If you’ve quit vaping, please tell me how you did it!

[BabCNesbitt]

I quit smoking years ago, before I got pregnant with DD1 (now 13). A couple of years ago I was having a shitty time and started buying vapes for nights out - well, fast forward to now and I’m getting through an Elfbar a day, and vaping from first thing in the morning to last thing at night 😳

I’m aware of the cost, the effects on my health and the environmental impact and also that it just looks really stupid, but I feel much more addicted than I was to cigarettes - it’s just so much easier to puff away and it has less of the yucky side of smoking (though I’m also aware that I smell of fake candy crap a lot of the time!) Has anyone managed to quit successfully, especially if you were a heavy vaper? How did you do it?

Hopeful bump for the afternoon!

Use the Allen Carr easy way method.

I also found vaping more addictive than smoking. Honestly when I became pregnant with my first child I quit both vaping and smoking then never returned to it. But also when my vaping pens kept leaking and ruining my stuff that was enough alone to get me to stop!

I think the best way is to go cold turkey, track your vape free days, give yourself little non food rewards for milestones, tell everyone and maybe buddy up with someone else who wants to quit.

Funnily enough I read this a couple of weekends ago, having quit (for a week or two) with the smoking one about 20 years previously. I felt very motivated by the end, threw out my vape and all my nicotine gum… then cracked the next day after a stressful morning at work 🙄

How did you get through the first day? Every time I’ve tried, I’ve got so antsy and grumpy and just a bitch to be around and all I can think of is getting to the shop.

Consider regularly applying sickly sweet scented/flavoured lip balm to replace the smell and Hand to mouth movement and chew nicotine gum?

No idea. I don’t smoke but I also don’t vape daily. Only when I drink. But I agree it seems a harder habit to wit as it’s somehow more socially acceptable even though you smell like a candy floss factory crossed with a blueberry farm 🤷🏼‍♀️

Put it down and ride it out cold turkey. Give into whatever you need to subsidise the craving through the early weeks so long as you don't pick the vape back up.

Went back to proper fags.

I found a simple sentence to repeat when tempted. It was I will not be a slave to this. It worked.

I love this. I’m starting to feel like a shameful addict (well, I’m definitely addicted!), calling my dealer (Deliveroo) to bring the goods when I’m WFH.

I used nicotine patches and an inhalator.

I went cold Turkey and never touched another vape again. They repulse me now.

You have to wake up and start a fresh day when you quit.
Make sure there’s none in the house.
The first 24 hours will be tough but once I passed that I felt proud of myself. Then I tried 48
hours, then three days, a week and so on.

The biggest motivation was how much money I would be saving.

I binned all vape stuff when I was 100% ready to quit. Bought some mints and lip gloss. Shiny lips makes me not want to mess them up with a vape and the mints give me something to suck on. As soon as the craving appears you have to shut it down ASAP. First few days are the worst then the cravings slowly disappear. I've not vaped for 4yrs and don't miss it one iota.

For every minute, hour, day, week that you don't vape or smoke, you are free.

So every time you put your vape down, or your fag out, you are free. Straight away, you're free. You're free already - it's done.

You can carry on being free forever, just as long as you don't light up or vape ever again.

So every time I thought about it I would repeat out loud, I am free, I am free already, I am free now. It helped, I think because it's true.

Vapes were initially designed to get people off cigarettes. Can you not find an option that tapers down the niccoteen dose? There's no reason not to try the other methods simultaneously.

As you have already said, vaping makes it much easier to get a bigger dose and so it's easier to get more addictive. If you can reduce the strength gradually it might help.

I am exactly the same . I even take it in the bath with me , put it under my pillow at night. I'm going to try and got to a refillable one then cut down the nicotine amount to 0% then I'll just have to wean off the actual movement of it rather than the nicotine I think xx

I think alot of it is the habit of picking it up so keep busy. When you get the craving you need to do something else and it will pass.

By day 5 I remember thinking I had barely any cravings for it and by then I was determined to get to a week without it.

Like pp said....started smoking again

So starting smoking regulated when I was smoking. I couldn't do it all the time as there is no off switch with a Vape

Then I moved to nicotine replacement lozenges from body care not the branded kind.

Vapes are too addictive as they can be constant
Now I look at vapes as a baby with their dummy 😄

Also I'd just like to add coming off vapes is what I imagine major drug withdrawal being like. I was sick my skin wad itching it was absolutely awful. Shakes and everything.... keep focused eventually you'll get there xx

Got loads of my favourite chocolates and sweets, and a fancy lip oil I’d been wanting. Whenever I felt the urge I had a chocolate or sweet, then applied my lip oil as I knew vaping would have ruined it.

Not the healthiest way but all the same it worked eventually!

Start with going down to 0% nicotine, then quit.
You gave the fags up so you can quit the vape. Good luck op

I succumbed to advertising. Nicorette ad for Quickmist spray was specifically targeting people who vape, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I stopped vaping entirely when I started using the spray, no tapering off. It took three months for me to feel confident about going it alone, and I haven't cracked in the six months since then. There are still times when I'd like a hit of nicotine, but obviously I have no vape kit nor cigarettes in the house.

I've occasionally found nicotine gum helpful in reducing the amount I've vaped, so nicotine replacement seems like it could work as a way to stop. Can I ask @Optimist1 what if anything you did to replace the 'sucking on a dummy' aspect of vaping, or was that less of an issue for you?

My main issue was having nothing in my hand, although the sucking thing did feature. I guess I could have started a knitting project or some alternative, but I didn't. Having a drink of water was something I did occasionally to distract my brain. Who'd have thought that a cigarette replacement would prove as fierce an addiction?

I know, I'd have stuck to the occasional buying of a packet of fags on a night out if I'd realised how addictive vaping would turn out to be!