I used to vape in college but afterwards decided to quit. Part of what made quoting easier was moving away and breaking from routine because for me it became a part of my day-to-day. The other thing that helped me was doing cardio. Running would suck so hard because my lungs had a hard time keeping up. That shitty feeling also helped push through cravings.

I started smoking in high school, and by 23, I was smoking a pack a day.

After college, I got a job teaching children’s martial arts at my instructors gym. I taught ages 3 to 18 full time.

Now, these kids, man, they think you are the coolest fucking thing ever walk the earth, I’m not even kidding. I’d run into them every so often outside if the gym, and I became terrified they’d catch me smoking, and I’d have to explain why their idol was doing something so terrible.

So, I decided to wean myself off. I went down by one cigarette each week. Eventually, I was smoking only 3 a day. Then, I cut out the one in the morning with my coffee. Then the one on the way to work.

That last cigarette I smoked on the way home for that last week, I dream about it sometimes.

Anyway, someone had told me that when you stop smoking, the third day is the worst. But for me, it was the fifth day. I’ll never forget how angry I was that day. But once I got through it, not smoking became a lot easier.

I just never went back. Those kids might have saved my life. Or at least my lungs. :)

Don’t get me wrong, it was hard. I think part of the reason I never got back into it is I didn’t want to have to go through quitting again.

It’s easy, I’ve quit multiple times.

I smoked a pack a day for about a decade.

I used a method that was, at the time, recent research. Idk if you remember the quit smoking ad that features a woman going out for a a smoke break at work. She goes to light up, but looks stressed and panicked. She then fucking carjacks someone, looks relieved, and then lights up. It ended with a voiceover “You smoke every time you drive, but you don’t drive every time you smoke…? Think of a new way to quit.” And then had their URL on screen.

I was a psych student at the time, in a research class. Perfect. I dig in, find out what this ad is all about. As mentioned, it’s based on recent peer reviewed research. Awesome. I’m the test subject. Let’s recreate.

The tldr: quit specific cigarettes. Don’t quit cigarettes.

Do you smoke every time you drink your morning coffee? And then your next one after breakfast?

Okay, well, now the first cigarette of your day is the one after breakfast. Well quit that one a little later.

If you’re a smoker, you know certain cigarettes will be harder to quit than others. Space these out. Don’t quit your morning cig and then your after dinner cig. Jesus, man.

One by one, get them outta your life. The discomfort is brief, you know you’ll smoke again soon.

That’s pretty much it. Get it down to the last, most difficult to quit cigarette, and work hard at it, knowing g it’ll be a little harder than all the rest. If you fail, you don’t go back to smoking you go back to that cigarette.

If you drink alcohol, this will be the hard one. The drunk cigarette is tricky because drunk you doesn’t care about progress and will justify chain smoking ‘socially’ while out drinking or something. My recommendation for the drunk cigarette is to do it last. First quit the “drink alone” cigs, then the “social” drunk cigs. Then limit social drunk cigs to like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 a night.

The magic part is that you’ll still have them… But you’ll start hating them. You’ll realize how much non-smokers smell smokers and how little you noticed. The taste will be overwhelming, you’ll remember how strong it was when you started. I recommend getting hammered and smoking a couple. You’ll puke like Bobby Hill and be more or less done with it.

I started smoking at 14, discovered vaping when I was 19, the first few months I was coughing up black goo, then once cleared my lungs have felt perfectly fine since. I’m 27 now and have no intention of quitting vaping, not for any reason, I just enjoy it. I don’t like clouds though, so I’ve found my self using a vaperesso xros 3 mini and I guess amazing flavour but most important to me I get a nice lovely nicotine hit.

I know I’m addicted to nicotine, but because of vaping I don’t find it necessary to quit my addiction, nicotine it’s self isn’t very harmful in small quantities, so here I am and probably will be until a doctor tells me otherwise.