Quitting vaping once and for all

[LordFall]

I started vaping in 2017 and have been trying to quit for around a year. I've managed to do it for three weeks but keep relapsing when I hang out with other people that vape or drink. I've directly noticed that it lowers my energy, increases my anxiety, and lowers my motivation so that in and of itself is enough of a reason to quit besides any other medium or long term health effects that I'm consciously trying to ignore. 

My roommate vapes and so trying to quit will be a nightmare. About as easy as quitting junk food while owning a convenience store. But this needs to be done since I feel like it's hindering my growth potential. Do you guys have any advice/relatable stories for me? 

[The0Self]

@LordFall Vaping I found even harder to quit than smoking, since every time I'd smoke, I'd get withdrawal symptoms for 4 days and didn't want to repeat that, whereas whenever I'd stop vaping, there wouldn't be any negative effects at all. I eventually quit because I felt that it interrupted my mindfulness somewhat. Whenever I got the desire to vape, I'd find a place to sit down wherever I was, and do a 1-10 minute meditation session, sometimes just noting my current mind state aloud 1x/sec.

[LordFall]

1 minute ago, The0Self said:

@LordFall Vaping I found even harder to quit than smoking, since every time I'd smoke, I'd get withdrawal symptoms for 4 days and didn't want to repeat that, whereas whenever I'd stop vaping, there wouldn't be any negative effects at all. I eventually quit because I felt that it interrupted my mindfulness somewhat. Whenever I got the desire to vape, I'd find a place to sit down wherever I was, and do a 1-10 minute meditation session, sometimes just noting my current mind state aloud 1x/sec.

Did you find what triggered you to vape? I noticed that everytime I'm trying to run away from an emotion I vape. If I think about how I'm not where I want to be, I vape and it feels better. If I think about how I've done something shitty to someone, I vape and it feels better. When I'm nervous about something, I vape and it feels better. 

I honestly thought that I vaped because of boredom but the realization that it is to cope with negative emotions makes it hard to keep doing consciously. Doubled by the fact that all my most successful best friends don't vape/smoke and the ones that I see with emotional issues usually do makes it even more troubling. 

 

[The0Self]

@LordFall I did it because I was experience-chasing and it was an experience that I could consume while doing ordinary activities like studying or writing or driving. I noticed it was making me less conscious during those moments, so I stopped.

[Yimpa]

How’ve you been doing with vaping these days? Love to hear an update if you want to share. 

And by vaping do you specifically mean nicotine? Or other stuff, like weed? 

[PsychedelicEagle]

You are the average of the 5 people you most spend your time with.

That said, it's possible to change your habits while in a "bad" environment, but expect 10x more effort.

What you gotta do is to research, read, and build a super strong intuition and connection to the harms that vaping does to your body. Once you create this ontological network in your mind, and it becomes "deep" enough to start altering your behavior, you will automatically start rejecting vapes because you will feel bad by smoking it. This requires time and cognitive work.

From this perspective, you simply keep vaping because you don't yet fully grasp how detrimental it is to your health and development.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

My brother cooked his lungs vaping. 

He had a medical recently - lung capacity of a 85 year old man. I fear for him, he is only 17 😢

My grandfather died of emphysema. He slowly suffocated to death. 

You don't want this. If you saw the effects you would never... 

🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Lots of new studies out showing vaping isn't better than smoking. Lunch cancer, mouth cancer. And because it is so easily accessed can be puffed on tap, the dosing can be a lot greater.

I hope you guys don't do this!!! 

And strength out to @LordFall I hope you've kicked it hard ❤️

 

[integral]

I'm going to give some tough love here

How could you allow yourself to vape to begin with?

People deep into self development, it never occurs to them to even consider vaping or becoming regular user of marijuana.

They're coping mechanisms involve sleeping at 8:30pm, going to the gym for an hour and a half, working on their life purpose as a distraction, these are the unhealthy coping mechanisms of the self-development Junkie 😂

Edited 5 hours ago by integral

[Natasha Tori Maru]

29 minutes ago, integral said:

I'm going to give some tough love here

How could you allow yourself to vape to begin with?

People deep into self development, it never occurs to them to even consider vaping or becoming regular user of marijuana.

They're coping mechanisms involve sleeping at 8:30pm, going to the gym for an hour and a half, working on their life purpose as a distraction, these are the unhealthy coping mechanisms of the self-development Junkie lmao

It's surprisingly common to use strong coping behaviours to offset a toxic positivity based mindset. Sometimes as well, we are totally unconscious as to why we need copes. It points to something else in our lives being deeply unbalanced, and uninspected.

Hidden trauma can also do it. 

So many reasons. Sometimes we are just predisposed to addictive behaviours.

But your question was more rhetorical... I just had some random thoughts in response ❤️😎

[something_else]

1 hour ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Lots of new studies out showing vaping isn't better than smoking. Lunch cancer, mouth cancer.

 

It is undoubtedly better for you than smoking according to all major modern research. Obviously it's still really bad for you, but if you are a smoker it is like 95% better for you to switch to vaping instead of continuing to smoke.

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And because it is so easily accessed can be puffed on tap, the dosing can be a lot greater.

You do typically consume more nicotine with vaping if you use full strength e-liquid, although there are two things worth noting here:

• with vaping you can control the dosage very precisely because you can choose the amount of nicotine in e-liquid you use — a common way to quit smoking or vaping is to continually lower the strength of your e-liquid by 2mg every week or two until you hit zero nicotine without even really noticing
• nicotine itself is not all that harmful to your body, just very addictive — it is the delivery mechanism (cigarette tar, heavy metals in vape coils) that harms you

39 minutes ago, integral said:

I'm going to give some tough love here

How could you allow yourself to vape to begin with?

People deep into self development, it never occurs to them to even consider vaping or becoming regular user of marijuana.

They're coping mechanisms involve sleeping at 8:30pm, going to the gym for an hour and a half, working on their life purpose as a distraction, these are the unhealthy coping mechanisms of the self-development Junkie lmao

This is like a 101 course on exactly how not to talk to people with an addiction

[integral]

15 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

coping behaviours to offset a toxic positivity based mindset

I didn't consider this thats a great point, I couldn't understand why there was so much need for positivity and reshaping/framing everything to match a positive View. I think possibly it has to do with not being able to motivate oneself intrinsically and to work everyday towards ones goals just based on their Vision alone. So being unsatisfied where they are in life and having no tools to be consistent every day, they then start framing the entire world from a positive View and become hypersensitized to any realistic viewpoint. A realistic view of reality looks like negativity(or victim hood) from the lens of someone who needs their motivation to come from a positive framing.

15 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

But your question was more rhetorical... I just had some random thoughts in response ❤️😎

Oh my godddddd do all of your insights come with hearts and sunglasses now?  what a blessing

Edited 6 hours ago by integral

[integral]

14 minutes ago, something_else said:

This is like a 101 course on exactly how not to talk to people with an addiction

I didnt consider vape a serious addiction. I wouldnt of written it like that if this as more serious situation.

Quitting Vape should be effortless for someone who serious about self development.

The motivation has to come intrinsically through a rock solid inner vision of your own self-identity.

"i am far beyond this", "i will never seek love from cigaret companies, fuck them" 

From MBTI this comes for Fi function = internal feeling function.

The idea that a cigaret company is going to control you body and life should disgust you. This framing is only one part of it but it gets the point across. 

Edited 5 hours ago by integral

[Valach]

19 minutes ago, integral said:

I didnt consider vape a serious addiction. I wouldnt of written it like that if this as more serious situation.

Quitting Vape should be effortless for someone who serious about self development.

The motivation has to come intrinsically through a rock solid inner vision of your own self-identity.

"i am far beyond this", "i will never seek love from cigaret companies, fuck them" 

From MBTI this comes for Fi function = internal feeling function.

The idea that a cigaret company is going to control you body and life should disgust you. This framing is only one part of it but it gets the point across. 

People get addicted to stuff because of internal shame. Because of feeling of wrongness. You do not help them by shaming them more. You have to understand that addictions are not a personal flow. They are an attempt of the organism to deal with some internal stuff. They actually make a lot of sense.

I have to agree with @something_else here. This was not productive comment.

 

Edited 5 hours ago by Valach

[integral]

6 minutes ago, Valach said:

People get addicted to stuff because of internal shame. Because of feeling of wrongness. You do not help them by shaming them more. You have to understand that addictions are not a personal flow. They are an attempt of the organism to deal with some internal stuff. They actually make a lot of sense.

I have to agree with @something_else here. This was not productive comment.

 

I not speaking to a normal human, this is @LordFall 😂. 

Edited 5 hours ago by integral

[Valach]

I think @LordFall deserves compassion with his struggles just like everyone else. But maybe you know him better than me

[integral]

20 minutes ago, Valach said:

I think @LordFall deserves compassion with his struggles just like everyone else. But maybe you know him better than me

Its possible he needs compassion your right.

I was speaking from how i operate and that one has to visualize who they are and who there identity is.

Visualize: "i will do anything i set my mind to", "i am a genius with infinite potential", "i will save the world".

Then visualize yourself doing all does things in detail, visualize your success, visualize social recognition, visualize all your dreams, even visualize yourself flying throw the air like a super hero, running at the speed of light and catching bullets with your bare hands.

Then go to the gym, feel the blood pumping through your veins, Feel the vitality and joy of being alive.

Edited 5 hours ago by integral

[integral]

1 hour ago, Valach said:

I think @LordFall deserves compassion with his struggles just like everyone else. But maybe you know him better than me

GUYS i speak differently depending on who im talking to.

self-development is highly addictive, there should be so much addiction going on here that it doesn't even occur to them to be addicted to vape.

The beginning stages of self development are some of the funnest times to be alive.

Im speaking to an equal not a grandma im helping cross the street.

Edited 4 hours ago by integral

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@something_else where did you get 95% better for you from? Do you vape, out of curiosity as a side question? 

What we know based on science is changing, and the new studies are what I am referring to. They are revealing it wasn't as harmless as initially thought. I don't think we know for certain anything yet without more data, more research and more time. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Natasha Tori Maru]

2 hours ago, integral said:

I didn't consider this thats a great point, I couldn't understand why there was so much need for positivity and reshaping/framing everything to match a positive View. I think possibly it has to do with not being able to motivate oneself intrinsically and to work everyday towards ones goals just based on their Vision alone. So being unsatisfied where they are in life and having no tools to be consistent every day, they then start framing the entire world from a positive View and become hypersensitized to any realistic viewpoint. A realistic view of reality looks like negativity(or victim hood) from the lens of someone who needs their motivation to come from a positive framing.

It often involves dismissing & avoiding negative emotions while incessantly reframing everything into growth mindset (or positive frame) no matter how negative, difficult or painful a situation is.

It can appear well intentioned, but it runs the risk of also making people feel unheard / guilty / shame for feeling natural and normal negative emotions. Negative states & feelings + acknowledgement of bad things in the world is natural, normal and needed as part of discernment. 

It can be a different form of bypassing in itself that leads to weird unconscious coping strategies due to suppression. 

It is a hidden issue in self help areas unless you have some experience picking it out. 

Quote

Oh my godddddd do all of your insights come with hearts and sunglasses now?  what a blessing

Haha well, I know you probably know half of the points I raised - so I felt it was me high fiving you for provoking insight rather than straight lecturing 🫡

It's okay I'll go back to pointing out the naughty boy again soon 😎