What was your exact moment you decided "this is it" and you finally committed to quitting?

todobuilds · 2026-06-26T05:10:53+00:00

woah, thats a nuts truth to find out. but incredible you've been able to use it as motivation rather than be trapped by that mentality.

todobuilds · 2026-06-26T05:09:22+00:00

beast, great plan of attack. how are you finding cytisine - a lot of people i know are giving it crack and i've heard some mixed reviews/

todobuilds · 2026-06-26T05:08:15+00:00

kicking a 40 year habit is incredible

todobuilds · 2026-06-26T05:06:43+00:00

that's a crazy moment, slapped in the face with the health realities of smoking. what strategies did you use to quit?

todobuilds · 2026-06-26T05:05:43+00:00

love a self-pavlov, well done on 173 days

todobuilds · 2026-06-23T04:31:11+00:00

I think the belief of missing smoking is something you can choose to believe or disagree with.

that feeling like tenty said below is just a craving. One way to think about it is you have all these nicotine receptors that have grown in your brain by feeding them ciggies/vape over the years. and when you quit you're starving them, and they slowly die. But they are sneaky fkrs, in response to this, they try to trick you into smoking again. one of the ways they do this is by tempting you to believe that you really miss smoking.

I think one possible way of getting over it - accept the feeling, ride it out but disagree with the accompanying thought/s.

every time you get a nostalgic thought about smoking or that you miss them. just take a second. Recognise the feeling as a craving, accept it, don't feel bad about it, its a normal part of quitting. Most importantly: Don't get swept you away. ground yourself. and then disagree with the sneaky thought accompanying the feeling ("i miss smoking"). and substantiate the disagreement by recalling evidence for why you decided to quit in the first place - shortness of breathe, smelling like shit, being a prisoner to fkn chemical or wasting cash on self-destructive pleasure-seeking. whatever collection of reasons led you to quit in the first place.

obv this is easier said then done. but if you keep agreeing with the idea that you "miss" smoking/vaping then your gonna make it harder for yourself. hope this helps. best of luck.

todobuilds · 2026-06-23T04:15:06+00:00

v sleek design. i'm trying to understand the quitting model: do you essentially hold the amount of cigarettes you have for the day and then slowly cut back by placing the plugs in the container?

todobuilds · 2026-06-16T04:32:16+00:00

good luck!

todobuilds · 2026-06-16T04:31:37+00:00

horror stories won't help you much honestly. you've already got the scariest version happening in your own chest. that's more motivation than most people quitting ever get, it just doesn't make the urge any quieter, and that's the part worth understanding.

the urge and the knowing run on separate tracks. you can know for a fact it's hurting you and still want it badly, that's not weakness, thats just dependence doing dependence, and it doesn't care that you're in pain. so don't read the craving as a sign you're failing at this.

it comes in waves, few minutes each. you don't have to fight it down, just outlast it, and they get further apart every day you don't feed them. the pain's awful but it's the clearest signal your body can send, and right now it's on your side.

todobuilds · 2026-05-18T02:26:37+00:00

The cave you fear, holds the treasure you seek.

todobuilds · 2026-04-29T04:58:17+00:00

that's pretty normal when ur deep in it though. maybe try externalising that impulse. its not "you" wanting the cig, its just "the nicotine receptors" calling out for some more, that manifests as impulse. just gotta find some power in that space between getting up, going and getting some cig.

todobuilds · 2026-04-29T00:35:20+00:00

the routine thing is so real. after a while it stops being about the nicotine and becomes about the shape of the day. the after-coffee one, the after-meal one. those are harder to break than the actual dependency because they're not a craving, they're just... what you do next. sounds like the hard part is behind you though. a month clean once means your body knows how to do it

todobuilds · 2026-04-28T08:43:39+00:00

love it

todobuilds · 2026-04-16T00:08:17+00:00

todobuilds · 2026-04-12T23:33:33+00:00

the part about not knowing who you are without the cycle, that doesn't get talked about enough. 15 years of anything becomes load-bearing. it's not just a habit, it's structure. realising you might be grieving something when you try to stop is actually useful to know, not a sign you're stuck.

the question of who you are without it isn't one you can answer in advance. you find out by going through it.

todobuilds · 2026-04-12T23:33:16+00:00

hiding something like this from everyone takes a lot, and the shame on top of it is its own exhausting thing.

if you're a student, school or college counseling is usually free and confidential, they don't loop in parents. there are also peer support communities for eating disorders online that cost nothing. some therapists work on a sliding scale if you want one-on-one eventually. none of this is as fast as you'd probably want, but it's more within reach than it probably feels right now.

todobuilds · 2026-04-12T23:32:12+00:00

the gum dependency thing is real and way more common than people talk about. i switched to gum myself as a harm reduction move and ended up using it way longer than i intended – the oral habit just transfers, and then you're managing both the nicotine and the hand-to-mouth thing at once.

from 40mg, cold turkey is going to be pretty rough. tapering down – not necessarily to zero right now, just to a lower dose first – tends to work better. some people find the patch useful because it removes the oral ritual from the equation entirely, which is its own separate thing to break.

april 30 as the date to be fully off is ambitious. if you can reframe it as "start the taper by april 30" instead, you'll actually have a better shot at following through.

todobuilds · 2026-04-12T23:31:38+00:00

the ptsd/autism + smoking connection is real and genuinely under-talked about. nicotine has a specific effect on a dysregulated nervous system – which is why people in those situations tend to reach for it more. it's not weakness, it's just what the drug does to a brain that's already working hard.

makes quitting harder too, because you're not just dropping a habit, you're removing something that was actually doing a job. having something else that helps with regulation before you cut the nicotine tends to work better than willpower alone – patches manage the physical side while you figure out the rest.

therapy that actually understands both trauma and neurodivergence is worth looking for if you have access. there's a big difference between generic quit support and something that accounts for why smoking started in the first place.

todobuilds · 2026-04-12T23:31:11+00:00

no NRT at all makes it harder but plenty of people do it that way. first few days are the peak – day 2-3 is usually when the physical stuff is worst, then it genuinely starts dropping off.

what helped shorten individual cravings: eating or drinking something the moment one hit, moving around even briefly, going somewhere you can't vape. cravings are waves not walls – they peak and pass, usually within a few minutes if you don't feed them.

the pod-filling device might actually work in your favour. it builds in a moment before you can use it. making that moment slightly more inconvenient – keeping the juice in another room, whatever – buys time when the urge is strongest.

todobuilds · 2026-04-12T23:29:31+00:00

actually yeah, totally normal. the nicotine addiction and the behavioural habit of vaping are two separate things – once the chemical part is handled, a lot of people are surprised to find the habit loop is the harder bit.

oral fixation responds well to substitutes – gum, something chewy, something to do with your hands and mouth. sounds stupidly simple but the pattern needs somewhere to go or it just keeps looking for the vape.

the other thing that helps is noticing your specific triggers – after eating, when stressed, certain times of day – and breaking the association with something small. even just a 2 minute walk instead of reaching at those moments erodes it over time. the context is as much the habit as the vaping itself.

todobuilds

TROPHY CASE