backgrounds I believe if it wasn't the common love of vaping we probably would have never met and became the great friends we have.