I Didn’t Think Vaping Was THAT Addictive—Until I Tried to Quit

Hi friend,

Today I want to share an incredibly vulnerable, tender, and raw story with you—a story that actually feels super scary to share, both because it’s so deeply personal and emotional for me, and because it involves me doing something that is widely judged and stigmatized: 

Vaping.

Yep. Sigh. This is going to be the story of how I got addicted to vaping, my absolute love affair with nicotine, and the hideously painful experience of quitting. (So if this is a topic you find triggering, or just don’t want to hear about, I support you in skipping this one!)

I feel a need to share my story about vaping with you here for two reasons, the first one being that it’s super important for us as a culture to start stripping away moral judgment from the topic of nicotine addiction, normalizing the struggle, and dismantling the stigma and shame for everyone dealing with this incredibly popular addiction. 

The second is because my experience of quitting my vape has brought up so much illuminating and relevant stuff around topics like desire, coping, pleasure, self-care, discipline, and thriving—all things I want to be able to share with you in the future, but which sort of require me to “out myself” first. 

So let’s start at the beginning.

I started vaping back when things were still mostly shut down from the pandemic, and I had just started working on my book Body Neutral.

It’s deeply embarrassing to admit now, in light of how incredibly painful and difficult it’s been to quit, but the truth is that I didn’t really even have any good reason to start. My brain was fully developed, nobody was peer pressuring me, and I knew all the risks. I was a fully grown adult with no real history of using nicotine, who just decided, one day, to pick up a new habit. 

I was aware when I started that vaping is bad for you, of course, and I was fully conscious of the fact that I was just reaching for a new coping mechanism. But the world was a mess, I felt isolated and stressed, and I figured I would just vape for a few months or so while I needed the outlet, and then stop when things settled down. 

In my defense (read: to prove how naive I was), I knew that nicotine was addictive, but I had no idea what that actually meant, because I don’t think people who haven’t experienced it can really imagine it. 

I also have a long history of recreationally enjoying all kinds of various substances without veering into the territory of real addiction, so I figured nicotine would be more or less the same—that similar to alcohol or other substances, I could just pay attention to how much I was vaping, and cut back or quit for a while whenever it felt like too much. 

If you yourself have ever been a smoker or vaper, you already know what happened next.

At first, I only took a hit from my vape every couple of hours (or more if I was out drinking with friends), and found it enjoyable. But I work from home, so the shift from vaping sometimes to vaping all the time happened slowly, and without me noticing:

• A few months into my new habit, I realized that I had passed the addiction threshold, and that quitting would now be a whole thing. 

• A few months after that, I stopped using disposable vapes and bought my own rechargeable/refillable device, telling myself both that it was better for the environment that way, and that it was important to acknowledge that vaping was no longer a temporary thing.

• The frequency continued to increase until I was more or less chain vaping all day, every day, and the thought of being separated from my vape sent me into an absolute panic.

  
  

Once I realized I was fully addicted, I knew I would need to quit at some point, but I held that “goal” very gently, because I was clearly using nicotine to cope with stuff that felt too difficult to face alone. I asked my deepest self/spirit to let me know when it was time to quit, and promised not to shame or judge myself in the meantime. 

As a body neutrality coach, I knew all too well that shame and self-judgment makes it harder for us to make behavioral changes, and I wasn’t about to make vaping a moral issue. 

I recognized that—just as with all coping, numbing, escaping, and dopamine-seeking behaviors, including disordered eating and body image issues—vaping must have been serving some kind of deeper existential and subconscious purpose for me. So I chose to offer myself compassion and grace, while simultaneously trying to understand what that purpose was, and which deeper needs were going unmet. 

For years, I pondered this question and tried to come up with a strong enough reason to quit, because based on everything I know about behavioral change, I knew I’d need to find a “why” for quitting that felt important and meaningful enough (on a deep-down core-value level) to justify me giving up my favorite thing in the world. 

This turned out to be way harder to do than I thought it would be.

I could vaguely name some reasons I “should” quit, but “shoulds” are by definition rooted in duty, obligation, and external opinions (rather than a person’s individual core value and authentic desires), which makes them notoriously terrible motivators for driving major behavioral changes.

Plus, none of the most common reasons people quit seemed to apply to me, or at least not in a way that felt particularly urgent or important, so I always had a sort of “addiction-brain rebuttal” that sounded perfectly reasonable to me. 

Like, of course I knew vaping was bad for my health. But my health wasn’t being impacted in any way I could see, feel, notice, or measure, so this always felt like more of a philosophical or hypothetical reason to quit, without any weight or immediacy. And while I often heard people talk about how vaping caused random negative side effects like mood swings, irritability, anxiety, fatigue, acne, memory loss, brain fog, dry skin, hair loss, and GI issues, I never noticed any of those things happening to me. So it was incredibly difficult to convince myself that quitting would bring about any meaningful benefits.

Three and a half months ago, however, I took my last hit of vape. 

My reasons for quitting were still pretty weak and vague at the time, essentially boiling down to:

• I was about to turn 39, and I vaguely liked the idea of being vape-free for a full year when I turned 40.

• It felt embarrassed by how much power my vape had over me, and didn’t like feeling like this tiny machine was the boss of me.

• My partner was out of town, so I wouldn’t be able to lash out at him if my withdrawal symptoms made me moody or temperamental.

These were the reasons that got me started, but I’m sure they wouldn’t have been strong enough to get me across the finish line. What happened next, though, really surprised me. 

Looking back on my decision to try quitting, I can confidently say that I was absolutely unprepared for how difficult and painful it was going to be.

I expected to deal with cravings and irritability, but I wasn’t prepared to feel like my best friend had died. 

That first week without vaping, I experienced a tidal wave of grief so powerful and all-consuming that there were times I felt sure I wouldn’t survive it.

I had initially told myself that this was just an experiment, and that I could start vaping again at any time if quitting was too hard. But as I cried and cried and cried (and cried) that first week, I realized my body was processing years of grief that vaping had somehow numbed and protected me from, and I was finally able to articulate my first deep compelling “why.”

I’d had no idea that vaping was dampening my emotions so much, and the ability to feel and tolerate the full range of my emotions is an extremely important part of one of my deepest core values: maintaining a positive, respectful, and loving relationship with my own body and soul. 

This powerful realization is ultimately what made me truly commit to my decision to quit, and I’m pretty sure it’s the reason I’m sitting here writing this today, 108 days since my last vape. 

But while being deeply committed to a vape-free life has made it possible for me to resist picking my vape back up again so far, the truth is that it hasn’t done jack shit to change how fucking badly I want to. 

And that’s the thing— as much as I would love to wrap this whole story up with a triumphant bow and be like “I did it, so you can too!” that’s just not accurate. 

Nearly 4 months after quitting, I still feel an overwhelming desire to vape every goddamn second of every goddamn day.  

Yes I am succeeding, and yes I am incredibly proud of myself. But every minute of the last 108 days has been an absolute gauntlet of willpower and grit. 

The reason I haven’t shared my story before now, in fact, is because the urge to vape is so constant and so powerful that I didn’t feel confident in my ability to succeed. Even now, even with the strength of my commitment and resolve, this whole thing still feels tenuous to me. 

To be honest, if I had known I would still be obsessively craving my vape like this, nearly four months after quitting, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. 

From my research, I was prepared for a few days to a few weeks of super-intense cravings, which would then ease up over time. Each day that I succeeded in the beginning, I told myself “we’re almost out of the woods now, it’ll get easier soon.”

But day after day, week after week, month after month… it hasn’t gotten easier yet. 

Well, that’s not exactly true, I guess. It’s gotten easier to trust myself—to literally not pick a vape back up, even during super intense cravings—because I’ve now successfully talked myself out of doing that so many times already. 

And that’s a big deal! But the fact that there hasn’t been even the teeniest tiniest decrease in how much I want to vape, or how much I think about vaping day to day, is pretty upsetting to me.

This part of addiction is, for me, like having an uninvited and inconsolable party guest in my mind at all times.

Every moment that I’m awake, this nightmare visitor is there with me, shrieking and wailing; endlessly screaming and demanding that I go pick up the fucking vape right now!! Occasionally she tries other tactics, momentarily sounding reasonable or sweet as she tells me that I really could just take one hit and then stop again…but as soon as I deny her again, she goes right back to her screeching tantrum.

I picture her like an old-timey siren or harpy, shape-shifting at the speed of light, trying anything she can think of to manipulate me into giving her what she wants. She bawls and blubbers as I get out of bed. She berates and mocks as I make dinner. She screams bloody murder as I drive in my car. She pleads and begs as I do my taxes. She howls and cries as I wash my face before bed. 

It’s a lot, but I try to think of my relationship with her like that of a gentle parent. I tell her that I see her pain, and that I understand why she’s upset, and that it’s ok to cry… but then I move my attention away from her. 

Sometimes I affirm our new culture: “we don’t do that anymore.” 

Sometimes I validate her: “it’s so hard when we want something we can’t have.” 

Sometimes I offer her reframes: “you keep saying you’re angry with me, but what I’m seeing is actually grief.”

Sometimes I encourage her to consider her other needs: “is there anything else that would help you feel safe and calm?”

Sometimes I lose my shit and scream back at her to “shut the fuck up, for god’s sake, shut up!”

She never does shut up though, and as time goes on I’m finding myself processing the possibility that she never will. 

When I say I don’t feel confident that I’ll stay vape free, this is why.

Because my willpower and discipline are a finite resource requiring my ongoing vigilance and tenacity, whereas my uninvited guest’s endless flow of hysterical protests and violent tantrums seem to cost her nothing at all.

It’s not difficult to imagine her resolve outlasting mine, or arriving at a particularly stressful day when the only thing I have in my control to make things more tolerable is to make this one part of my brain stop screaming. And given the statistical likelihood of relapse among nicotine addicts (as well as my own personal experience so far), I have to make compassionate and loving room for this possibility. 

To wrap this up, I want to say that if you yourself have ever struggled with nicotine addiction—either as a current or past user—I hope my story makes you feel seen, validated, and supported. 

The research seems to substantiate the idea that nicotine is on the same level as many of the Schedule II drugs like cocaine in terms of addictiveness, and I sometimes joke that anyone who has quit should have a daily parade thrown in their honor, because this drug is no joke. 

Do I think we need to do absolutely everything in our power to keep people from getting addicted to nicotine in the first place, and to support them in quitting? Yes. But it’s not as simple as telling people to stop because it’s bad for them, and we absolutely must stop shaming and stigmatizing people who are addicted, and struggling or unable to quit. 

And if you yourself have never experienced nicotine addiction, please consider this both a cautionary tale (don’t start!), and an invitation to have more compassion and less judgment for those of us who have found ourselves caught in nicotine’s nasty little trap. 

That’s it for today, but I have so much more I’d like to share on this topic, if you’re interested, including:

• Why the concept of “listening to your body” tends to fall apart in the face of addiction and other compulsive behaviors, and what we can do about that.

• How we can understand the appeal of GLP-1s (the weight loss drugs which seem to decrease “compulsive desires” across the board) in a world where our desires are so often distorted and out of control. 

• The importance of destigmatizing behavior (and respecting the research about the psychology of behavioral change) when it comes to breaking “bad habits” and taking better care of ourselves. 

Wanna hear more about any of these topics, ask any questions, or share your own experiences around addiction? Hit reply and share your thoughts!

Big hug,

Jessi

PS. I’m considering offering some discounted coaching sessions to support anyone struggling to quit smoking or vaping, so please let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in!