Electronic cigarettes have taken Ireland by storm since the start of 2014. I had tried them a couple of times over the years without much success and continued to smoke. I was given present of an ''Ego-Firebird'' electronic cigarette for Christmas 2013 and tried it a few times, to tell the truth I don't think I was fully committed to the idea of coming off cigarettes so I didn't give it a long enough test. It wasn't until August 2014 that I decided to stop smoking ordinary cigarettes and fully commit to the electronic cigarette. [ generally on this site I don'e review anything and this is my own personal review of trying to give up smoking using a E-Cigarette, I don't endorse anything on this page ]

The reason I decided to fully commit was because of medical grounds, you see, I was getting these pains in the arms and shortness of breath and the doctor says I had very high cholesterol. I'm not going to go into high cholesterol here and the causes but I knew that the main cause was smoking fags and eating crap food. I decided to go on a crash diet for three months to see if I could lower the cholesterol, well after the 3 months were up I had lost 1 percentage point of bad cholesterol. But this wasn't good enough for the doctor

who put me on tablets to lower it. I sort of knew I was only putting off what I really needed to do and that was to quit smoking cigarettes. 

I had tried giving up before and the thought of doing without the smokes again drove me nuts. So as I write this I'm nearly 3 weeks off the ''Real Cigarettes'', the one's made out of tobacco. Yes I broke up 14 cigarettes into little pieces and throw them into the bin, buts and all just in case I got the idea next morning to go through the rubbish bin in search of a but,,I have done it before and would walk miles for a smoke. This is something only a smoker would do, not smokers don't understand no matter how hard to try to tell them how hard it is to do without smokes. I have been smoking for 40 years and tried 3 times in the past without success, the longest being without the smokes was 6 months and each day was like the first day. It wasn't getting and better, well at least that's what I told myself and was probably a reason I thought up to justify going back on the fags.

So here I was again facing life without cigarettes, but this time I had a brand new electronic cigarette which I had tried a couple of times, so I knew these new fangled gadgets were not too bad. You see, I had also noticed that about a quarter of all the smokers I knew were using these new e cigarettes. One only has to walk down any street in Ireland and you see people smoking e cigarettes. I wonder what new taxes the government will have to bring in to make up for the shortfall in cigarette sales in Ireland.

Most people who try going off the smokes will do so on a monday morning after the weekend of being out on the beer. I know this because that's the day I done it in the past. This time it was a Friday night at 7-45 [ one of my beer nights ] that I took one cigarette out of the box and broke up the remaining 14. I said to myself that that cigarette I had in my hand was the last one I was ever going to smoke. I charged up the  ego-firebird and filled it with some nicotine liquid from the little bottle. People had told me to start off using the high dose nicotine which is 24 mg. It's called ''Wicked Silk Juice'' the silk stands for ''Silk Cut'' as that's what I was smoking and your supposed to start off with the closest dose of nicotine that your real cigarette contained.

So armed with this new e cigarette I headed out to the pub for my usual quota of pints of beer. I was sort of dreading the thought of going on the beer and not being able to smoke a fag. But it was too late now, I had broken up the last of my fags, and there was no way I was going to give up the gargle at the same time.

I used to go outside for a smoke after my first pint of beer and even though it's quiet legal to smoke these e-cigarettes in most pubs in Ireland I went outside for my few puffs, I suppose it was more out of habit. I was unsure if I'd last the night. I thought I might have asked a friend for a smoke or two, but I kept to the electronic machine for the night. The next morning I was dreading getting out of bed to face my first full day without the fags. As it turned out it wasn't too bad, and to get to my real point of writing this is the fact that ninety percent of the craving is taken away by using an e cigarette, at least the particular  brand I'm using.

I had tried using other nicotine replacement  in the past, including chewing gum when it came out in the 1980's. I also tried the patches and lasted 6 months, with the patches the craving was still very strong. These e cigarettes are a gift and I always wondered when someone would eventually bring out such a product, and now it's here and about a quarter of all smokers in Ireland are using these devices. If you read this whole page you'll remember me saying I was getting pains from smoking real cigarettes ? will 3 weeks later and I still get pains, I put this down to the nicotine. The reason being is that I don't have any arm pains in the morning, but they only start after I have a couple of smokes from my e cigarette. I find that strange as I assumed that no other problems were associated with nicotine but addiction.

Atomizer smoking device. These devices have taken Ireland by storm with an estimate of a quarter of smokers now using e cigarettes.

The 24mg wicked nicotine.