I last smoked/vaped weed in May of 2023. I last vaped nicotine in June of 2023. I first want to say, very few people actually care about you quitting. I obviously don’t know who’s reading this but that’s not my point. I’d care if I knew you I guess, but yeah, anyways.
There was one vape shop I went to for years. One day I came there and told the guy working there – who I saw many times – that I was planning on quitting. It was as if it went right over his head and he didn’t even listen or process what I said. He just started trying to help me find a vape product or whatever.
So how did I quit all of it? Well, it was a long ass process.
I first started smoking cigarettes when I was 13 but I didn’t inhale so I never got addicted. Then I started smoking weed at 15 but didn’t inhale either. Finally, I turned 16 and knew how to inhale weed. I then smoked everyday until I was 18. When I was 16 I also started vaping nicotine but didn’t buy a juul or e-cig till later.
When I was 18 and went to college, I took a break from weed. For a whole year ( two semesters ), I abstained. I remember getting good grades and being stable, but feeling unexcited about things if I couldn’t smoke weed.
For nicotine, off and on from 16 – 17 i’d rip my family’s vapes in secret and i’d rip my friends’ vapes in school.
Fast forward to when I worked at Wendy’s, I was miserable. I worked 2 – 3 months as a cashier and fry cook. At the end of my employment there, I was a lonely dishwasher. It started off ok, but over time I got sad, lonely and every second of the job felt like torture. To this day i’m grateful I don’t have to work there again. So after being a dishwasher, I got fed up. I stole my family member’s vape and brought it to work. I remember listening to music and hitting the vape every 5 – 10 minutes. I also am pretty sure I was on camera too, so I don’t know why I wasn’t caught and fired.
The vape made things worse, but I forego any negative feelings every time I got a nicotine buzz or just took a simple hit of it. Some bad stuff that happened were i’d forego eating because every time I took a hit it supressed my hunger. Overall, that led to a big decrease in overall energy and strength. It also made me hide away from people to sneak a hit. WIthdrawals led to increased anxiety, stress and sadness.
Also during this time, my coworker brought in a weed pen and I thought, why not? I broke my 9 month streak and got high again. Things were ok. I felt like I was in a movie. For example, I was ‘people watching’ my boss and I saw her every move as if I was a puppetmaster controlling her. I thought I was some genius cause I could see people’s every action and move as if they were following a movie script that I knew about lol. Oh yeah, and the obvious, weed gave me a buzz and made me calm, relaxed and chill in exchange for the slight fear, paranoia and anxiety.
Fast forward to college in the end of 2018 to mid 2019, I abstained from everything. Like I said, I got good grades and was stable but things were unexciting without smoking and vaping.
Finally, in mid 2019 some freak accident happened. I moved to a new dorm hall and happened to be roommates with a stoner.
I remember the day vividly. I lived in a separate dorm residency where there were me and three roommates and we all had our own room. I was on one side of the residency with a nice white guy. On the other side were two other nice black guys.
One of the black dudes was a heavy stoner. He was blasting DaBaby and Stunna 4 Vegas and i’d frequently smell the scent of vapor from a weed dab pen coming from his room.
So that first day when everyone was chilling in their room, he came over to my room and asked me ‘You smoking’ in a chill funny tone. He was part jamaican I think.
Again, I decided screw it and went for it because I wanted some excitement in life. He made me take a ‘blinker’ by me smoking the weed pen while he held the button until it blinked. So, an 8 second hit.
I remember getting so blasted. I can’t remember what happened for certain. But, I do remember one time getting high I hung out with him and his other friends in his room. He was high as well playing Apex Legends while blasting DaBaby songs. I felt like I was in a movie and felt extreme pressure and the spotlight effect. Almost as if I was in a play for a theater and had to say everything with conviction so i’d make a great performance.
Things were okay, but like I said in other blog posts, there were lots of problems. Mainly, I was very unaware of shit and would smoke a bong in the bathroom with the shower running and a towel. I thought it blocked the smell. Turns out, it didn’t at all. I’m pretty sure I made our separate residence of four separate rooms smell like weed everyday, all the time, and that’s why my roommates were annoyed with me. I also found out that people walking by our room would smell it constantly.
I got in trouble after room inspections one day, and got a ticket from a cop and had a mini-panick attack. I didn’t stop because I still didn’t realize the shower was not blocking the smell. For a second time, my hall director got me in trouble. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I had smoked a blunt in the bathroom, got high and thought nothing of it. Then I started playing a game called Sniper Elite 4 in my room on the computer. I was completely locked in and had major tunnel vision. Weirdly, this day I actually thought subconsciously to myself while playing that I deserve to treat myself and not think of anything else beside the game because of all the problems happening recently. So, I was more distracted and felt more free and relaxed than ever.
What do you know, i’m playing for fifteen minutes and my hall director and the receptionist of my hall had gotten into my locked room using a universal key that can unlock any door in the hall. My hall director pokes me and I look over at him and the receptionist and was freaked out for my life. I don’t know what was said but it was probably saying that I wasn’t allowed to smoke in my dorm and that people were complaining about the smell in the hallway all the time. He then searches the bathroom and sees a blunt in the toilet. Then he calls campus police and I flush the blunt down the toilet and he freaks out cause now he has no evidence of me smoking. The police show up and he tells them I flushed the blunt and they said they can’t do anything. After that, I just smoked in the woods. Fast forward, after that semester, I woke up on the first day of the new semester to find that all of my roommates had abruptly moved out without telling me. That is where things got bad. I remember being alone and hitting my bong in the living room. Then, staying up for days and making weird artwork. All during this period things were so quiet in my room. I played no music, nothing. I’d have weird moments where i’d be silent and hear people in their rooms near me and them seemingly sounding like they were talking about me.
Saying shit like, “what’s he doing now?” when I would abruptly be quiet and not move. Weird shit that freaked me out. And then one day, things really got to me and I got rid of all the money I had at the time and called my brother telling him I was losing my mind and was scared. The next day I took an uber home. Then Covid started very soon after that weirdly.
Long story short, from 2020 to mid 2023 were also a lot of bad moments. First off, without the money I had before, I had to work again. I worked at supermarkets, fast food places, etc as a cashier or janitor or deli slicer and the works. I had periods of smoking weed a year straight but it not even working and so I was just doing it for the smoking motions. I had periods of vaping nicotine for many periods too. I once went 9 months without smoking or vaping anything then relapsed.
Then, in regards to quitting all that shit, it was like god or divine coincidence or science saved me. In April of 2023 I worked at Ocean State Job Lot as a stocker then as a janitor. Horrible experience, but that’s not what this is about. This is about how I’d literally go to corners of the store and vape innocently and I ended up getting caught on camera. They called me to the office and my two managers confronted me showing evidence on the camera, in which I thought the cameras didn’t even work lol. They said if I got caught again i’d be fired. So then I had to cut back and could only vape in the bathrooms. Then I started getting really self conscious and realizing how sad it was to be sneaking to the bathroom every 30 minutes to take a hit even when I wasn’t even getting a buzz, and that it was only for the smoking motion. Fast forward, I was horrible at stocking and then they switched me to a janitor. I remember I wasn’t amazing at that either and would do the bare minimum and always be so tired and unexcited that I didn’t care about doing a good job. Then, around August 2023, they told me that the store wasn’t making enough money and that they had to take me off the schedule for a few months.
When they finally called me back after two months, I told them I was sick. Then I filed for medical leave for three months. During that process, I was waiting on a decision for EBT and Disability. Then in December of 2023 I went to the psych ward.
But back to May 2023, I abruptly quit weed for many reasons. First off, the many times I smoked before then, my auditory hallucinations got horrible and my cough got bad too. I remember one time I smoked, felt hot all over my body, and stood still and could not stop hearing sounds around me that sounded like they were narrating my life. Then I just up and left my house and walked around barefoot looking into neighbor’s windows. Due to the many times I got high and heard neighbors talking about me, I really believed all my neighbors were in on it. I believed they all knew me and talked about me as the kid who checked out women, smoked constantly, and looked through their windows. So yeah, that high experience essentially scared me straight. I did not want another time getting high thinking I was god and the world revolved around me and that everyone was tracking what I was doing.
So yeah, I actually had good reason to quit weed. I was scared of going ‘crazy’ for lack of a better word, if I smoked again. So, I think I quit on the spot.
Quitting nicotine was much much harder. Why? Well first off, nicotine does not really cause paraoia and hallucinations. Also, so many people do it, even with zyns. Hell, even Einstein and Carl Jung and many other famous people in history consumed nicotine. Also, if you’re getting a buzz, it only last a short duration, not anything crazy. People say it helps them focus, gives them something to motivate them through the day, etc. There’s so many negatives, but yeah, lol, anyways, on an average day I vaped nicotine like 150 times. I also had a chronic cough at the time, and when I vaped the menthol flavor, it’d cool and relax my throat so I didn’t feel the urge to cough for a few seconds.
In the many attempts to quit before that, I tried so much. I remember a quit attempt where I went a day without it. Then, I woke up, realized how sad my life was and felt all my usual negative feelings and remembered how nice a nicotine buzz would feel. Mind you, this was also after being feeling extremely ‘confident’ and taking a risk by smashing all my vapes and getting rid of any juice. I basically did that all for nothing because without a second thought, the next day I woke up and drove to the vape store and got a vape lol. And I remember too that a lot of the time I didn’t even get a buzz lol.
Then there was a day about in the middle of my quit journey. I was having my usual Discord call with all my online friends. Usually in these calls, i’d be quiet, not say much, and just vape nicotine every 5 – 20 minutes. This time, I decided to put my vape somewhere across my room in a secret box. That way, it’d be an inconvenience to get up and go hit it, hopefully making me not want to hit it. Well, what do you know, the Discord call was stressful without the vape. All my real problems popped up and I couldn’t just ignore them with a vape hit. I know i’m probably making the vape seem more malicious than it is but whatever. I remember going 20 – 30 minutes and problems would come up that i’d usually vape about. Stuff like that certain friends are probably thinking i’m weird for being so quiet, etc. So yeah, a lot of negative feelings, even shit I still feel and haven’t solved to date. I remember a friend saying something and I couldn’t take it anymore so I ran across the room to take a hit. I don’t even know if I got a buzz but hey, atleast I was trying to quit right!
It got to the point where I didn’t get a buzz at all anymore. I resulted to chain-vaping so i’d get high from oxygen deprivation. We’re talking, taking 10-15 vape hits back to back just so i’d get dizzy and lightheaded from oxygen deprivation. Once I got to there, I felt so pathetic. It also made me run through vape juice so fast, and I was low on money too. Also about this, so many of my family members consume nicotine as well as my friends and they never seemed too bothered by it, or atleast never expressed it to me, so I thought nicotine addiction wasn’t so bad. I even had a friendship with a family member’s partner at the time where they’d let me hit their nicotine and weed vapes too. They even did the same vape thing too, of taking 10 hits back to back for oxygen deprivation.
I also forgot to say how there’d be days where i’d wake up every 2 hours of the night just to take a vape hit. There’d also be days i’d wake up at 5am before work at 8:30am, and just stare into the distance and take vape hits back to back. Then there’d be days where i’d vape and eat very little and feel very weak. There’d also be days where i’d vape and would constantly go to the bathroom. There’d also be days where I kept vomiting from vaping too much or from vaping some nasty juice or because I kept getting vape juice in my mouth or because my vape was burnt.
So how I quit for good you might ask? Well, first off, I really really wanted it. It took 1 – 3 months of solidifying the quit. There were times were I wrote pros/cons of vaping and even gave a family member my vape gear and told them not to give it to me and to explain why I quit if I asked for it. I also had many periods where I caved in and bought vape shit for nothing, because I got no buzz, so I again threw out the vape gear I just bought. I also had experiences talking to smart friends who said nicotine is not bad, as long as I use actual tobacco leaf in a pipe. That kind of made me less serious about quitting but whatever. The biggest motivators to me were that I thought it was pathetic. I thought it was pathetic that I only hung out with family or friends because I knew that I could sneak off and take a vape hit after 20 minutes. I also thought it might be worsening my cough, and so I needed to eliminate any irritants, including vaping, to help my cough go away. Sadly, it still hasn’t gone away, but that’s another story.
When I finally solidified quitting, what I did was I found a menthol juice with 0mg of nicotine. That’s right, no nicotine at all. The way it worked though is I found a juice that gave a good throat hit even without nicotine. So, I kept all the things I liked before – the vaping and inhaling vapor motion along with the strong feeling of the vapor that soothed my throat. I even chain vaped it just so I could have the strongest menthol throat hit possible. So yeah, I quit weed in May of 2023 and vaping nicotine in June of 2023. At the end of 2023 I went to the psych ward my second time and got put on the strongest anti-psychotic possible, called Clozapine. Clozapine makes me tired all the time. That’s good for when I need to sleep but can’t due to anxiety or rumination, but bad during the day. But that also means its good to replace the sedation from weed/nicotine as I can relax without it whenever. Oh yeah, I also believe my chronic cough started in the end of 2022 because I was constantly hitting my vape and ignoring my mom, which made me have an existential crisis thinking I am/was a horrible son. And so I developed a nervous tic – a chronic cough to deal with the anxiety I developed that day and still deal with.
Anyway, after coming home from the psych ward after the end of 2023, one of my family members got rid of all my vaping and smoking gear. All of it, lol. my $200 dry herb ( weed ) vaporizer called the pax 2, another $100 vaporizer, a $80 combustion vaporizer, my mini rainbow bong, my pipe, my rolling papers, lighters, blunt wraps, my mason jar with weed, my dry herb that I vaped, everything. Probably $500 down the drain but well worth it. Again, weed makes me paranoid and all of those insane stories when I was high and was experiencing such crazy shit has still stuck with me today. I’m still paranoid of neighbors and really anyone to this day. If I smoke anymore i’ll probably have more paranoid episodes that will fuck up my psyche even more for who knows how long.
What’s weird though is that certain family members and friends even still offer me weed, even the people who know how paranoid it made me. It makes me forget all the bad experiences and makes me think nothing of weed – and that it’s just a simple way to chill and relax. So yeah, I still have to remind myself of reasons not to smoke even when it seems harmless.
After my smoking gear was tossed and I came home from the psych ward, things just started working out. I got EBT and disability so I don’t have to worry about having to work right now. That means no insane stress which may cause me to relapse. Now I just plan on finishing school and getting a degree and my own place. There are still many negative moments for me but it could be worse, and I think I have a good future.
So for anyone reading wondering how to quit weed/nicotine: You have to want it, meaning you must have reasons to quit that outweigh why you should keep doing it. Or, some other good advice is to just quit them and that you don’t need a good reason to. Just quit them. Good reasons for anyone could be that it’ll save you money and that you won’t rely on them anymore.
For nicotine, taper your e-juice nicotine dosage until 0 or so, then go on gum, then stay on 0mg juice for as long as you have to until you can quit vaping for good.
Thanks for reading,
Max
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