I recently tried out a mate’s Iolite. Gotta be honest, I was sceptical. I’m a pretty hardened smoker and didn’t think anything was going to be as good as kicking back and smoking a couple of joints. However I was convinced to do so as my friend is, if anything, an even more veteran smoker than I am and he couldn’t stop raving about it.

I took my first hit and remained entirely sceptical as I could hardly feel a thing. The only experience I could liken it to is when you’ve got a cold and are inhaling steam (which I guess is exactly what the vaporizer does) whereby you can tell that you inhaling something, but you certainly don’t get the same feeling in the lungs and chest as you do with smoking.

However, a couple of deep hits later and I realised just how high I was already. It was a very clean experience – the kind of high I haven’t had in years.  Very clear and very heady; almost psychedelic. I was almost instantly giggling like a child and wanted to go and be creative. I’m really used to having a few joints and using it to chill out until I get too monged to do anything, but this incredible experience made me pick up my guitar and I simply couldn’t stop playing.

After the Iolite was on for a while I did notice the mouthpiece starting to get quite hot, but we were able to rig a cooling system out of some pipe tubing, so we could keep going. The more I vaped, the more creative I felt myself getting which was incredibly unusual! There was certainly no sitting still and monging in front of the TV that night for this girl.

At £140 or thereabouts, the Iolite Vaporizer isn’t cheap but it really is an incredible experience! And I reckon that if you were to give up smoking entirely you’d probably save yourself quite a bit in the long run. In an evening we used less than half the amount of weed we usually would and no tobacco, so after just a short while the thing would pay for itself.

Personally I enjoy smoking too much to want to give it up straight away, but I’m definitely considering investing in one of these babies. I’m not going to want to smoke forever, and in the meantime it gave me such an amazing, different and creative experience, and I can’t wait to repeat it.