Quitting smoking awakening

[Someone here]

@UnbornTao @Natasha Tori Maru  thank you guys for supporting me . Appreciate it . And btw sorry for ignoring your comments in the thread about suffering.  I did so because I feel like we need to tackle one point at a time ,instead of Bombarding each other's with tons of unrelated questions . Much love 🙏. 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@Someone here no harm no foul 🫠

I like being challenged, even if sometimes it makes me feral and aggressive with making a point. So I too, am sorry. In the end it is me angry at myself. I see some 'perceived' ignorance and I want to help, but when I am faced with resistance I am infuriated. 100% because I am disowning the part of myself that is ignorant, and I refuse to see it. I refuse to accept the other user has considered something I have not. So what I see in reality is just precisely what is occuring inside me. I am just unconscious too it. So reverse engineering my feeling and emotional reaction back to the belief is fucken brutally awesome. Lots of arrogance there as we can see...

I do have to get a handle on the feral slappings I tend to let slide in... 🤪 

I don't insult but I am aware I can be very derisive and dismissive. I do it at work in construction, and it gets results. Learned bad behaviour.

Edited yesterday at 01:50 AM by Natasha Tori Maru

[Carl-Richard]

6 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I just choose to obstain because I value clarity over anything else.

You just can't keep yourself from stealing more of my thoughts? 🙈 I'm not even joking.

[UnbornTao]

5 hours ago, Someone here said:

@UnbornTao @Natasha Tori Maru  thank you guys for supporting me . Appreciate it . And btw sorry for ignoring your comments in the thread about suffering.  I did so because I feel like we need to tackle one point at a time ,instead of Bombarding each other's with tons of unrelated questions . Much love 🙏. 

No worries.

[Carl-Richard]

On 19.9.2025 at 6:24 PM, Someone here said:

Good job. If it wasn't rare and expensive in India (I had to find a dealer " I would've be addicted to weed as well .

India has literally the #1 cheapest weed in the entire world lol

[Natasha Tori Maru]

2 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

You just can't keep yourself from stealing more of my thoughts? 🙈 I'm not even joking.

I'm over here harvesting that shit like a golden datamine  

[Someone here]

I must say as well the first few days were full on hell landscape. I use cigarettes to cope with stress . Like when I go to buy bread and I have to cut through crowded hungry mofos to buy the freshly baked bread I need to chew on a 🚬 and blow some steam outta my chest to deal with the absolute nonsense of society. 

 

[something_else]

I'm going to give you a very comprehensive overview of my experience with nicotine and how to stop. I don't get the sense that you are fully committed to stopping yet, but I hope this will change that. Fucking listen up dude, I promise it's worth it.

----

I’ve been cutting down on nicotine lately. Over the past few weeks I’ve dropped to two 3mg pouches a day (this is a very small dose of nicotine) and the difference in my mental state is insane. Motivation is way up, everyday things feel enjoyable again, and for the first time in a year (since I started heavy daily use) I actually feel content.

What’s strange is that I’m in a good place in life, but I still felt empty and couldn’t figure out why. I think it was the nicotine. High doses hijack your dopamine system so nothing feels rewarding except the next hit. It feels a lot like depression: even basic things like washing dishes, going to the gym, or working feel flat and joyless.

When I first started vaping regularly I could feel my excitement for life slipping away, but the nicotine hit was strong so I didn’t care. Eventually the hit fades too and you’re just left with no excitement for life at all. It’s a terrible deal.

I can’t stress enough how much I recommend cutting back. Not just for health, but for your brain. Feeling content in life is almost impossible when your brain is constantly flooded with nicotine.

Here's exactly what I did to quit, and I have not found it that hard because it's been very gradual. You can absolutely do this, and I promise it's worth it.

• Buy a re-fillable vape with 10-15mg (1% - 15%) e-liquid
• Every two weeks drop to the next lowest e-liquid strength e.g. 15mg (1.5%) > 10mg (1%) > 6mg (0.6%) > 3mg (0.3%)
• Start taking 3mg nicotine pouches on weekdays (I was taking around 5 per day when I switched to this) instead of vaping, but allow yourself to vape on weekends
• Take fewer and fewer pouches per weekday (I found it much easier to switch to lower pouch strength than lowering vape content)
• Once you're taking 1-2 pouches per day, you can stop yourself vaping at weekends and only take pouches
• At this point the health impacts are negligible. Maybe you can stay at this level, or you can make the final push to quit. I haven't reached this point yet, but I already feel 1000x better than when I was smoking and vaping daily.

Edited yesterday at 12:51 PM by something_else

[Singularity8]

I had a huge spiritual awakening when I quit smoking too!  I read the book "The Easy Way to Stop Smoking" by Alan Carr (Highly recommend) And it was like it unlocked the nature of addiction in my mind and all of the sudden I could see it everywhere and from there I had epiphany after epiphany and everything in life clicked together and made sense.  I was elated and tingly in my forehead for about 2 months and then I went back to being normal but wiser.      

The key take away though, is that addiction is self deception.  My mind created a narrative that I enjoyed smoking so that I would feed it niccotine, but the truth was that niccotine made me anxious all of the time, and smoking would make me feel normal temporarily until the anxiety to smoke would build up again and I'd smoke again to feel "normal".    Non-smokers feel the "normal" feeling ALL THE TIME.    It's funny because it inverts on you.   At first the cigarettes feel good and relaxing but eventually you become anxious and the cigarettes just bring you a moment of normal.  That's it.  And it is that way for any addiction.  At first it starts out with some sort of positive feeling, but eventually you feel like shit all of the time and you need it to feel normal.   Crazy right?   It is all just lies to your self when you think "the cigarette relaxes me"  No.  It doesnt.  It makes you anxious all of the time in a way that the non smoker never experiences.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

21 hours ago, Someone here said:

I must say as well the first few days were full on hell landscape. I use cigarettes to cope with stress . Like when I go to buy bread and I have to cut through crowded hungry mofos to buy the freshly baked bread I need to chew on a 🚬 and blow some steam outta my chest to deal with the absolute nonsense of society. 

 

What stood out to me here was the level of resistance to seeking out bread to eat (survive). 

I think with the removal of nicotine you will have to face that stress (as well all do) and then work on acclimating until it is a norm and not an issue to deal with. 

Easier said than done, I understand. 

But that passage was an interesting contrast to my own, as stress for me only arises when serious physical injury or sickness comes about. There was a time when I endured stress from situations you describe - but then life came and fucked me up so hard the reality check was brutal.

I do not say this to minimise your struggle. Because the mind and physical addiction is up there. More as an observation that every small challenge you smash prepares you for the next 🙏🌱

Edited 9 hours ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Carl-Richard]

@Natasha Tori Maru

One time, me and my buddies were smoking (not cigarettes) on the top of a mountain (not big), then we decided to drive down to McDonalds to eat. The guy who drove the car (who I'm pretty sure was the one who suggested it or was at least very hyped for it), after stopping in the parking lot at McDonalds, said he was too scared to go in and order food. It was late in the evening, dark outside, and not really many people inside. And we had been at McDonalds in the same state many times before. I had to literally give a pep talk and go through a whole ass therapy session before we finally went in. The mind is peculiar thing.

Edited 9 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Natasha Tori Maru]

47 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

The mind is peculiar thing.

Absolutely. 

I really try to figure out just how one can become more resilient to stress. I lead and train the team I work with at the office - and it is HIGH stress. A revolving door for people who cannot do construction from the back end and handle it. It is a big one for me - I can only come to the conclusion it is nature & nurture. I think by nature I am confident and resilient - toward the higher end of the spectrum. I always took this to be a product of my experience; I have seen some evil shit. Been through evil shit. And have a massive capacity for stress. I used to labour under the assumption this arose in me because of hard challenges in my past. Each horrible thing I experienced very much prepared me for the next challenge. And so on and so forth. Until I had such a high capacity for stress, I struggle to even comprehend it myself - especially retrospectively.

And so, because I overcame so much and became stronger - I went through life assuming anyone who faced challenges could reframe and grow from it. Siphon out the positive from any bad experience and learn the lessons to be had there. I projected this onto others. A 'golden shadow'. I truly believed everyone could do this and boy oh boy was I HARD on people when they fell short.

Then I begun working with my sister. She went through similar trauma as me, the same environment. She was exposed to slightly less horror I will say. But she has no capacity for stress. She suffers from anxiety attacks with only a slight push. She isn't able to see positive from past experiences unless they made her happy in totality. She constantly worries how she will be perceived. Worries for her safety - won't walk down the street in the dark. Worries about how a cashier will think of her order - similar to your friends pathology around going to McDonalds in the dark.

Bit long winded - but in the example above, it illustrates how 2 family members can be exposed to the same trauma and walk away with totally different understandings and lessons. And our responses could not be more different - I have no regret and am stronger as a result; she feels she has had an unfair and bad life, and has been weakened. Our minds did totally different things with the experience... all in the mind. And indeed, how strange our minds are!

I can tell you though - my sister lets our past define her. And define her future. I do not. I don't even think on it. Unless to reveal a story such as above to illustrate a point. I have no attachment to my past. I recognize it as a story about someone. It doesn't limit me. I have no attachment there... So I can see how spirituality has altered my mind and how I have been able to reframe my experience in a way my sister simply cannot. And she is not interested in spirituality, nonduality, inquiry - any of it. 

Looping back to @Someone here - I think he could be in a great position to tackle the stress of addiction head on, because he is in a relatively good position (from what I gather, I do not know all of his circumstances) to do so. He can build resilience to stress while he has stability in other areas. 

Because if there is one thing I know in life - it comes to fuck you in the arse with no condom in a sudden and shocking way. Your whole existence and way of being can be deleted at the drop of a hat.