I have a question...

[ToniR]

I'm vaping and also using niquitin tabs, so why am I still getting cravings, and sometimes quite strong ones? If I'm replacing the nicotine does that mean there's something else addictive in cigarettes?

[Nozmo Valued Contributor]

Hi Toni,

I would love to be able to give you the answer to that! All I can say is what you're experiencing is not unusual. I'm using an e cig and I had bad cravings all through my first week, and I still get the odd one after two months. It isn't a doddle quitting with ecigs. Good news is it gets easier!

It can't just be nicotine that we crave, smoking is much more complicated than that in my opinion.

[RoisinO1 Administrator 3 Years Smoke Free]

Hey Toni, it takes 3 days for the nicotine to leave your system so it is perfectly normal to be feeling bad cravings even though you are on the e-cig and tabs. I would suggest researching as much as you can on what happens both mentally and physically when we quit, knowledge is key.....strongs xx

[annavickaay]

you're probably addicted to the feeling of going for a cigarette, but i don't think it's an addiction as such it's more just like because you've been doing it everyday its almost like routine and how long have you quit for? because they call it the 3 day hump, once you get over that it should be easier! and when you start seeing the benefits it will be far greater than the many negatives of smoking

[Wanabsmokefree]

Leave all the substitutes out you don't need them I been smoking 17 years I used to tell my self it was to hard to give up, it really all is in the mind set yor self a day wrote a list of why u want to give up I had things like stinking house out, son doesn't deserve to live in a smelly smoked out home, save loads of money, skin hair and nails will start to improve.....note tell your self it's easy and believe it I honestly have not had one craving because I told my self it's not hard why I struggled all these years I don't no well I have not had a ciggy since xxx

[DebraErics in reply to Wanabsmokefree]

You are only non smoker  I know of, that has had  "not  ONE craving." I applaud your will, and determination. AMAZING!!!!!! Keep breathing easy, and stick to your quit.

[ToniR]

Hiya, thanks for your email, you're right it is so easy with the right mindset! I have done it twice cold turkey without too much difficulty. My big worry was work, I really struggle with physical symptoms, foggy brain etc I guess due to the oxygen levels changing in my body and I couldn't use busy work as an excuse any more so I decided to do it anyway but with some nicotine replacement to make work easier. I already kind of hate the vaper lol so hopefully just a short term solution! Well done on your amazing efforts!

[DebraErics in reply to ToniR]

ToniR, you are doing the dang thing!!!   I agree, it's a lot easier,  " with the right mindset".  I hope your  day is filled with lovely fragrances, you can enjoy more now.

[Yvette2016 3 Years Smoke Free]

I'm also vaping on my 6th day cig free now ... just a thought .. have you checked the strength of the liquid you're using ? depending on what strength cigs you smoked this might be the reason. I tried vaping last year and didn't last a day but this time I actually went to the stall and was recommended a liquid very similar in strength to the cigs I was on. It really made a big difference ....

[ToniR in reply to Yvette2016]

I checked and I need to increase the strength, thanks! Think I'll give it the weekend and if I'm still struggling I'll get new liquid, would prefer to stay low if I can get through it x

[Teflonmuppet]

Toni, you are an addict, the cravings will never go away. You will learn to deal with them better and the impact they have will reduce in time.

I am 3 years in and still get them, but I am alot better at dealing with them now than I was early doors. But then I am still addicted to nicotine and assume I will always be so never let your guard down.

I would love to be able to say after x days you will not feel anything, but I would be telling a lie, it does though get much much easier to deal with the tricks your brain will play on you.

best of luck.

[RoisinO1 Administrator 3 Years Smoke Free in reply to Teflonmuppet]

Sorry Teflonmuppet , thank you sharing this post, only seen it now. Well done on over 3 years quit, share your experience on here as often as you can, it will be much appreciated

[Teflonmuppet in reply to RoisinO1]

No need to apologise Hopefully Toni is still going strong?

[RoisinO1 Administrator 3 Years Smoke Free in reply to Teflonmuppet]

Yeah, ToniR is still going strong, over 3 months now

[Teflonmuppet in reply to RoisinO1]

excellent news

[ToniR in reply to Teflonmuppet]

Thanks, I am indeed still doing well and still smoke free coming up to 4 months but it seems like a lifetime ago!

[RoisinO1 Administrator 3 Years Smoke Free in reply to ToniR]

Great to read ToniR , keep up the great work!

[austinlegro 11 Years Smoke Free]

Old post alert...

Smokers do not really smoke because of nicotine at all, even if they are utterly convinced they do. (Were you expecting that I wonder?) If they’re addicted to anything it’s possibly dopamine but even then it’s stretching things a bit.

At first glance the nicotine addiction theory holds a lot of water and luckily any leaks can be plugged by an astonishing amount of myths and creative statistics. Bear in mind that it’s part of a multi-billion dollar industry and there are good grounds for its success.

As sophisms go it’s not dreadful, after all, if a smoker can use their perceived nicotine addiction as a weapon to quit then it’s advantageous, however, the reverse is more often than not the reality.

When I look back at my own quit I’m quite surprised how long I managed to stick with the addiction theory, modifying it to suit the way I smoked even to the ludicrous conclusion of separating my fags into “wants” and “needs” so that I was able to identify those smokes that fed my addiction and those that were casual fags for the fun of it. I managed to answer most of my questions but there were some biggies that seemed to have accepted answers that were frankly rubbish. Bizarrely in every packet of fags I smoked there was my morning fag, my after eating fag, my after sex fag and my calming bedtime fag. There were a few ‘calm me down’ smokes, a few ‘perk me up’ smokes and one or two ‘help me concentrate’ smokes and despite looking, not one of them was labelled yet I managed to select the correct one each time.

Every study I read, every published paper I worked through added more questions and fewer answers until I realised I was looking in the wrong place. The vast majority of stop smoking data is indirectly connected to the pharmaceutical companies and therefore biased towards their products. Not unsurprisingly the pro-smoking groups with the burden of the smoking ban chip-on-their-shoulder are very good at winkling out the data and had done a fabulous job. Of course their reasons were more of a battle with the smoking ban, their loss of ‘freedom’ and the myths surrounding secondhand smoke. Exploding the nicotine myth is very low on their agenda and I’m sure a goodly proportion of them think of themselves as addicted. (Addicted to a substance more addictive than Heroin apparently, but sold on the lower shelves of ASDA, fancy that.)

Nicotine is a toxin, one of many in cigarette smoke, and certainly present in nicotine patches, gums, sweeties, puffers, lozenges, creams, cheese slices and Nick O’Tine’s medicinal jam. Unfortunately it’s not actually physically addictive, despite a lot of research, and you can’t get lab rats, monkeys and beagles hooked on it. The tobacco giant denied its addictiveness for years until it was in their interests to change their tune.

As smokers we eventually learn to tolerate its presence in our bodies and when we stop consuming it our bodies take a week or two to acclimatise to its absence. You can purge it quickly by just stopping consuming it or you can drag it out over twelve profitable weeks if you’re feeling a bit gung ho with taxpayer’s money. Either way combating the effects of nicotine cessation is actually a little easier than slipping off a Teflon coated log floating in a pool of oil. The cold-turkey quitter and the NRT quitter both have exactly the same battle against stopping smoking but the NRT quitter chooses to purge the nicotine from their system gradually, both very different things.

No-one started smoking for nicotine, no-one smokes for nicotine and no quitters relapse onto nicotine. Smokers relapse to smoking every time.

You don’t even have to believe me, I’m not trying to sell anything, the exact opposite in fact. In these times of coming austerity I’d rather the NHS didn’t have to prescribe one useless single NRT prescription and let my gran have a new hip instead.

Smokers do smoke because of cravings, but cravings are nothing to do with nicotine or any other part of the smoke.

Cravings disappear when the smoker lights up, but that is because a craving is simply a mental prompt to repeat the habitual behaviour, triggered by the brain, not by falling nicotine levels, but experienced as a physical compulsive urge that seems to the smoker like a real bodily need. The craving disappears long before the cigarette is smoked and well before the seven second myth of nicotine to brain transit.

Staggeringly the craving is often gone without even lighting up. (Damn clever stuff that nicotine, it’s not safe even being in the same room as it..)

Now that NRT has no novelty value it’s no surprise to see cessation rates stabilising around 7% which is comparable with cold-turkey, placebos and bupropian (Zyban). This is just as you’d expect for being prescribed a toxic insecticide to somehow combat a compulsive habit of tobacco use. Similar results can be expected from prescriptions of liquorice allsorts or green tea and I’m more than happy to volunteer for their trials.

The big winners, acupuncture, hypnosis and Mr Carr’s clinics still seem to be achieving 30% success rates and hopefully sooner rather than later the world will wake up to the reasons, which are:

We quit smoking in the subconscious as that’s where we smoke. There isn’t a magic pill that stops us smoking but a method that directly or indirectly passes the message to the subconscious that we no longer have any desire to smoke is proven to be the most successful. Any method with support shows better results that the same method without.

Of course many of us quit without any help or even the “wrong” help by getting “our minds right” (is this self-hypnosis?)

I used to have a nagging question. I repeatedly tried and failed to switch from cigarettes to rollies. It used to frustrate me and I’d find myself lighting up a proper fag pretty much straight after I’d smoked a rollie. On at least two occasions I managed to wean myself exclusively onto rollies for a few months and then I’d have a relapse back onto normal cigarettes. It wasn’t until I quit this time that it finally dawning on me I was simply craving a cigarette. I wasn’t craving a smoke, a cigar, a pipe, nicotine, burning paper, singed flesh or tar, I just wanted a cigarette and only a cigarette would feed the crave.

My advice is to spend one smoking day, maybe a couple, looking at how you smoke. Not just when but also how. See what triggers you to light a fag and how much you smoke and how much you wave it around. If you’re feeling very honest with yourself make a note of how many lit cigarettes you wish you’d not lit because they’re now getting in the way of what you were previously doing.

Once you know why you actually smoke the steps to cessation become a lot clearer.

[RoisinO1 Administrator 3 Years Smoke Free in reply to austinlegro]

Excellent post austinlegro , not sure how I missed it 4 months ago but very informative. Please post as much you can to share your experience as I said to teflonmuppet it would be much appreciated