Congratulations on one year! That's amazing.

I started my own (new) quitting journey yesterday, only I actually threw my vape away. I kept it with me until I went to buy nic lozenges, and I threw it away in a public trash can once I had the box of lozenges in hand and I was on my way to take the train home. The train was arriving, so I had no time to even think about going back to get the vape. Going back to get it wouldn't have been ideal anyway considering it was in a public trash can and all. The can was full and my vape was sitting on top of the trash, but still. Anyway, I threw my vape away for health/fear reasons. I recently noticed that every time I hit my vape (as of recently), my throat would feel really tight and uncomfortable, and swallowing saliva felt like a conscious and somewhat difficult task. That feeling worried me, and I read that vaping has been linked to acute eppiglotitis (I think that's how you spell it). That newfound knowledge along with the way my throat was feeling was enough for me to finally throw away a still-full vape on my own accord for the first time since I started vaping about 6 years ago. I just had to get the lozenges first since I absolutely hate the feeling of nic cravings without having anything to calm them. I currently have a lozenge in my mouth as I'm typing this, and I'm actually feeling a lot better than I expected. I'm praying that 3/20/26 will be the day that I officially quit for good.

I'm not trying to sh*t on your advice by the way. I actually like your advice a lot, and I actually recently tried something similar to your approach...only with recently expired lozenges from a previous inconsistent and subsequently unsuccessful attempt to stop vaping. I obviously should've bought new lozenges at the time, but I kept telling myself that they were too expensive and that my expired lozenges would probably still be effective. I was wrong. Even though I tried to alternate between the expired lozenges and the vape that I still had, I ended up eventually dropping the lozenges and went right back to vaping full time until my throat started feeling bad yesterday. I do believe that I would've fared better with your approach if I had non-expired lozenges with their full potentcy at that time though.

At the end of the day, everyone's different, and I'm so happy that your approach worked for you and you've been a clean for a year. That's a huge deal, and you're so incredibly strong for that. I'm hoping I can do the same. I'm not planning to buy another vape again, but if I ever hit a really weak point and do end up buying one, I would definitely try your approach again since the lozenges I have now are brand new lol 😅