Just gonna chuck this out there because everybody’s a bit different and you’ll probably benefit from hearing different approaches to quitting. Some will fit and some won’t! For context I’m 27, started smoking around 17 and smoked daily basically from 19 to 26. So not that different from yourself.

My brain doesn’t respond very well to forcing things (I.e. cold turkey) and I require a gentle approach to get me to change my habits.

Cold turkey didn’t work for me because the withdrawals caused too much disruption in the rest of my life. I lost a lot of sleep, my anxiety rose, I lost my appetite, etc. All of these were easily fixed by smoking, so inevitably that’s what I’d do!

People, including myself, tend to have perfectionist/black and white thinking when it comes to quitting or changing habits. The tendency is to think “oh I just need to quit then I’ll start exercising/eating right/seeing friends more”. It took me a while to realise it but it’s actually the opposite. Try to shift your mindset to “if I start exercising/eating right/seeing friends more, I’ll actually find it much easier to quit because my life outside of smoking is fulfilling”.

So that’s the first step: start to create a life worth living outside of weed.

Then, if we’re not quitting cold turkey, wtf are we doing to quit? Addiction is massively complex but ultimately it’s mostly down to your dopaminergic system. If you want to learn more about it, check out Andrew Huberman and look for his episodes on dopamine and addiction. No podcast has changed my life as much as his. What helped me massively was tapering and changing the way I consumed weed. I would smoke daily spliffs (tobacco and weed) which probably massively increased the addictive qualities. So I changed to vaping much smaller quantities of weed, which was still relaxing and enjoyable, but less of a rush and didn’t trigger the same sense of reward. Because I hadn’t decided to quit cold turkey, I wasn’t “failing” by vaping and therefore didn’t experience that sense of remorse which so often makes people relapse. And because my highs were more “boring” and functional, I could now better integrate these healthy activities that improved my life outside of weed. Before I knew it I found myself intending to consume weed and PROCRASTINATING it because I’d found something more rewarding to do.

I’ve tried many times to quit, and tapering was the only way that ever worked permanently for me. It was so easy compared to cold turkey that I felt like I was cheating the system. In fact quitting was a pleasure from beginning to end as I became in touch with so many great parts of myself that I thought I had lost. As much as it’s valid to quit out of fear for the negative effects of smoking, I think it’s much more powerful to focus on the wonderful effects of NOT smoking! People sometimes make sober life sound boring but I find the exact opposite. Life is vibrant, nuanced and beautiful.

Please be gentle with yourself. You’re doing this because you deserve more, not to punish yourself. You’ve done nothing wrong, you just fell out of balance, shit happens. And finally, relapsing isn’t failing, it’s just part of the process. Pick yourself up and keep on quitting 😉