Switching from smokes to vapes was pretty easy. Then over time I lowered the nicotine level 1mg at a time until I was at zero. One day I realised I hadn’t touched it for 2 weeks and I’d accidentally quit so I got rid of everything and here I am - smoke and vape free.

I had always been a fan of smoking and chewing. One day, a friend showed me his Strawberry Shortcake vape. I never looked back. Lemon Pound cake vape for days.

Eventually I got into making large bottles of ejuice. Then I just gradually lowered the quantity of nicotine.

Once I hit that 0 nicotine, I just worked on decreasing my frequency. Then one day I bronchitis and I was like: okay I’m done.

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.

Terrible at first because I tried it without any medication and I simply could not afford to not be working for the 3-5 days for the worst physical signs to pass.

Afterwards I tried again with medication and it went smoothly, no physical addiction signs, but the mental ones were interesting. I haven’t even realized how rooted in my routine smoking was - every time I knew I’d be waiting for ~5 minutes, I went for a smoke.

Has been over a year now and the strangest thing is I really want a cigarette from time to time, not very often, but it feels weird.

Ex-smoker/vaper here.

First put down the cigarette after 10+ years of smoking in favor of vaping. This was probably the easiest transition as I like gadgets and the whole vaping culture back then (UK) was huge. Everyone was getting the latest vapes with fancy features, the best juices and flavors. Regular vape maintenance, refilling and coil changes become a great substitute for cigarette rituals.

There was a huge downside of overdoing it. I mean in the beginning a lot. There is no control, no recommendation, and mainly no bad smell. You just whip out the vape indoors, while waiting for the bus, literally anytime.

There is the other issue (at least back then 5-6 years ago it was not really regulated) you could buy juices with any nicotine concentrate, even mix your own. Some of my coworkers even got headaches from overdosing nicotine.

Luckily after a year or so I got kind of bored of the whole vape culture as more vapers developed this self centered asshole personalities, where they think they could start blowing flavoured clouds into the face of others anywhere because “it’s safe, it’s not smoke” and other stupid reasons.

In the last few months I slowly reduced the nicotine content and reached zero nicotine juice state. Also, I made strict “outdoors vaping only” policy for myself. Without the nicotine I felt less and less will to go outside, just to inhale flavoured vape so I stopped altogether.

For 5 years now I am now nicotine-free and about 7 years without cigarettes, never looked back.

In summary: Vaping is a great tool to quit smoking, but needs careful planning and self control.

If you’ve got a big change coming up (moving house, changing jobs, etc) it’s a great time.

These changes can break all your mental associations and habits, making it easier to quit.

Not a smoker, but…

Do you drink? Like even just a few drinks per week? Try to stop drinking for 2 months. You can feel part of the addiction, there will be a kind of craving to drink.

I tried to quit caffeine a few times and failed miserably each time. Once I had a terrible headache and felt like I was slowly loosing consciousness. Luckily I was next to a Starbucks at that moment.

Wife and I bought a house with the agreement that we would not smoke inside. Then we stopped going out so much, argued a lot because quitting sucks and we did it at the same time. Eventually started going back out and have both been smoke free for a couple of decades.

It really took a lifestyle change to quit since the worst triggers were environmental, physical addiction was secondary.We also had tapered down a bit while house shopping and finalizing the sale so we had whittled down the number of cigarettes per day over time before stopping completely. The house was a nice reminder that we quit at first, and then a reinforcement during later temptations.

Easy! Turns out smoking not only is a slow kilñer but it raises your stomachs acidic level so that if you have other stressers (high stress job, no regular meals, no breaks, drink to excess, etc) it’s easier for your body to turn on itself and pop a hole in your stomach (aka a bleeding ulcer).

which then can lead to a moderate (week+) hospital stay, plus special diet for a month, couple weeks rehab, and medication for a time.

Oh, as a bonus your body will then be subjected to all the fun withdrawals: nicotine, caffeine, alcohol. All cool things when you’re young and indestructible.

Needless to say I haven’t had a cigarette in over 26yrs.

It was actually much easier than I expected. I used to smoke 40 a day about 30 years ago . One day I just decided to give up. The first few days aren’t that bad, you will get cravings but I found the best thing to do was distract yourself. Giving up while I was busy at work was a good way to distract my brain. After a few days the cravings get less and less.

What is harder is months down the line when you accidentally catch secondhand smoke. I couldn’t help but think “I’ve given up for so long, just one wouldn’t hurt”

It must be easier nowadays because fewer people smoke (in most countries) but back then it was common to see people light up when they left buildings.

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 personally went slow. I transitioned from cigarettes to vamping but kept camping for a few years. Then I caught a pretty bad cough and could not vape for 3 days. After that, I decided to not pick it up again as I had already not vapped for so long. That said, I had previously tried quitting and held it for half a year but fell in again.

My partner recently stopped too (3 years after I did. She also transitioned to vapping but stuck with it longer than me. She cot help though our doctor who prescribed a course paid by the state (we live in Denmark) who gave her a series of 1:1 meetings with a coach, that kept up with her with weekly meetings, options to call whenever she needed help and they also guided and paid for replacements. They recommended lozenges and skin patches as they are less likely to replace the addiction

I feel like we both had it easy. It is not the case most of the time. The main aspect is that you need to want to quit. If you’re quitting for someone else or if you quit because you’re told to, it’s going to be a lot harder or almost impossible

A couple of things helped me stop. First, I didn’t set a day I was going to stop because that just made me anxious and want to smoke more as THE DAY approached. I decided I was going to stop soon and then one random morning I said to myself “this is it. Stop now”, which took me by surprise and I didn’t have a chance to get anxious.

Secondly, I kept to my routine of taking a break when I’d normally have a cigarette but I’d go outside and chew some ordinary gum instead. That way I could deal with the physical addiction first and the mental addiction later.

I quit smoking 6 years ago. It’s tough honestly, it helps that there are no smokers in my social group. When I’m out with smokers I usually bum a cig, particularly when drinking.

I was hospitalised for a couple months, I couldn’t physically take myself out for a smoke and the nurses weren’t going to wheel my bed down, so they gave me patches. I figured I’d quit smoking when I got out to continue the work already done.

I still want to smoke, I like that it gives me something to do and haven’t really found a replacement for it, doom scrolling maybe. It also gave me something easy to manage, if that makes sense, low stakes and easy problem to solve every day. I smoked for 10 years and my habit was just less than a pack a day, sometimes more not often less. Hopefully, it gets easier in 4 years when I’ve been a non-smoker for as long as I was a smoker.

Transitioning to vaping was easier, I was at or near the vanguard of that movement, when we were building our own coils and shoving batteries into tupawares and blowing ourselves up. Whenever I craved a real cig, I’d buy 10, smoke them and go back to vaping. I’d buy a pack every week, then every month, then every 2 months… I hoped quitting would be the same, it was not.

One of my friends just woke up a non-smoker the same time that I quit, and our experiences are night and day. I get cravings all the time, this guy: “why would I get cravings? I don’t smoke.” His brain just decided it was done smoking one day.