Help with ending horrible vaping addiction

[Bloopoooooo]

Would love to hear success stories. I am so ashamed of my vaping; I am getting through about 1½ disposables a day.
I quit smoking in my late 20's, I had the impetus of wanting to start trying for a baby.

Managed to stay off the cigs for a decade and got to the point where I didn't miss smoking and could even be around others smoking and not minding or being tempted.
Stupidly went out on a night out where some random offered me a go on his Elf bar. Liked it. Bought one for the weekend. Didn't have any more for another week or so but then next weekend away I bought another.
It's completely spiralled from there and now I'm getting through about 3 in 2 days.

I went our with friends at the weekend and as no seats indoors we went outside; I got through 2 disposable ones in one evening.

I can't enjoy cinema or theatre anymore cos I'm just itching to vape.

I'm hiding in the bathroom vaping so my kids don't see me but the older one has found packets and been understandably very upset.

I went cold turkey for about a month because I was on holiday and then for a few weeks after, but as soon as something stressful happened at work I bought one and am back at square one.

I am thinking of getting a liquid, non-disposable one and gradually increasing the amount of liquid that has no nicotine in it, but no idea where to start as have only used disposable ones.

Absolutely mortified when parents from school see me puffing away and I'm mid-40's so feel like I am way too old for this.

Any advice please?

It’s not about weight so much as sugar levels in the blood are somehow linked to nicotine addiction. When you first stop nicotine the levels change. But if when you give up, if you go on to sugar it is like propping up and prolonging the addiction. If you can avoid that, your body will balance out.

Don’t go on to alcohol either.

You can have a high protein and vegetable diet to help curb sugar cravings. Use nicotine replacement therapies to help you ease out of it.

I get it. I have just stopped vaping. It has taken me 3 months. I started with nicotine patches 2x 25mgs every day. Then I started reducing. I forced myself to go an hour between vapes, then 90 mins etc.

I am now on one 15mg nicotine patch and no vaping. It's bloody hard, It's the hardest thing I have ever had to stop. But you can do it.

Updating to say I bought a "yoga whistle" and it really helped when I was at the cinema!! It was a 5er off amazon and as I have Prime it was next day delivery. I felt a bit weird using it as first but it is great at staving off the initial cravings and replacing the hand-to-mouth action.

Thank you xxx

I don't know if it's true but when we did PSE in school we were all told "nicotine is more addictive than heroin".
Regardless it really is super addictive; I have been truly disturbed by how I went from a non-smoker of 10 years to a vaper who vapes the equivalent of about 20, maybe 30 cigarettes a day. And someone who's (having just worked it out for this thread) spending around £200 a month on it. Absolutely crazy.. 😔

I can’t help with vaping but I used to be a chain smoker for years. Tried to quit probably hundreds of times and it never worked. What really helped me was to severely restrict the number of situations when I could have my cigarettes. I started smoking only at one conference I was attending every year and then with my MIL who was also a heavy smoker. I would meet MIL twice a year so effectively there would be three occasions each year, each one lasting for a couple of days, when I would puff away like Thomas the Tank Engine. I managed to tell myself that I was still a smoker, but just from time to time. A couple of years ago my MIL died so I stopped smoking with her. Then during the pandemic I started attending the conference online. So went from three times a year to nothing. I don’t miss it, it’s like I managed to convince myself that I had two personas - one is the smoker that only comes out at very rare and very special occasions, the other one is just me and I don’t smoke. I can’t explain it better but it worked for me, when trying to go cold turkey would only work for a month or so.

Nicotine vapung carries around 95% less risk than smoking. This has been calculated off the back of several independent evidence reviews carried out by OHID. They are safer because they contain nicotine but none of the dangerous chemicals contained within a cigarette. Nicotine in itself is not harmful, it's everything else in a cigarette that is. Do not go back to smoking!

First thing is to make sure you are buying safe regulated vapes, from a specialist vape shop or reputable shop like tesco etc, definitely not from your random off licences and premiers etc. These can be illegal and won't have been through the safety checks that they're meant to, and we don't really know what's in them. Buying reputable products means they're as safe as possible.

Then to quit vaping it's about reducing the nicotine content or reducing how frequently you vape, or a mix of both. Good advice here: https://www.nhs.uk/better-health/quit-smoking/ready-to-quit-smoking/vaping-to-quit-smoking/how-to-quit-vaping/

Using NRT (gums, patches etc) is also an option. You may or may not get this on prescription from your GP or pharmacy, but you could buy it yourself.

Good luck!

I used to smoke, although never heavily. I now vape and I can really tell the difference between it and smoking. I have asthma and it doesn't affect it at all, whereas smoking would really set me off.

Yes I was exactly the same as a smoker - vaping is insidious and it is hard to stop as I do it mainly at home or in the car.

I have hit 48hrs. It has been harder today. I have kept very busy and feel drained from not having nicotine. I don't miss vaping now just the nicotine hit.

Anyone else still with me?

Wrong thread!

I didn’t have a problem with that, I smoked in the car too! For me vaping is in the same category as smoking so “only allowed in very special circumstances” and I haven’t had anything with nicotine since my opportunities to smoke disappeared. I sometimes miss my MIL (she was great) but not smoking.

Be super careful doing this with anything other than patches! I'm sure the other methods work if you use them properly but I ended up far more addicted to them than I ever was to smoking. You don't even need to hide in the toilet to use them, they are literally always available so require a tonne of willpower to quit.

I ended up quitting with patches because they didn't give me a 'reward' feeling for taking one... they were just boringly stuck to my arm everyday.

Good luck OP, nicotine addiction is a complete pain but you have done it before and you can do it again.