I smoked for 20 years. Tried stopping for 5 years.
Then did a course on the nature of nicotine addiction.
Some core facts:
Smoking works by relieving the psychological pain that is created by not smoking. Reread that.
There are no other real benefits. Smokers have a higher baseline stresslevel.
All nicotine addiction works the same as smoking, all nicotine products are created by the tobacco industry. You are still addicted to nicotine if you use patches.
The only real way is to stop using it and to endure the mild withdrawal symptoms.
Did you know that the tobacco industry spreads anecdotes of people who died of some smoking related disease and kept smoking till the very end? Why? Because it implicitly tells you two things: it's either just so good. "To die for" good. Or it must be really hard to quit.
They also spread horror stories about withdrawal. Many smokers think the withdrawal will get even worse when they are actually already at peak withdrawal. Just hang in there a little more. It's not so bad. You can do it.
Then, when you have kicked the habit. Convince yourself that even just 1 cigarette will enslaved you again, so smoking "just one" is not an option.
> The only real way is to stop using it and to endure the mild withdrawal symptoms.
I’m curious - have you ever been addicted to nicotine? If so, how much per day were you consuming?
I have been. I’ve kicked it multiple times and decided consciously to pick it back up because the benefits (focus) outweighed the drawbacks at the time.
When I was consuming nicotine at the level of a “pack a day” smoker, the withdrawal sucked but wasn’t as bad as you might think. The worst lasted a day or so. After three days it wasn’t perceptible if I wasn’t thinking about it.
One thing to consider though is that it’s entirely possible to consume many times the nicotine by vaping that you would by smoking. Severity of withdrawal correlates to the amount you consume.
My approach has been to taper off a bit by consciously deciding to only consume it if I was really craving it - and putting the device in another room afterward to avoid consuming mindlessly. After a week or so of that, my use had dropped to the point that the cravings were only once or twice per day. From there it was trivial to quit - withstanding the early withdrawal symptoms in the evening and going to sleep was enough so that the next morning the worst had passed.
Trying to quit cold turkey while you’re sucking down two Juul pods a day is very, very different than when you’re only using 1-2 per week.
How does the tobacco industry spread those anecdotes exactly? I find it a bit difficult to believe, seems like smokers would be able to spread them on their own just as well, as they provide stories to relate to when you can't quit.
(Apologies if I come off as overly critical, generally I agree with what you wrote)
Did you know that the tobacco industry spreads anecdotes of people who died of some smoking related disease and kept smoking till the very end? Why? Because it implicitly tells you two things: it's either just so good. "To die for" good. Or it must be really hard to quit. They also spread horror stories about withdrawal. Many smokers think the withdrawal will get even worse when they are actually already at peak withdrawal. Just hang in there a little more. It's not so bad. You can do it.
Then, when you have kicked the habit. Convince yourself that even just 1 cigarette will enslaved you again, so smoking "just one" is not an option.