For the last few years, I've been trying to quit nicotine.
And I know it sounds cliche, but it has been one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.
Like, when they tell you, in those anti -smoking, anti -vaping commercials, that nicotine is incredibly addictive and incredibly challenging to quit, they are not exaggerating to prevent you from smoking or vaping.
Okay? It's true. It is 1 ,000 % true.
As a young person, when you become introduced to the concept of nicotine, you're like, how addicting can it really be?
It can't be that addicting.
No, it is, it is. And when you read the statistics that are like, quitting smoking is impossible, yeah, it makes sense, checks out.
My experience is aligning with the data.
It has been one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.
And I know some of you are familiar with my nicotine addiction because I've made quite a few podcast episodes on it.
I haven't made one in a while and I was really hoping that the next episode I made about nicotine would be my story of successfully quitting.
I wanted more than anything for this episode right now to be my story of quitting successfully, how I did it, how you can do it too.
But unfortunately I'm here today with a much less honorable story.
And that is the story of my relapse.
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I was doing so good.
I was so close. And then boom, back to it, Vape In Pocket.
My vape is in my pocket right now.
I'm back to square one and it's so mortifying.
I feel like a failure.
I feel weak. I feel ashamed.
It sucks to sit here right now and tell this story.
But I know from my experience trying to quit thus far, that this is an important story because quitting anything is not linear.
And to expect it to be linear is to be setting yourself up for disappointment.
And I think my expectation for this experience to be linear led me to feeling the negative feelings that I'm feeling now.
And I think they're a bit too harsh because I really thought this wouldn't happen again.
in a weird way, a perfect, gorgeous, beautiful story of quitting is less realistic.
And I think for those of you out there who are trying to quit nicotine, I think it's comforting, I hope it's comforting to hear that the experience is not linear and that's okay and that's normal and you're not alone.
Let me tell you how this happened.
So, I think in August of last year, I made the decision, I'm done, okay?
And at that time, I wasn't vaping.
That wasn't my form of nicotine.
I was using the Zyn, which is the little, you know, nicotine pouches that you put under your lip and I think what really inspired me to quit was in California, they banned the product and I was like, all right, you know what, this is the universe being like, Emma, it's time.
Stop playing around.
it's time. What you've been using just got banned.
That's not a great sign for your health and well -being.
You should just be done all together." And so, I did it.
I actually did it. I threw everything away.
I had no nicotine in the house.
And I just went cold turkey.
Let me tell you, the first month was one of the darkest months of my life.
It wasn't okay, Actually, it wasn't one of the darkest, I've had darker months, okay, but it was a dark, dark, dark month.
For whatever reason for me, quitting nicotine is incredibly turbulent and I envy my friends who have been able to wake up one day and just quit and have like a little bit of discomfort, but ultimately get over it pretty quickly.
That is not my experience.
This first month was agony, pure agony.
the nicotine withdrawals caused intense anxiety and dissociation so like I was constantly in this state of borderline panic, like I wasn't having panic attacks but I constantly felt like I was on the verge of having a panic attack.
I felt dissociated like disconnected from my brain and body kind of spacey, almost like I was in a dream which is incredibly uncomfortable But in addition to that, it really triggered my depression.
I just got depressed.
And I had been doing really well, not really experiencing a lot of depressive episodes.
So this was really tough.
I didn't want to get out of bed having mental breakdowns any time.
I had to go to a social event or do something social for work.
My motivation was non -existent.
I couldn't get any work done.
I was incredibly irritable.
I was being irritable with my loved ones.
They were struggling with that.
They were confronting me about that.
More so for like people who are not blood -related to me.
Right? Like my family, like my parents.
They get a little bit more of my grumpy side, I would say.
But like friends or, you know, romantic relations.
Like all these types of people, they were seeing a new side of me.
Like, what is happening?
Like Emma's so grumpy.
And I wasn't being mean or harmful, but I just was irritable.
I was irritable, and I explained this to everybody in my life.
And they totally got it, and they were on my team, and they were patient with me.
But they were also like, you're not doing well.
You're irritable, you're grumpy, this is definitely impacting you.
They were noticing.
It was really, really, really brutal.
And the only thing that got me through was replacing the oral fixation, obviously the vape, the Zinn, all of these things satisfy my oral fixation.
And I couldn't lose that element.
Like with drawing from nicotine was enough.
I had to replace the oral fixation.
So I started with chewing a lot of gum, a lot of gum.
Wow, I was chewing a lot of gum all day from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed chewing gum, just normal gum, not nicotine gum, but that started to really impact my stomach negatively.
There's artificial sweeteners in chewing gum, and that started to give me serious stomach pain, like unbelievable stomach pain.
If I chew one or two pieces of gum over the course of a day, I'm not going to have a problem, but the amount of gum I was chewing, 20, 30 pieces a day, that amount of aspartame, artificial sugar was really, really hard on my stomach and I started to have severe stomach pain to the point where I was like, okay, I guess I have to quit the gum.
But luckily for me, I found Aspartame free gum and so I was on that for a bit and that was really helping me for a while.
But then I started to get jaw pain from how much gum I was chewing and I was like, okay, We need to try something else again So and I also think that that gum was also giving me gas It wasn't like severe stomach pain because it was a bit more natural, but it was still I think giving me gas I think anytime you're consuming a large amount of artificial sweetener or really a large amount of anything at all You're gonna pay a price for that and I definitely did so then I moved on to mints okay, because the jaw pain was getting out of control.
And actually I was chewing so much gum that I was having facial swelling.
My face was swelling up a little bit because I was chewing so much gum and my jaw was inflamed.
So it was like making my masseter muscles look huge and puffy, and it just, my face didn't look cute.
And I was like, okay, that's where we draw the line.
Honestly, I think this sounds so fucked up, but I think the fact that it was making my face visibly puffy was more upsetting to me than the jaw pain.
If it was just the jaw pain, I would have pushed through.
But I was like, I don't need the cheeks puffing out.
You know, I'm good on that.
So then I moved to mints and I was sucking on these aspartame free mints, same brand as the gum that I was chewing prior.
And that worked for a bit.
And then I got introduced to the concept of menthol, minty toothpicks.
And then I started sort of switching between those.
So I'd have a toothpick for a bit and then I'd have some mints.
Then I started to realize that the mints were giving me gas to a point that was actually becoming painful.
I was like, why are all of these things giving me gas?
Like, this is insane.
It was so frustrating to me because I was doing so well at this point.
It had been a few months since I had had nicotine and I was successfully off of it.
you know, obviously I was replacing it in a very extreme way, but technically I was off of it.
I'm doing so well. Can the universe just give me something like I'm please like I'm doing well?
Why am I being punished?
You know, it just felt so unfair in this industry.
I think in all industries, but I think the entertainment industry in particular, there's a lot of nicotine around Like, if I'm on set for something like shooting a project, it could be an editorial shoot, or like, commercial, it doesn't matter.
There is a vape somewhere, there's someone with a pack of cigarettes somewhere.
Luckily, I don't get tempted by cigarettes, so that's never a temptation, but there's always a vape somewhere.
There's someone with a zen somewhere.
There's a lot of nicotine around.
When I was working at home, it was pretty easy to resist temptation, but in certain working environments, it was kinda tough.
We're all adults, and when we have a 10 hour shoot day, there's something nice about having a little nicotine during the little off moments, I don't know.
It was hard to resist in these environments, but also even in social environments, so many young people are addicted to nicotine and it's pretty easy to be like, "'Hey, can I have a little bit of that?" So there was a lot of temptation around.
At first, I was really good at resisting temptation like when I'd gotten to a point where I wasn't really craving it anymore.
I kind of missed it, but it wasn't ruling my world anymore.
At that point, I was pretty good at resisting temptation.
I was also becoming aware of how good I felt without nicotine in my system.
You know, my anxiety was lower, my mood was better, I was thinking clearer, like I just was experiencing all of these incredible things from not having nicotine in my system, and so it made it easier to resist temptation.
But at a certain point, I started to cave, you know, here and there, I'd be like, hey, can I hit the vape?
Hey, you mind letting me hit that, hey?
And I started having occasional little stints of having it, but I did not have my own.
Absolutely did not have my own.
That was unthinkable at that point.
I was fully quit, But see, this was a slippery slope, right?
Because one day of, you know, hitting someone's vape, and you're kind of backing it, you know?
You're kind of backing it.
Like I would leave the person who had the vape, and I'd be craving it, it would hurt a little bit.
And for the next 24 hours I felt a little bit off.
It was almost like I was going through withdrawals again.
Luckily the withdrawal period would be shorter.
It wasn't like a month long.
Instead it was like a day or two long, But I was still having that withdrawal period and and it was uncomfortable and it made me Crave it more to the point where next time I had one available to me I was like, ooh, I really want it it was almost like I was slowly becoming addicted again and Like every time I'd have some it would get a little bit harder to let it go at the end of the day when I wasn't Around that person anymore who had it.
There wasn't a specific person at this point It was just whoever had one around me, right?
It would get harder and harder to say goodbye to the faith, right?
But I was doing well, and I was dealing with the repercussions.
It would give me brain fog.
It would make me irritable.
But I was so aware of how it impacted me emotionally that I was able to sort of cover it up.
Because I had experienced those feelings so vividly a few months prior when I quit, I knew that they would pass.
I actually kind of felt like, Oh, I'm doing pretty good.
Like even though there's negative consequences, I'm actually handling the negative consequences super well.
And it's almost like the nicotine was convincing me like, you're good.
You can have as much as you want.
You know how to handle yourself.
You're not getting addicted again fully.
You know, you're just having a little bit here and there.
It's no problem. There's like something sinister about the way nicotine and anything addicting will convince you that it's okay that you can have it.
You can have a little bit and not fully get addicted again.
Or at times, even an addiction will sort of convince you that it's okay to be addicted.
I've really experienced that with this nicotine addiction.
Like when I was fully addicted, not even planning on quitting, you know, I used to tell myself, everyone smokes, like so many people smoke, like, fuck it.
Like, I don't care.
Like, you know, by the way, this is harmful mentality, okay?
But this is how I was thinking.
I was like, it's normal.
Like yeah, it's not good for you, but like, it's normal.
So many people do it and like, I'm like, I'm a good person and I don't do a lot of bad things for my body.
Like I exercise and I eat well and I don't, you know, drink too much, like I don't drink a lot of alcohol, all these different things.
So I was like, I can have a little something, you know?
Come on! And And so that sort of started, that little voice started to creep back in as I'm starting to have more vape in my life.
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It got really bad when some people closer to me, who I see more frequently got addicted, okay?
That's when it all went to shit.
All went to shit. If there's somebody in your close vicinity who's addicted to something that you're trying to quit, it's tough.
It's really tough. And I'll give myself credit.
For the first few months of this, of you know, this experience of having somebody in my life close to me being addicted, who I see frequently, at first it was like, I can do this.
You know like I, I will not let this ruin my progress but it just got harder and harder and over the course of of a few months, I eventually was fully addicted again and you know I ended up getting my own and I felt disgusting about it but the reason why I got my own was because whenever I'd be around this person, I would use theirs And then they wouldn't be around anymore and I would have severe withdrawals and then at a certain point I'd see them again.
I would feel better because I would have it and then I'd withdraw again.
So I was almost constantly in a state of withdrawal and and that was just Impossible for me emotionally like it was like every week I was like Starting again and stopping again And it was just too much and it was it was getting in the way of things that I just I couldn't I could it was like I can't live like this.
And so I ultimately relapsed.
But here's the thing that's complicated, right?
It's like I am an adult, okay?
I cannot ask the people in my life to quit things for my own benefit.
I can't. You know, I can ask people to not do things around me, maybe, or find a way to, but see, here's the problem.
I didn't even want to do that because I was like, deep down I want to have the vape.
You know what I mean?
Like I want to have a little moment with the vape.
So I don't wanna say, hey, can you not do that around me, because that means I don't get to have it anymore.
That's my own battle.
It is not anyone else's responsibility in this world to protect me from my own addiction.
The truest test of the effectiveness really of your quitting is being around it and seeing if you can handle it.
And it's very clear that I couldn't.
But I allowed myself to be around it because deep down, I think I wanted it, And so this was my own fault.
This is not the fault of anyone who had a vape around me at all.
And we can all have different opinions about that.
Some people might say, if you know that somebody quit nicotine, you should then hide your nicotine from them.
I'm sorry. I don't want people to be walking on eggshells around me.
I want people to be able to be free.
If they want to fucking hit their vape and blow it in my face, they should.
I want to be at a place with nicotine where I can resist temptation.
I am not asking people to behave differently.
Listen, again, if somebody were to come to me and say, I'm quitting nicotine, whenever I see it, it really makes me want it.
Do you mind not doing it around me?
I'd be like, duh, 1000%.
I have no problem with doing that for other people.
There is nothing wrong with others finding that that's the most effective way for them to quit.
For me, I want to quit in a way where I can be around it.
No one needs to change their behavior.
That's what I'm striving for.
Clearly it didn't work for me because here I am.
Vape in pocket. Now here's where I'm at now, right?
I'm dealing with a lot of negative emotions towards myself.
I feel discouraged.
It's hard in moments like this not to feel like a lost cause like, why even try to quit?
You know, what's the point if I'm ultimately just doomed for relapse?
Like, why even try?
I've been experiencing that.
I've been experiencing low self -esteem because I sort of see myself as a failure, I feel ashamed of my lack of discipline.
I catch myself looking down upon myself a lot.
I've also experienced a lot of fear of karma, in a way.
And this is sort of irrational I think and not actually necessarily healthy but I'm just being completely transparent about the way I've been feeling.
I think part of me feels like having this nicotine addiction is wrong.
It's going to give me sort of a bad karma.
But I think that that's rooted in some issues that I have with perfectionism and being the most morally perfect person so that nothing bad can happen to me.
Like I, I have issues with that.
So I think that's sort of more of an Emma problem than something that maybe you might experience if you're going through the same thing.
But I've experienced a lot of negative emotional responses as a result, but I also am fully like addicted to the substance again.
Like I, there's no, you know, the reason why I became addicted to it in the first place is because you know, it makes me feel good in a weird way.
It also can make me feel sort of anxious.
It can also make me feel sort of disassociated.
But this time around I've chosen a specific vape product that has less nicotine in it, it's a lower percentage, by probably about 50%, and so I'm experiencing less anxiety, less disassociation and stuff like that.
And my addiction is a bit weaker as a result, but it's still there.
It's like if it made me feel completely horrible, I wouldn't be addicted again.
So it does sort of make me feel good in a weird way.
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I come to you now at this place where it's in my pocket.
Like I can't lie to you and say, well, but today's day one, I threw the thing in the trash.
I didn't. I didn't.
And the experience of quitting last time was so exhausting that I'm, to be completely transparent with you, I'm dreading doing it again.
I know I will be doing it again.
I know I need to get back on the horse, but it's tough, you know?
Morale is kind of low.
I think the first time you quit, you know, you have this sort of hope in a way you're excited.
You're like, this is the last time I'm ever going to do this.
And, and when it's not, it's discouraging and it makes you feel like, well, why would I even try this again?
Why would I go through that grief all over again, if I'm so prone to relapsing and that's sort of where I'm at now is this really uncomfortable place of knowing that at some point I'm going to need to begin this journey again, ideally as soon as possible, But I'm also feeling discouraged and like, I don't know how to make this time different.
And I'm stuck with that, of like, how do I make this time different?
And maybe the answer is telling everybody, hey, I'm sorry, I'm quitting, I need a year or two without vapes around me, without any nicotine around me.
Like, I, you know, maybe that's the answer.
I'm thinking about it.
I don't necessarily want that to be the answer, But it might be, you know, the answer might be, unfortunately, you just have to do the same thing over again and next time, just be more disciplined about not hating people's vapes.
You know what I mean?
I don't know what the answer is.
And so I'm sitting here now thinking about it and trying to figure out how to make next time different.
But I really think what the moral of this story is is quitting isn't linear, nothing in life is linear.
And I'm not trying to put a positive spin on this to make an excuse for my relapse, if you will.
I'm not trying to make excuses.
I'm not trying to put a little cute bow on it and say, it's totally fine.
This is good. Because it's not, it's not good.
But it's also normal.
It's complicated with something like this because on one hand, you don't wanna almost be so gentle with yourself that you let yourself fall back into it and you're so gentle with yourself that you're like, you know what, it's okay.
I don't need to quit again.
You should feel a level of frustration with yourself, I think, when you fail, right?
You need to feel a little bit of negative emotion, but you don't need to feel so much negative emotion that it's like impacting your self -esteem and it's impacting the way you see the world.
It's like making you pessimistic.
It's like making you depressed.
It's like, you know, that is not good.
You should feel just enough negative emotion that you're like, okay, I want to do better next time.
I want to better myself.
I want, I don't want, like, does that make sense?
Like you don't wanna be so chill with yourself that then you have no reason to quit because you're just, you're cool with what you're doing.
You know what I mean?
But you also don't wanna be so self -deprecating that you're destroying your mental state.
So, all of that to say, like, I'm not trying to present this in like, a sweet, overly sensitive way.
That's not the moral of the story.
The moral of the story is not like, it's totally okay to vape.
We should all do it.
Like, that's not the moral of the story.
The moral of the story is that, for better or for worse, quitting, healing, all of these different things are not linear experiences.
Because we should strive to have the trajectory of our quitting be upward. But on that trajectory, there are going to be little dips and valleys, okay?
And that's just inevitable.
And what I'm trying to teach myself right now is like, this is an opportunity to prove to myself that I can do it, that getting back up and trying again, even when I feel completely discouraged can lead to success.
Like failing a few times doesn't mean failure forever.
I'm trying to get there, you know, but it's tough.
I'm trying to accept that this experience is not gonna be linear, but it's tough.
But I'm not giving up, you know, like this journey, it'll last the rest of my fucking life if it has to, but I'm never gonna stop trying to quit me being like, it is in my pocket, but I promise, I promise that I'm quitting.
It's really hard. It's really hard. It's really fucking hard. And anyone who's ever been addicted to nicotine in a big way understands it's no joke.
It's no joke. I feel like as a kid I just scoffed at the anti -vaping anti -smoking infomercials about how addicting it is, how hard it is to quit, how it can cause a lifelong addiction that is impossible to quit.
I always was like, fuck off.
How addicting can it really be?
The kids need to be listening to those infomercials.
I swear someone needs to create anti -vaping infomercials that don't cause kids to rebel.
As a kid, I would see shit like that and I'd be like, shut the fuck up, which is douchy and rude.
But as like a teenager, I don't Like you're rebellious, you know, it's like the the infomercials are not effective for young people Which is such a bummer because man, I'd love to not be in this situation if you haven't ever Ingested nicotine in your life.
I tell you don't do it.
Don't do It's My god, I just it sounded like a wheeze and my it wasn't well, maybe was Anyway, don't do it, okay?
Don't do it. Don't try it.
Don't do it. Anyway, y 'all, I really wish I had like a really beautiful conclusion, but this is what I learned and this is what you should do at home and this is what we can all do to make the world a better place and to stop consuming nicotine.
You all, wake up people.
We can do this. Like I wish that was the conclusion.
But here I am, back at square one I hope that the next time we talk about this, maybe I have quit, for good that time.
All right. Thank you all for listening and hanging out.
As always, it's a pleasure.
And there's new episodes of Anything Goes every Thursday and Sunday, so if you had fun, come back, come hang out.
Anything Goes is on social media at Anything Goes.
I'm on social media at Emma Chamberlain.
and my coffee company can be found anywhere at Chamberlain Coffee, not like anywhere.
We're not like in every store, but like anywhere you could find a coffee company like on the internet or at Chamberlain Coffee.
I love you all. I appreciate you all.
We have fun together and I'll have fun with you again in a few days.
All right, I'll talk to you then.
Bye.
