I managed to stop smoking cigarettes about a month ago. Well, I’m still smoking e-cigarettes, but the transition wasn’t easy. You’re supposed to replace real cigarettes with a vaper, you know. But I’m not just a casual or occasional smoker, I’m a cigarette lover. Was! I was a cigarette lover. I loved the smell of it, the taste of it, and I stank. Many cigarette lovers like me still wish to give up smoking for health and financial reasons. So we give an e-cigarette a try but often find it hard to get rid of the cravings for the real thing and end up smoking both.
I too craved real cigarettes during the first week like crazy, particularly found it so hard on the 2nd and 3rd days. I took a "one last cigarette in the box" approach - decided to smoke no more, leaving one last cigarette left in the very last packet. I told myself,
“That one last cigarette on the shelf is your urgent rescue remedy. If you get really, really, unbearably desperate, if you feel you’re in an absolutely helpless situation, you can have that last cigarette. But you realise what that means, don’t you? Back to square one. You’re gonna have to go out and buy some more again. And again.”
That kept me going and it worked. I was slowly regaining my stamina. Within days, I started to wake up feeling a lot more energetic. I could run a longer distance in the morning. I wasn’t so tired in the evening anymore. And my teeth were cleaner again (only just!) My body witnessed the benefits of not taking tar, that’s enough not to pick up the last cigarette.
By the way, just a couple of days ago, I found another packet in my drawer and there were about 10 cigarettes in it. So rubbish! I could give those to my husband who is a chain smoker. He has no intention of giving up smoking right now and if I gave those to him now, he’d finish them all off within a few hours. So they’ll stay in my drawer for now.
So I’ve cleared the first stage. Now I’m supposed to vape less frequently over time and eventually quit. Not easy, either. I know.
E-Cigarettes Good and Bad
Compared to other nicotine replacement therapies such as patches and gums, an e-cigarette is considered to help you quit cigarettes easier because of the hand-to-mouth action of puffing. The downside of it is, because of the odorless fog, you can smoke anywhere you want (so long as permitted, of course) and anytime you want. You could keep smoking forever and end up taking more nicotine than before if you don’t manage the frequency.
That’s what happened to me 7 years ago (was that so long time ago!? Oh my god.) I ended up smoking my vaper in the office continuously, and still went outside for a cigarette break a few times a day.
Lessons learned this time, I cannot go back in the same loop only to defeat the purpose again. That’ll be stupid. So I swore to myself;
- Treat my vaper as if it were a real cigarette!
- Smoke for 2 minutes, then put it away. Put it back on the shelf!
- Smoke in the morning, then don’t smoke until after lunch!
I made that promise to myself. I even wrote that down on a piece of paper. That promise has gradually faded away. My e-cigarette is standing next to my laptop. The memorandum of the oath is right next to it, folded in half so I can’t read it. I keep puffing just like I sip a bottle of water as I’m typing this right now. No, I don’t feel good about it.
E-Cigarettes Will Make You Dumb
We’ve all heard about the bad chemicals that vaper juices could contain, haven’t we? The main ingredients are Nicotine, Propylene Glycol, Vegetable Glycerin, and flavorings. But one of the flavorings is called diacetyl, and according to BreathPA.org, diacetyl can trigger a disease called Obliterative bronchiolitis (OB), also known as “Popcorn Lung”, which is incurable. That’s pretty scary.
What I noticed when I first started to use an e-cig 7 years ago was loss of concentration. And memory, perhaps. I remember feeling slightly but increasingly like… becoming less intelligent by the day, you know. But 7 years ago, I was already 50, so maybe it was due to aging, not necessarily due to the electronic cigarette.
Now I started to vape again, I feel I’m suddenly losing focus once again. So is that true? Do e-cigarettes make you dumb? I’ve googled a few and couldn’t find a definite answer, but I’m a little more convinced for sure. My foggy brain tells me so.
So I was watching Sir David Attenborough’s “Green Planet” on BBC last week, right? There was this thing about caterpillars on tobacco plants in an American desert. The caterpillars would munch away the leaves furiously at first, then the plant reacts to it, starts to release nicotine. Nicotine has some sedative agent, so the caterpillars start to move like a slo-mo. I thought, whaaaat, I thought nicotine was a stimulant like caffeine, it’s actually totally opposite then?
Anyway, my body thinks whatever chemicals are in vape juices will make me dumber. Sir Attenborough says nicotine will slow you down. I’m close to 60. I’d better get rid of this unnecessary habit.
What Can Replace Nicotine?
Some quit-smoking advisory sites say that some types of foods and drinks can help you quit smoking…such as;
- Dairy products, e.g. milk. Because drinking milk makes cigarettes taste worse.
- Ginseng tea (Ginseng Saponins), backed up by some clinical study.
- Popcorn. Because it’s a snack, and low in calories (if you choose to keep eating low-calory popcorn. Obviously.)
- Gum. Mints. Obviously.
Most of the advice sites are written based on this study, but they all interpret it in their own way. I bet most of them are written by non-smokers. I already take Ginseng Saponins supplement daily anyway. Milk makes “cigarettes taste bad” but I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore. I smoke a chocolate-flavored vaper.
Now, 2 ways to give up vaporizing completely have been suggested to me by my best friend Tinderella. The first one is how she quit hers and the second one is something she’s been doing all her life.
Plan 1: Treat Yourself On Milestone
So my friend Tindy suggested that I should set milestone points and treat myself to some nice sweets from a posh chocolatier if I make it without vaping all day. Then gradually increase the length to the next milestone, like 2 days, 3 days, a week, and so on. I guess if I can manage without smoking for a week, that’ll be the end of the quest.
I’m thinking about how I can treat myself, as I have an incredibly sweet tooth and already eat loads of chocolate every day, anyway. I could give up chocolate and only allow myself to eat it if I don't vape all day. But I wouldn’t want to punish myself that way only to lose more hair. So Plan 1 is a work in progress.
Plan 2: Meditate!
There is evidence that meditation training improves self-control, thus reducing smoking. This study was done almost a decade ago - 60% of the smokers who received 5 hours of meditation training over 2 weeks managed to smoke significantly less.
What kind of training that particular meditation involved is unclear, so I cannot replicate it. But since I go out running every morning, Tindy taught me how to "mediate" while running. So this is also a work in progress. It’s only been a couple of weeks. I don’t know if meditation has been working directly, or if it ever will. But at least I consciously try out anything plausible to quit my e-cigarette. I feel bad every time I puff, and that's progress in my book. No, I’m not going to blow it easily this time. Yet.
