how i actually quit vaping after 3 failed attempts

part onei wasn't even a "vaper". i just vaped. constantly.

that's the thing isn't it. nobody thinks of themselves as a vaper. it's just there. in your bag, on your desk, in your hand on the walk to the station, last thing before bed, first thing when you wake up. i'd had one since uni and i'd genuinely stopped noticing i was doing it.

and i wanted to stop. i'd wanted to stop for about two years. every january, every "new month new me", every time i saw the price of a new one. i wasn't in denial about it at all. i just could not do it.

if you've tried and failed and quietly decided you're just someone who can't quit, this post is for you, because i thought that about myself for a long time and it turned out to be completely wrong.

part twoeverything i tried, and exactly how it fell apart

attempt one

cold turkey. lasted eight days.

binned it on a sunday feeling very sure of myself. by wednesday i was snappy, couldn't concentrate, and sleeping worse than i had while vaping. my hands did not know what to do with themselves. on day eight i had a bad afternoon at work and bought one on the way home without even really deciding to.

attempt two

nicotine pouches. made it worse, honestly.

everyone recommends them so i tried them. they did stop the cravings, which i thought was the whole problem. but i still found myself reaching for something that wasn't there about forty times a day, and i hated the feeling of them. all i'd actually done was swap one nicotine habit for another one, and after a few weeks i was using both. that's when i realised the pouches were never solving the thing that was actually breaking me.

attempt three

willpower and a girls' night out. didn't survive the girls' night.

i was doing so well. then we were out, everyone had theirs, passing them around like lip balm, and i'm sat there with a drink in one hand and nothing in the other feeling like i'd left the group chat. someone offered me one without even thinking about it. i didn't even hesitate. that one hurt because i'd been genuinely proud of myself.

three attempts. three completely different reasons for failing, or so i thought. and after the third one i stopped trying for about six months because i'd decided the problem was me. that i just didn't have the discipline other people had.

part threethe thing nobody tells you about quitting

here's what finally made it make sense, and i wish someone had said it to me two years earlier.

nicotine leaves your body in about three days. so what was i still fighting in week two?

it wasn't the nicotine. that's the bit everyone focuses on, and it's the bit that sorts itself out fastest. what kept breaking me was everything else the vape was doing for me.

it was something to do with my hands. it was the little pause when i was stressed at my desk. the thing on the walk. the wind-down before bed. the thing i held at the pub so i was doing what everyone else was doing. hundreds of tiny moments every day that all suddenly arrived empty.

that's why cold turkey felt unbearable and why the pouches never fixed it. pouches replace the nicotine, the part that's gone in three days anyway. nothing replaces the ritual. nothing gives your hands anywhere to go.

and once i understood that, the whole thing stopped feeling like a willpower problem and started feeling like a really obvious gap that just needed filling.

part fourthen tiktok, of all places, actually delivered

1am, for you page, a girl explaining how she quit vaping without feeling like she'd given anything up. i watched it about three times, went straight to the website and ordered on a "whatever, i've bought worse" basis. i genuinely wasn't expecting much.

histicks

the journey pack. one little wooden stick, and the flavour cores that go inside it.

it's a small wooden stick with a flavoured core inside it. you draw on it exactly like you would a vape. same hand to mouth thing, same little pause, same ritual. except:

no nicotine at all. so you're not swapping one dependency for another one, which is exactly where the pouches went wrong for me. you're just... not taking nicotine anymore. from day one.
it's completely natural. wood and essential oils. no smoke, no vapour, no battery, no electronics, no mystery ingredients list. nothing you're inhaling that you'd have to think twice about.
it's flavoured, like your vape was. this mattered way more than i expected. half of why i loved mine was honestly the taste, and i'd assumed quitting meant giving that up too. the cores are infused with essential oils so you still get the draw and the flavour. i never felt like i'd downgraded to something sad and worthy.
you swap the cores, you keep the stick. when a core's flavour fades you just pop a fresh one in. no binning a whole device every few days, no drawer full of dead disposables, no charging anything. one little stick that's actually yours.
your flavours turn up every month. you pick what you like and they arrive in the post, so you never run out at the exact moment your willpower does. this quietly deleted my biggest relapse trigger, because both my worst moments started with "i'll just nip out and buy something".
you don't feel left out. the girls' night thing that ended attempt three? that was the real test. everyone had theirs, i had mine, i was doing the same thing they were doing. nobody even clocked it. i wasn't sat there white knuckling it with empty hands.

the honest version: it's not magic and it doesn't remove cravings by force. what it does is make sure that every single time your hand goes looking for something, it finds something. that's the entire trick, and it's the exact thing all three of my failed attempts were missing.

the vape was gone in about two weeks. and after three failed attempts i need to stress this: it never really felt hard. there was no dramatic willpower battle, no counting days, no bad afternoon that undid everything. at some point i just noticed i hadn't thought about it in ages.

part fivewhat a month off vapes actually did

i expected one or two of these. i did not expect all of them, and honestly the ones i didn't expect are the reason i'm never going back.

my skin ✨

the breakouts around my chin, the ones i'd been blaming on hormones for actual years, went away within a few days. my face stopped looking puffy in the mornings. and the glow i'd been buying serums to try and get finally just turned up on its own. same routine, nothing new added. turns out nicotine tightens the tiny blood vessels that feed your skin, so i'd been cutting off my own glow about forty times a day.

my sleep 😴

this was the biggest surprise. nicotine leaves your body so fast that you spend the night in mild withdrawal without knowing it, which is why i'd been waking up feeling like i hadn't really slept. now i actually sleep deeply, i stopped waking up bloated and swollen, and i've got energy all the way through the day instead of dying at 3pm.

my workouts 🏃‍♀️

two things happened. i could breathe properly, which sounds obvious but the difference in a pilates class or on a run is massive. and my appetite came back, which mattered more than i realised, because vaping had been quietly suppressing it and i was never hitting my protein. eating properly plus actually recovering at night, and the results showed up faster than months of trying had.

my bank account 💸

about £40 a month back. which is a serum, or a top, or a very good lunch out. girl math, but it's the one benefit you can see in your banking app immediately, and it turns out spending money on things that make you look better works considerably better than spending it on things that don't.

and the one i didn't expect at all

not being owned by it. not checking my bag for it. not panicking when it dies. not stepping outside. not planning around it. i didn't realise how much of my day was quietly organised around a small plastic thing until it wasn't.

i'm not more disciplined than i was six months ago. i just stopped trying to quit with nothing in my hands.

one honest note, girl to girl: everyone's different and i can't promise your timeline will look like mine. some people find it easier, some harder. but if you've failed a few times and decided the problem is you, i'd really like you to consider that the problem might just be that nobody ever gave you something to hold.

how i actually quit vaping, after failing three times