I was a pack-a-day smoker for about 20 years. Quit and started lots of times.

I replaced cigarettes with a nicotine vape (salt nic) about a year ago and haven't looked back. I still consume the equivalent of a "pack of day" worth of nicotine. I still get the rituals and sense of "stepping away" that I used to have.

I liked cigarettes in the same way I like coffee and probably would have been happy to smoke indefinitely if I hadn't had kids and it wasn't so incredibly harmful.

It's unfortunate that vaping is not "zero harm", but in my life situation I believe it's been a major harm reduction that would have been very, very difficult to achieve otherwise.