Vapers Are Quitting by Taking Up Cigarettes
People hooked on vapes try a new way to quit: cigarettes
Vaping was supposed to help people ease nicotine addiction, but it hasn't worked out. On TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and Facebook, e-cigarette users trade quitting tips and count days since their last hit. Now a counterintuitive idea is gaining steam: start smoking. Shaun Moore, a road-paving superintendent in Utah, turned to cigarettes last year to quit vaping. Smoking, these people say, is even more disgusting than vaping, making them less likely to light up.
All of the reasons that make you want to quit smoking — on a cold morning, for instance, having to put on shoes and a heavy coat to venture outside — none of them were there for the vape.
- UntitledNo4
Tabex (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytisine) is what helped me (and my boyfriend) quit smoking after many years (~30) of smoking and several failed attempts to quit using nicotine gum and patches. We have now been smoke-free for over 5 months, which is still not long, but much longer than we have ever lasted before.
It seems strange to me that with all the talk about the importance of quitting smoking that Tabex is not well known. A course of treatment lasts 25 days, costed me €35 for the whole course, you can buy it online, you stop smoking on the 5th day, and it makes quitting a lot easier. Really.
It does still require motivation in certain situations when you used to smoke before (going out drinking, clubbing, etc.) but it's still much easier than with anything else we tried, and after the first couple of weeks your brain rewires itself. Five months in, going out with friends who still smoke, we were both not tempted to take a cigarette from them. This is huge for us.
If you really want to quit smoking and everything else failed so far, give it a try.
If you do buy online, just make sure it's not a counterfeit. I don't have any advice regarding that, we got ours at a pharmacy on a trip to Poland.
- prohobo
People don't understand that cigarettes are self-limiting because they literally hurt your throat and lungs. Most people simply can't chain smoke and they need about an hour break in between smokes.
With vaping that limit is completely gone. A vaping addiction can keep escalating until you want a puff every 30 seconds, especially once you start breaking down mental barriers like "no vaping indoors" or "no vaping while on the computer", etc.
So in terms of pure addiction I would 100% argue that cigarettes are better than vaping.
- S0y
Here's what I did to get rid of my nicotine addiction (vaping):
- Gradually lower the strength of my liquid until it was at the minimum.
- Stop all vaping and switch to nicotine gum
- Gradually increase the time between each gum
- Stop the gum altogether
This process took probably 3 months and tbh it was pretty miserable the whole time. It's 100% worth it tho, You don't realize how much it controls your life until you stop. You will also still get random cravings for a year or two afterwards, Heck it's been 4 years and I still sometimes get dreams where I'm vaping.
- dasKrokodil
A while back I saw this on reddit... in case you don't want to click the link, it's a picture of a cigarette with the caption "This plant-based alternative promises to help high schoolers stop vaping".
I would have never thought that people would be stupid enough to try this for real, but here we are...
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
- itomato
I bring this up every decade because I haven't been able to find (many) supporting studies.
Chilis. Nibble a Thai bird chili instead of facing a nicotine fit. Sip some Tabasco if you must.
I quit this way, and the point is not burning your mouth or the heat. It’s the endorphin complement.
Tobacco products out. Capsaicin products in.
- sph
For the past 3 years I have replaced my ADHD stimulant medication with nicotine patches and they’ve been great, cheap, and legal in the country I live in now.
Recently I got the urge to try vaping again, bought all the paraphernalia and started vaping like a chimney 24/7. Got light nicotine poisoning as well. After two days, I caught myself compulsively reaching for the vape.
So I threw everything away and I’m back to patches. Took me a week to forget the compulsive hand-to-mouth urge. I now believe intradermal nicotine is the superior method of administration. At least with cigarettes the smoke is such an intense irritant you self-regulate pretty quickly compared to a cupcake flavoured vape you can just suck on all day long.
- narag
Not funny. Smoking restrictions weren't put in place because it's addictive, but because it causes cancer. WHO and others are conflating both to restrict vaping, because it's convenient for them. AFAIK there's no strong evidence vaping causes cancer. Is it addictive? Sure, nicotine is. This headline really crossed a line.
- mullingitover
Did a cigarette write this article?
Cigarettes are ridiculously more addictive. I know this from experience, but also from a study that found that MAOIs (in cigarettes, but not found in vapes) "dramatically increase the motivation to self-administer nicotine in rats."[1]
I had a wickedly difficult time quitting cigarettes, many failed attempts over the course of years. Vaping made quitting tobacco comically easy, and quitting vaping was also comically easy compared to cold turkey. To quit my all-day vaping habit I just...got rid of the vapes and stopped doing it. I thought about it a few times a day for the first few days, and that was it.
People saying to avoid vapes as a cessation tool are committing actual harm, imo. It's like the difference in difficulty between just jumping off a roof versus using a ladder to descend. Yes, ladders are risky, but not as risky as jumping off a roof.
- jiaosdjf
I switched to nicotine patches and never looked back, I use them as nootropics now.
The key is to break any brain connection between doing something and receiving nicotine, no other method can do this, you will simply keep dosing.
I'm at the point where I will often forget to put a patch on. I also cut the patches up to get the desired dose and save money as all box doses are the same price (try and convince me that this is wrong).
I will occasionally use a higher dose if I'm on a night out or feel the need but since it takes maybe an hour to have an effect I don't ever feel the need to re-dose it's just something I put on and forget. Best nicotine decision I ever made.
- rafael09ed
For anyone looking to quit, I recommend Allen Carr's Easy Way to Quit Smoking. Helped multiple people in my life with addiction