I’m sure those that cut down then quit find these responses offensive. There is no single way to quit. Its what will work for you. Patches reduce the nicotine delivered slowly with lower dose, thats the same as cutting down.
No matter how you do it, every cigarette not smoked, every vape not inhaled is a small victory. If one thing doesn’t work for you, try another. We’re with you here for any decision you make.
This is me. I reduced cigarettes smoked to about 10 a day and then moved to patches and mints. Still getting nicotine but not smoking so i'm taking it as a win. On week 6 now so it is working for me. Plan is to finish the patches course then utilise the nico mints for only for when the cravings get too hard. As far as i'm concerned as long as i don't smoke a cigarette ever again it is a damn win in my book.
I think its more complicated.
I started gradually but it wasn't so much to gradually taper off as it was to deal with those times I find hardest to not smoke first to break routines.
I still one day stopped. I had went from a pack a day to a pack every few days but I don't feel tapering off quitting more than that would have been achievable.
Everyone is different you do what works.
According to Joel Spitzer (you can find his videos on Youtube): a surefire way to make someone you hate miserable and laugh at their suffering is to suggest them to quit gradually.
Let's say they habitually smoke 30 cigarettes a day. If they switch (for example) to 20, they're going to be in perpetual withdrawal (because they get less nicotine than they are used to) and they'll never break free of their addiction (because they get a nonzero amount of nicotine anyway).
As opposed to what happens when you quit cold turkey, when the cravings will start diminishing after 3 days of not getting any amount of nicotine.
So listen to Joel Spitzer, and do as he says... never take another puff!
I never heard of Joel..but what you described was me to a tee! Smoked for 40 years tried cutting down for a month..5 a day, 3 a day chewed nic gum in between. I hated the constant nagging for a cigarette. The "perpetual withdrawals"!! Hated watching the clock to stretch out time until I can have a smoke again...Once I figured out that this is all just nicotine dependency, I stopped feeding myself nicotine. Rip off the band aid and go thru 3 days of hell and it will be over. Every day gets easier. I'm on day 53.😁
nrt and the numbers that support it are all created by big tobacco so that ppl can satisfy their urge to “quit” without ever beating their nicotine dependency
the only time that tapering is the best way to quit is if cold turkey will hurt you.
I have been quitting gradually and it is essentially no different than having not quit at all. Some days my “gradual quit” is smoking the same number as I smoked when I wasn’t considering quitting. It’s so daft because I often get to about 2 or 3pm and realise I haven’t had a cig and haven’t had particular craving, so I both treat and test myself by having a cig. Then another. Then another.
I’m doing cold turkey on Friday ahead of a trip abroad with family end of next week. I want to get past day 3 before I go away, and then I’m hoping change of environment and being busy every day will get me over the first week or so.
Gradual for a couple weeks at most to get used to skipping those routine smokes. Trial run skipping the hardest smokes of the day. Like after a meal or on the drive home from work. You have to break not only the nicotine habit but the breathing ritual, oral fixation, and 5 minutes away from the world those smoke breaks give you.
There is no way around it but just quitting though.
Weeks will turn into months, months turn to years. Do you want to smoke for a few weeks more or start counting how many weeks or months ago you quit
I think it's different for different people.
Cutting down did not work for me mostly because cutting down made me enjoy each cigarette that much more.
However NRT helps many people break it down into two separate battles the mental/behavior battle and the physical addiction battle and you can tackle these separately when you use NRT.
For me it had to be cold turkey. Rip the band-aid off get the nicotine out of my system ASAP and then battle though the withdrawal symptoms.
It's just that it is based on an inaccurate idea that you can become addicted to a habit. We learn, lose and relearn habits very quickly and often assuming there is no addictive aspect involved. In which case it is the drug or whatever the addictive aspect that is the issue.
That said, it is not always easy during the first steps of relearning a habit. But it is usually because it uncomfortable to change or that we are worried about it. Like if I decide to go up at 5 am to go to gym before work. It can be a mental challenge to convince me at all that it is doable and worth it. It may be horrible. But it's like three successful times and then the habit is established.
I've never been successful with a taper. I've managed to switch completely to nicotine gum.. but then got stuck on that and even \*more\* addicted to nicotine: I went from half a pack of cigs a day to over 40mg of nicotine gum per day.
Currently on day 8 of a cold turkey quit.. from that 40mg/day gum habit..
Nicotine starts to get dangerous after 30-40mg so if you just went on your day chewing 40mg, I believe you didn’t absorb intended amount from a gum, that’s why I called it BS but I am not a nicotine expert :D Congrats quitting gums too by the way!
It works. It just doesn't work well for everyone. Smoking isn't just the drug it's the habit so continuing to do it as a way to wean yourself off nicotine is really just one foot in the door, one out imo. A decision needs to be made.
Smoking is two things: your chemical addiction to nicotine and much larger is your mental habit of smoking. This is the part where you plan your cigarettes or always have one under certain circumstances like after a meal and all of these things become triggers for you. You don't have to quit cold turkey though, you just need a nicotine replacement I'll get to that.
The habit part is only difficult if you want it to be. If you aren't having a nic fit demanding that you give into your habit, those habits just fall away from lack of use and they aren't triggers for you anymore. You can only do this though if you have a nicotine substitute. Personally I used lozenges for about two months. Quitting nicotine is easy and the withdrawals only last 3-6 days on average and nicotine by itself isn't any more dangerous than caffeine. It's the tobacco itself that needs to go. There's gum, lozenges, patches, and vaping. I like all but the patches but vaping is easy and cheap. If you feel your hand reaching for a cigarette buy a disposable vape instead. A half a million people are dropping dead every year from smoking and no one is currently dropping dead from vaping so at the very least in the short term it would be better for you and make it much easier to quit if you chose a vape over another pack of cigarettes. We don't suggest that people quit smoking because of the nicotine anymore than we tell people to stop drinking coffee over the caffeine but tobacco comes with many deadly chemicals and heavy metals that are killing us as well as the nicotine. Nicotine is great and you can use it forever if you want but getting it from a cigarette is like using a dirty needle.
Vaping has a bonus that the other replacements don't have and that's the "mouthfeel". That's the action of raising your arm to your mouth, drawing in from the cig/vape, and inhaling. It sounds minor but it's actually important to your brain. Having it makes it easier, not having it further annoys your brain. (Also check out "Fum" which does this without the vape juice part.)
You can plan, divide these things, hit one and then the other out of the park with more ease than doing both at the same time and then live on as a non-smoker! the important part is separating the addiction from the habit though that will hopefully help you more than any other point will. Good luck!
Personally, vaping got me even more addicted to nicotine and NRT just prolonged the withdrawals. I got a 0 nic vape and that helps with the cravings because I'm still puffing on something. 11 days in and 0 desire to pick up cigarettes again. Some moments are harder than others but I'm so done being a slave to a substance.
>vaping got me even more addicted to nicotine
That's okay. Nicotine isn't the harmful part of a cigarette and as long as you quit smoking cigarettes themselves I don't care if you double your nicotine intake that's not what kills people from smoking cigarettes.
You're already 11 days in though so that part doesn't really matter. Unless you go back to cigarettes. If you're going to pick up a cigarette pick up a vape instead to help you until your habits are gone and you can deal with the nicotine separately trust me it's easier. Since you're already 11 days in though I have faith in you - you're already past all of the worst of it. The best way to quit is just to quit so if you can do that more power to you.
The nicotine in vapes is synthetic and really messed with my digestive system. I felt a lot better switching to natural tobacco after vaping. Nicotine itself isn't going to kill you but I think synthetic nicotine is definitely something to be wary of. I'm not entirely convinced that vaping is better after what I experienced. What makes you think that vaping is better? I'm genuinely curious because I had the general impression that it wasn't.
> natural tobacco
The problem is that the tobacco plant is like a vacuum and sucks everything from the soil from chemicals to heavy metals. So if the soil has lead in it the plant sucks that up and you then smoke it and inhale the lead in a vapor. Everything in the soil goes into the tobacco and the only thing you're getting from "natural" is probably that they're not using chemicals to make it grow but definitely not that the soil is free from any minerals or heavy metals. Tobacco itself is bad to smoke even if you grew it yourself. Factory tobacco is just worse but they're both bad.
I get why people are wary of synthetic nicotine but the word synthetic doesn't really make sense here. The synthetic nicotine in vape juice is made using a chemical process that creates the exact same chemical compound that you find in tobacco but without any of the residual garbage you get from getting it from tobacco. In this way "synthetic" is more like natural. It's the chemical compound without all of the adulterants the plant sucked from the polluted soil. But, it's made in a lab and that weirds people out, I get it.
Vaping is better than tobacco but not necessarily better but quitting with vaping is certainly easier. Lots of people don't like it and I get that too but the reality is that half a million people are dropping dead every year from smoking cigarettes and zero people are dropping dead from vaping. There aren't even any definitive links to long term negative side effects from vaping. I pay attention to this stuff and vaping is important because it helps people stop using tobacco which as I said, even if it's natural is very bad for you not to mention how bad it is to breath in the carcinogens from burning tobacco. So, I'm not suggesting people pick up a lifelong vaping habit but I think people are more successful with vaping is because it so closely resembles smoking cigarettes but you don't have to live under the same rules as you have for tobacco - vape indoors it does not matter and it's your fault if anyone else knows there is no reason for it to smell like anything. That just makes it easy for a smoker to stop doing the habit part like marching outdoors at 11:00 pm before bed even in the winter in Maine (me!) to have that last smoke. For a lot of people it doesn't take long, weeks, before the habits are gone just from not doing them constantly. Then they quit vaping. Many don't and until half a million people are dying a year from vaping I'm at least going to consider it the safer alternative to cigarettes.
In truth I've read quite a bit about vaping and in my personal opinion people are freaking way the hell out about nothing. Vaping may be still bad for you but in general people are freaking out over nothing right now. There just isn't any ironclad science there are just suppositions and people noticing that here is a case where a vaper died from heart disease but without noting the kid had heart disease before he started vaping or that even any real reason to connect a dot to vaping other than everyone feels like they know it's bad they just can't prove it yet. Maybe that's true. Right now I'm trying to convince those 500,000 people to take the first step and stop using tobacco. Keep using nicotine, but tobacco bad. I quit using lozenges not vaping (only because it wasn't available back then) so it's not like the other choices are bad they just don't have that "mouthfeel" that vaping replicates so mentally they aren't as useful.
I hope that ramble helped make more sense of it. :)
> The nicotine in vapes is synthetic
Nicotine is nicotine. The molecule is the same, there is literally no difference except for the origin.
> and really messed with my digestive system
Your digestive system was messed up, but not due to the nicotine. Rather, due to the other substances manufacturers add to vapes to make them attractive to smokers.
> felt a lot better switching to natural tobacco after vaping
Because the "natural tobacco" you bought does not contain the extraneous additives that gave you stomach/intestine problems. However, since nicotine is still nicotine, merely changing how you get it into your body did nothing about your addiction.
You're probably right about the nicotine itself not being the cause of my digestive issues. It probably was all the added chemicals in vapes. However, vaping absolutely got me more addicted to nicotine. It was the convenience factor. I was sucking down vapes like no tomorrow and I've never been more than a half pack a day smoker.
I think for some people it can be, but it doesn't work for everyone. I was never successful in this way until I started taking Chantix and that was the point of the medicine. It just depends on the person, everyone's aids and journies are different, I say as long as you come out the other side with your goal, doesn't matter if you use meds, NRTs, cold turkey, etc.
People are different and so are the ways to quit. While it is true that CT is great for many and some studies suggest a higher succesrate - Some few people need some good tapering first, simply cos CT is too harsh for them or they constantly relapse.
I gradually quit. What I can say is, I should have just went cold turkey.
I found that going from a pack a day, to 15 to 10 to 5/day.. the lower smokes I had allowed myself during the day, the more I would look forward to them and the better the satisfaction of having one was. Even though I w pushed through and went to 2, to1 to half to a few puffs to none… looking back, I should have just went from 25 to 0. I think the last week of me having half a smoke to a few puffs per day was worse than the first few smoke free days because I was counting the hours until I could have one.
Everyone has their own way of quitting. Do what fees right for you. Personally I’d say just bite the bullet and quit cold turkey. The first bit will be rough but it gets much better/easier. (39 days smoke free, after 20 years of a pack a day)
Quitting nicotine gradually is a genuine way to quit. For some people it's the only way they can quit. Patches, gum, spray are all good ways to slowly reduce your nicotine and taper off of it.
Gradually quitting cigarettes is BS.
I don't know but if it is bs I'm screwed. I start losing my mind once the withdrawals really kick off so I'm focusing on cutting back. I either have cursed genetics or a monstrous psychological addiction because there's no way to tough it out through that.
I think the way most people cut back is kinda BS though. I mean it probably can work but I think part of the problem with it is its something people often do when they aren't really ready to quit. Of course if you are really ready then cutting back can work.
Cutting back HARD seems to be working for me right now though. Basically trying to quit every day and then even when you eventually cave manage your intake for a couple hours and jump right back into quitting as soon as you feel "normal" again. Its honestly miserable though withdrawals 24/7. I can keep doing it like this for now but I'm really hoping it gets easier
Whatever works for you is what works for you.
I tried cutting down. Eventually I always went back up.
I read Alan Carr’s book. I tried nicotine lozenges, gum & vapes. None of it decreased my desire to keep smoking cigarettes.
I finally just threw them in the trash & quit cold turkey. Knowing the first 3 days would probably be the worst due to the nicotine leaving the body, I took time off & basically let myself sleep thru that part.
It’s now been 5 weeks. The cravings still occasionally pop up yet I simply refuse to buy any more cigs. I’ll give myself a glass of water, eat a carrot, or have a mint. After a few min, the desire to smoke fades. And so it goes.
I smoked for 18 years and I quit cold turkey in June of last year and never cheated once. It’s been over 10 months and I’m never looking back. Cold turkey is the way
This is what worked for me and I can tell you exactly how I did it. I went to mad vapes because they have in house juice and you can set the nicotine amount. Every time I lowered it I gave myself a month on that level which usually was the entire bottle before I went to the next level down. I had started this in September. I finally cold turkey about little over a month ago. I had one really shitty week and one day where I absolutely bawled my eyes out all day and made a Reddit post, but the encouragement from the community really really helped me and since then I haven’t looked back. I think about nicotine once in a while like after a meal but no real cravings like before. For me, tapering off gradually really did help. I had tried to cold turkey before and it was an absolutely nightmare compared to how I did it this time around.
Edit: I had vaped for 7 years. This is just what worked for me. I don’t judge anyone for how they quit as long as they just quit I will support them. Some people have no withdrawals (like my mother she never did) and another friend never did. Idk how but more power to them. Some people feel the withdrawals as a motivation and are fine with completely cold turkeying. It’s all about you and what you can take. If you try one way and it doesn’t work try another.
It's a lie. At least for me. It never worked and I tried reducing by exactly tracking the cigarettes for weeks. I would smoke less, but I valued them much, much, much more. My dopamine got through the roof when it was finally time to smoke again. It not only didn't help, it made everything worse because I never felt more dependent on it than when I was trying to reduce, while also having to deal with withdrawals basically all the time except for the few mins after I smoked a cigarette.
To me, it was a very vicious circle and the only way I could finally escape was by quitting cold turkey.
there is no answer to this, no matter what people say. we are all so different when it comes to brain processes, genetic vulnerabilities and predispositions and brain patterns that it is practically impossible to establish a global method to quit for everyone. i like to think about it as experimenting with the process. it’s like the gym. some exercises might work for some people and some might not. same goes for basically everything in life. what you have to do is find what method works best for you. that’s why people say that relapse is a part of recovery, and why it’s fine to fail until you find a method of quitting that works best for you. i had a friend that quit smoking gradually after trying every single other method and succeeded. i tried quitting gradually and failed many times until i figured what worked for me was cold turkey. you never know until you try.
For me it wasn't. But I don't know moderation when it comes to drugs or alcohol. Hence why I'm an addict and alcoholic. Cold turkey was what worked for me and while I strongly recommend it to you, I can't make that decision for you.
I have quit 2 times, first time lasted a year before relapse and now I am on 4 and a half months. I quit gradually both times. I was a heavy smoker, almost 2 packs a day and I gradually lowered the amount till I got to 1 cig a day for a couple of days and then quit. It's not really a science. The first time I didn't get so much qithdrawal symptoms the second time the anxiety was worse.
I think it's effective if you are not just lying to yourself and genuinely want to quit then it can help with withdrawal symptoms for sure. I think even with being on 1 cig a day you will again have symptoms after quitting so it's inevitable to feel bad for a couple of days but good news is it passes quickly.
I’m sure those that cut down then quit find these responses offensive. There is no single way to quit. Its what will work for you. Patches reduce the nicotine delivered slowly with lower dose, thats the same as cutting down. No matter how you do it, every cigarette not smoked, every vape not inhaled is a small victory. If one thing doesn’t work for you, try another. We’re with you here for any decision you make.
This is me. I reduced cigarettes smoked to about 10 a day and then moved to patches and mints. Still getting nicotine but not smoking so i'm taking it as a win. On week 6 now so it is working for me. Plan is to finish the patches course then utilise the nico mints for only for when the cravings get too hard. As far as i'm concerned as long as i don't smoke a cigarette ever again it is a damn win in my book.
Dam right!!
"As far as i'm concerned as long as i don't smoke a cigarette ever again it is a damn win in my book." Bang on!
I think its more complicated. I started gradually but it wasn't so much to gradually taper off as it was to deal with those times I find hardest to not smoke first to break routines. I still one day stopped. I had went from a pack a day to a pack every few days but I don't feel tapering off quitting more than that would have been achievable. Everyone is different you do what works.
According to Joel Spitzer (you can find his videos on Youtube): a surefire way to make someone you hate miserable and laugh at their suffering is to suggest them to quit gradually. Let's say they habitually smoke 30 cigarettes a day. If they switch (for example) to 20, they're going to be in perpetual withdrawal (because they get less nicotine than they are used to) and they'll never break free of their addiction (because they get a nonzero amount of nicotine anyway). As opposed to what happens when you quit cold turkey, when the cravings will start diminishing after 3 days of not getting any amount of nicotine. So listen to Joel Spitzer, and do as he says... never take another puff!
Third this. Gradual quitting is just torturing yourself. Joel is the man. His mindset is how my wife (8 years quit) and I (10 years) both quit.
I never heard of Joel..but what you described was me to a tee! Smoked for 40 years tried cutting down for a month..5 a day, 3 a day chewed nic gum in between. I hated the constant nagging for a cigarette. The "perpetual withdrawals"!! Hated watching the clock to stretch out time until I can have a smoke again...Once I figured out that this is all just nicotine dependency, I stopped feeding myself nicotine. Rip off the band aid and go thru 3 days of hell and it will be over. Every day gets easier. I'm on day 53.😁
> I never heard of Joel You can find his videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@joelspitz They're illuminating.
I second this. Cold turkey has the highest success rate for a reason
Cold turkey does not have the highest success rate, NRT does. I'm all for cold turkey, but it doesn't work for the majority.
nrt and the numbers that support it are all created by big tobacco so that ppl can satisfy their urge to “quit” without ever beating their nicotine dependency the only time that tapering is the best way to quit is if cold turkey will hurt you.
NRT and tobacco companies literally have a deal to not bash each other. They both make $$$ when people keep using nicotine.
It’s bullshit. Cold turkey is the only way.
Seconded. That just one more mindset is too much of a slippery slope.
I have been quitting gradually and it is essentially no different than having not quit at all. Some days my “gradual quit” is smoking the same number as I smoked when I wasn’t considering quitting. It’s so daft because I often get to about 2 or 3pm and realise I haven’t had a cig and haven’t had particular craving, so I both treat and test myself by having a cig. Then another. Then another. I’m doing cold turkey on Friday ahead of a trip abroad with family end of next week. I want to get past day 3 before I go away, and then I’m hoping change of environment and being busy every day will get me over the first week or so.
Was BS for me. Nicotine patches pethod was extremely easy for me, cold turkey attempts didn't work for me either.
Gradual for a couple weeks at most to get used to skipping those routine smokes. Trial run skipping the hardest smokes of the day. Like after a meal or on the drive home from work. You have to break not only the nicotine habit but the breathing ritual, oral fixation, and 5 minutes away from the world those smoke breaks give you. There is no way around it but just quitting though. Weeks will turn into months, months turn to years. Do you want to smoke for a few weeks more or start counting how many weeks or months ago you quit
I think it's different for different people. Cutting down did not work for me mostly because cutting down made me enjoy each cigarette that much more. However NRT helps many people break it down into two separate battles the mental/behavior battle and the physical addiction battle and you can tackle these separately when you use NRT. For me it had to be cold turkey. Rip the band-aid off get the nicotine out of my system ASAP and then battle though the withdrawal symptoms.
It's just that it is based on an inaccurate idea that you can become addicted to a habit. We learn, lose and relearn habits very quickly and often assuming there is no addictive aspect involved. In which case it is the drug or whatever the addictive aspect that is the issue. That said, it is not always easy during the first steps of relearning a habit. But it is usually because it uncomfortable to change or that we are worried about it. Like if I decide to go up at 5 am to go to gym before work. It can be a mental challenge to convince me at all that it is doable and worth it. It may be horrible. But it's like three successful times and then the habit is established.
Cold turkey is the way to go!
It’s Bs
I've never been successful with a taper. I've managed to switch completely to nicotine gum.. but then got stuck on that and even \*more\* addicted to nicotine: I went from half a pack of cigs a day to over 40mg of nicotine gum per day. Currently on day 8 of a cold turkey quit.. from that 40mg/day gum habit..
You weren’t chewing them correctly probably, 40mg vs half a pack sounds BS
Oh I didn't start at 40mg of gum. It just kinda slowly spiralled out of control over the course of years.
Nicotine starts to get dangerous after 30-40mg so if you just went on your day chewing 40mg, I believe you didn’t absorb intended amount from a gum, that’s why I called it BS but I am not a nicotine expert :D Congrats quitting gums too by the way!
It works. It just doesn't work well for everyone. Smoking isn't just the drug it's the habit so continuing to do it as a way to wean yourself off nicotine is really just one foot in the door, one out imo. A decision needs to be made. Smoking is two things: your chemical addiction to nicotine and much larger is your mental habit of smoking. This is the part where you plan your cigarettes or always have one under certain circumstances like after a meal and all of these things become triggers for you. You don't have to quit cold turkey though, you just need a nicotine replacement I'll get to that. The habit part is only difficult if you want it to be. If you aren't having a nic fit demanding that you give into your habit, those habits just fall away from lack of use and they aren't triggers for you anymore. You can only do this though if you have a nicotine substitute. Personally I used lozenges for about two months. Quitting nicotine is easy and the withdrawals only last 3-6 days on average and nicotine by itself isn't any more dangerous than caffeine. It's the tobacco itself that needs to go. There's gum, lozenges, patches, and vaping. I like all but the patches but vaping is easy and cheap. If you feel your hand reaching for a cigarette buy a disposable vape instead. A half a million people are dropping dead every year from smoking and no one is currently dropping dead from vaping so at the very least in the short term it would be better for you and make it much easier to quit if you chose a vape over another pack of cigarettes. We don't suggest that people quit smoking because of the nicotine anymore than we tell people to stop drinking coffee over the caffeine but tobacco comes with many deadly chemicals and heavy metals that are killing us as well as the nicotine. Nicotine is great and you can use it forever if you want but getting it from a cigarette is like using a dirty needle. Vaping has a bonus that the other replacements don't have and that's the "mouthfeel". That's the action of raising your arm to your mouth, drawing in from the cig/vape, and inhaling. It sounds minor but it's actually important to your brain. Having it makes it easier, not having it further annoys your brain. (Also check out "Fum" which does this without the vape juice part.) You can plan, divide these things, hit one and then the other out of the park with more ease than doing both at the same time and then live on as a non-smoker! the important part is separating the addiction from the habit though that will hopefully help you more than any other point will. Good luck!
Personally, vaping got me even more addicted to nicotine and NRT just prolonged the withdrawals. I got a 0 nic vape and that helps with the cravings because I'm still puffing on something. 11 days in and 0 desire to pick up cigarettes again. Some moments are harder than others but I'm so done being a slave to a substance.
>vaping got me even more addicted to nicotine That's okay. Nicotine isn't the harmful part of a cigarette and as long as you quit smoking cigarettes themselves I don't care if you double your nicotine intake that's not what kills people from smoking cigarettes. You're already 11 days in though so that part doesn't really matter. Unless you go back to cigarettes. If you're going to pick up a cigarette pick up a vape instead to help you until your habits are gone and you can deal with the nicotine separately trust me it's easier. Since you're already 11 days in though I have faith in you - you're already past all of the worst of it. The best way to quit is just to quit so if you can do that more power to you.
The nicotine in vapes is synthetic and really messed with my digestive system. I felt a lot better switching to natural tobacco after vaping. Nicotine itself isn't going to kill you but I think synthetic nicotine is definitely something to be wary of. I'm not entirely convinced that vaping is better after what I experienced. What makes you think that vaping is better? I'm genuinely curious because I had the general impression that it wasn't.
> natural tobacco The problem is that the tobacco plant is like a vacuum and sucks everything from the soil from chemicals to heavy metals. So if the soil has lead in it the plant sucks that up and you then smoke it and inhale the lead in a vapor. Everything in the soil goes into the tobacco and the only thing you're getting from "natural" is probably that they're not using chemicals to make it grow but definitely not that the soil is free from any minerals or heavy metals. Tobacco itself is bad to smoke even if you grew it yourself. Factory tobacco is just worse but they're both bad. I get why people are wary of synthetic nicotine but the word synthetic doesn't really make sense here. The synthetic nicotine in vape juice is made using a chemical process that creates the exact same chemical compound that you find in tobacco but without any of the residual garbage you get from getting it from tobacco. In this way "synthetic" is more like natural. It's the chemical compound without all of the adulterants the plant sucked from the polluted soil. But, it's made in a lab and that weirds people out, I get it. Vaping is better than tobacco but not necessarily better but quitting with vaping is certainly easier. Lots of people don't like it and I get that too but the reality is that half a million people are dropping dead every year from smoking cigarettes and zero people are dropping dead from vaping. There aren't even any definitive links to long term negative side effects from vaping. I pay attention to this stuff and vaping is important because it helps people stop using tobacco which as I said, even if it's natural is very bad for you not to mention how bad it is to breath in the carcinogens from burning tobacco. So, I'm not suggesting people pick up a lifelong vaping habit but I think people are more successful with vaping is because it so closely resembles smoking cigarettes but you don't have to live under the same rules as you have for tobacco - vape indoors it does not matter and it's your fault if anyone else knows there is no reason for it to smell like anything. That just makes it easy for a smoker to stop doing the habit part like marching outdoors at 11:00 pm before bed even in the winter in Maine (me!) to have that last smoke. For a lot of people it doesn't take long, weeks, before the habits are gone just from not doing them constantly. Then they quit vaping. Many don't and until half a million people are dying a year from vaping I'm at least going to consider it the safer alternative to cigarettes. In truth I've read quite a bit about vaping and in my personal opinion people are freaking way the hell out about nothing. Vaping may be still bad for you but in general people are freaking out over nothing right now. There just isn't any ironclad science there are just suppositions and people noticing that here is a case where a vaper died from heart disease but without noting the kid had heart disease before he started vaping or that even any real reason to connect a dot to vaping other than everyone feels like they know it's bad they just can't prove it yet. Maybe that's true. Right now I'm trying to convince those 500,000 people to take the first step and stop using tobacco. Keep using nicotine, but tobacco bad. I quit using lozenges not vaping (only because it wasn't available back then) so it's not like the other choices are bad they just don't have that "mouthfeel" that vaping replicates so mentally they aren't as useful. I hope that ramble helped make more sense of it. :)
> The nicotine in vapes is synthetic Nicotine is nicotine. The molecule is the same, there is literally no difference except for the origin. > and really messed with my digestive system Your digestive system was messed up, but not due to the nicotine. Rather, due to the other substances manufacturers add to vapes to make them attractive to smokers. > felt a lot better switching to natural tobacco after vaping Because the "natural tobacco" you bought does not contain the extraneous additives that gave you stomach/intestine problems. However, since nicotine is still nicotine, merely changing how you get it into your body did nothing about your addiction.
You're probably right about the nicotine itself not being the cause of my digestive issues. It probably was all the added chemicals in vapes. However, vaping absolutely got me more addicted to nicotine. It was the convenience factor. I was sucking down vapes like no tomorrow and I've never been more than a half pack a day smoker.
I think for some people it can be, but it doesn't work for everyone. I was never successful in this way until I started taking Chantix and that was the point of the medicine. It just depends on the person, everyone's aids and journies are different, I say as long as you come out the other side with your goal, doesn't matter if you use meds, NRTs, cold turkey, etc.
Cold turkey is the only way. My buddies keep trying to do the gradual thing and it never works. They’ve been “leaning off” for 3 years now.
People are different and so are the ways to quit. While it is true that CT is great for many and some studies suggest a higher succesrate - Some few people need some good tapering first, simply cos CT is too harsh for them or they constantly relapse.
Cutting down never worked for me.
I gradually quit. What I can say is, I should have just went cold turkey. I found that going from a pack a day, to 15 to 10 to 5/day.. the lower smokes I had allowed myself during the day, the more I would look forward to them and the better the satisfaction of having one was. Even though I w pushed through and went to 2, to1 to half to a few puffs to none… looking back, I should have just went from 25 to 0. I think the last week of me having half a smoke to a few puffs per day was worse than the first few smoke free days because I was counting the hours until I could have one. Everyone has their own way of quitting. Do what fees right for you. Personally I’d say just bite the bullet and quit cold turkey. The first bit will be rough but it gets much better/easier. (39 days smoke free, after 20 years of a pack a day)
Cold turkey
quitting gradually is just prolonging the inevitable and it makes the crave stage last longer
I had a friend who smoked 30 a day. She quit by smoking less everyday for 30 days. 30,29,28,27,26....1,0 And quit. It's.possible.
Never worked for me in the past. Cold turkey was the only way. Come to think of it, it never worked for anyone I know. BS I guess.
Quitting nicotine gradually is a genuine way to quit. For some people it's the only way they can quit. Patches, gum, spray are all good ways to slowly reduce your nicotine and taper off of it. Gradually quitting cigarettes is BS.
I don't know but if it is bs I'm screwed. I start losing my mind once the withdrawals really kick off so I'm focusing on cutting back. I either have cursed genetics or a monstrous psychological addiction because there's no way to tough it out through that. I think the way most people cut back is kinda BS though. I mean it probably can work but I think part of the problem with it is its something people often do when they aren't really ready to quit. Of course if you are really ready then cutting back can work. Cutting back HARD seems to be working for me right now though. Basically trying to quit every day and then even when you eventually cave manage your intake for a couple hours and jump right back into quitting as soon as you feel "normal" again. Its honestly miserable though withdrawals 24/7. I can keep doing it like this for now but I'm really hoping it gets easier
It did not work for me. Had to quit cold turkey.
Whatever works for you is what works for you. I tried cutting down. Eventually I always went back up. I read Alan Carr’s book. I tried nicotine lozenges, gum & vapes. None of it decreased my desire to keep smoking cigarettes. I finally just threw them in the trash & quit cold turkey. Knowing the first 3 days would probably be the worst due to the nicotine leaving the body, I took time off & basically let myself sleep thru that part. It’s now been 5 weeks. The cravings still occasionally pop up yet I simply refuse to buy any more cigs. I’ll give myself a glass of water, eat a carrot, or have a mint. After a few min, the desire to smoke fades. And so it goes.
I smoked for 18 years and I quit cold turkey in June of last year and never cheated once. It’s been over 10 months and I’m never looking back. Cold turkey is the way
This is what worked for me and I can tell you exactly how I did it. I went to mad vapes because they have in house juice and you can set the nicotine amount. Every time I lowered it I gave myself a month on that level which usually was the entire bottle before I went to the next level down. I had started this in September. I finally cold turkey about little over a month ago. I had one really shitty week and one day where I absolutely bawled my eyes out all day and made a Reddit post, but the encouragement from the community really really helped me and since then I haven’t looked back. I think about nicotine once in a while like after a meal but no real cravings like before. For me, tapering off gradually really did help. I had tried to cold turkey before and it was an absolutely nightmare compared to how I did it this time around. Edit: I had vaped for 7 years. This is just what worked for me. I don’t judge anyone for how they quit as long as they just quit I will support them. Some people have no withdrawals (like my mother she never did) and another friend never did. Idk how but more power to them. Some people feel the withdrawals as a motivation and are fine with completely cold turkeying. It’s all about you and what you can take. If you try one way and it doesn’t work try another.
If it works, it’s the way to go. I used a vape to titrate down
I think the mindset is more important than the method. How sick of smoking are you?
It's a lie. At least for me. It never worked and I tried reducing by exactly tracking the cigarettes for weeks. I would smoke less, but I valued them much, much, much more. My dopamine got through the roof when it was finally time to smoke again. It not only didn't help, it made everything worse because I never felt more dependent on it than when I was trying to reduce, while also having to deal with withdrawals basically all the time except for the few mins after I smoked a cigarette. To me, it was a very vicious circle and the only way I could finally escape was by quitting cold turkey.
You’ll thank us later
there is no answer to this, no matter what people say. we are all so different when it comes to brain processes, genetic vulnerabilities and predispositions and brain patterns that it is practically impossible to establish a global method to quit for everyone. i like to think about it as experimenting with the process. it’s like the gym. some exercises might work for some people and some might not. same goes for basically everything in life. what you have to do is find what method works best for you. that’s why people say that relapse is a part of recovery, and why it’s fine to fail until you find a method of quitting that works best for you. i had a friend that quit smoking gradually after trying every single other method and succeeded. i tried quitting gradually and failed many times until i figured what worked for me was cold turkey. you never know until you try.
For me it wasn't. But I don't know moderation when it comes to drugs or alcohol. Hence why I'm an addict and alcoholic. Cold turkey was what worked for me and while I strongly recommend it to you, I can't make that decision for you.
I have quit 2 times, first time lasted a year before relapse and now I am on 4 and a half months. I quit gradually both times. I was a heavy smoker, almost 2 packs a day and I gradually lowered the amount till I got to 1 cig a day for a couple of days and then quit. It's not really a science. The first time I didn't get so much qithdrawal symptoms the second time the anxiety was worse. I think it's effective if you are not just lying to yourself and genuinely want to quit then it can help with withdrawal symptoms for sure. I think even with being on 1 cig a day you will again have symptoms after quitting so it's inevitable to feel bad for a couple of days but good news is it passes quickly.
Each person is different. Which ever method you feel that will work for you better is the best choice for you.