I had gone to visit an old smoking buddy of mine. Together we unboxed my shiny new machine and with big school-boy grins on our faces fired the chrome cylinder up. Having gone ahead and taken the plunge without ever having tried any kind of vaporiser I had no idea what to expect.

Effects wise we got massively, ridiculously high, as high as it was possible to get from the stuff we had, no doubt. However, something was missing. I was even slightly disappointed.  And then I realised. I was missing the hit. The impact. The familiar sensation of smoke entering my trachea and permeating deep into the tissues of my lungs.  I wanted the very thing I was trying to get away from!

This was something I hadn’t prepared for but looking back it seems obvious. In the space of a morning I had gone from habitually inhaling dense smoke to a thin, clear, clean mist and my sub-conscious wasn’t immediately buying into this new method of becoming one with the universe. I knew why I had bought the vaporiser and I was determined to make it work, but just buying the thing wasn’t enough – it was going to take time for me to become the healthy stoner I knew I had inside me.