Smoking e-cigarettes, or e-smoking, is the closest thing to conventional smoking. Smokers  know that nicotine gums and patches are not very effective, especially the nicotine patches because they have nothing to do with the sacred act of smoking. Chewing gums at least keep your mouth busy, but still, it’s not the same.

Smoking e-cigarettes has a great advantage over other ways to quit conventional smoking. The reason is that both experiences, e-smoking and conventional smoking, are very similar—you’re taking time alone doing something, you’re holding a cigarette between your fingers, and you’re smoking, and the most important is the act of smoking.

When you smoke an e-cigarette you feel many of the same pleasant and unpleasant sensations of real smoking. And although you inhale water vapor instead of smoke, the taste of good smoke juice is like that of cigarette smoke and, sometimes, even better.

The great similarity between smoking and e-smoking is why I never went back to smoking real cigarettes, even after I accepted a cigarette by a friend at Starbucks when I hadn’t smoked a real cigarette for three months. The real cigarette didn’t taste as good as my e-cigarette. It was too bitter.