The book behind Quitpod

The Free Breath

A Spiritual Guide to Letting Go of Vaping

A Note Before You Begin

This is not a book about willpower. If willpower were enough you would have stopped already. You have probably stopped several times, and each time the vape found its way back into your hand, and each time a small voice told you something about yourself that was not true. It said you were weak. It said you were the sort of person who cannot see a thing through. The voice is wrong. Willpower is for lifting. What you are holding is a knot, and a knot does not come loose because you pull harder on it. It comes loose when you see how it was tied, and then let the rope go slack.

It is written for someone who vapes and does not want to. You may have said this is the last one too often, or stopped for a month and kept quiet about it. Perhaps you came off cigarettes, were told this was safer, and found it had a grip of its own. Perhaps you have never tried, afraid of what failing would say about you. If you use patches or gum on a pharmacist's advice, you may wonder whether that counts. It counts. A patch is not a vape, and a person who stops with one has stopped. You are welcome here if you believe in nothing and intend to keep it that way. You need not pretend otherwise.

You can read the whole of it while you still vape. Nothing in these pages asks you to stop before you have chosen to. Leave the vape on the table beside you if it is there. The early chapters are about looking, and you cannot look at a thing you have hidden in a drawer.

Read it slowly. If a line stops you, let it. Put the book down and notice what stopped you. Something in the chest, or the throat, or a flush of heat in the face. You are not asked to dig for anything or to make a feeling bigger than it is. If nothing comes, read on. If something comes and it is more than you want, look up and around the room, at the door, the window, the coat on the back of the chair, and let it settle before you go back to the page. The feeling that comes while you read may be one the vape has been covering.

Try what is suggested. The practices are short and need no equipment or quiet room. Start with what seems too small to matter, because addiction makes you believe only something enormous can shift it. Try it with an open mind. In the hallway with your coat half on and the front door in front of you while you reach for a vape in your pocket. On a bus at night with your own reflection in the dark window. At the sink.

The teaching comes from three streams.

The first is the long tradition of people who recover from addiction together. In church halls and kitchens and borrowed rooms, they learned to admit what is so, even when the admission feels like defeat. Your own will cannot carry you; you need something larger, understood however you like. You recover by being honest, and by making peace with yourself and, where it is safe, with people you have hurt. Helping someone who is where you were keeps you free. One person who knows the truth about you is worth more than a crowd who knows your face. These pages borrow what they give freely and belong to no fellowship.

The second is the teaching of a physician who studied human feeling. A feeling that is allowed and not resisted rises, crests and passes on its own. Resist it and it stays. Allow it and it goes, and what is left afterwards is lighter than what was there before. He also mapped feelings, from shame through fear, wanting, anger and pride to courage, then willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy and peace. The map shows where you are standing. It is never a grade. Nobody stands anywhere for long. You move by letting go of what holds you there.

The third is a former chain-smoker's account of seeing through his addiction. The body's need for nicotine is a small restlessness that passes. The prison is built of belief: the relief of lighting up only eases the discomfort the last cigarette made. There is nothing to give up. What you set down is the thing that has been making the pain. It tasted of something once, and felt like something, and the pleasure went out of it long before the reaching did.

The former smoker shows you that the prison door was never locked. The physician shows you what to do with the fear when you walk towards that door: let it be there and walk anyway. The people who recovered together show you how turning towards others and something larger holds you when the first excitement fades. Nobody walks out for long alone. Each stream answers the question the others leave open.

You need no knowledge of these sources and no religion or doctrine. Understand something greater than yourself however you like. God, or life, or love, or the stillness beneath the noise of thought, or the part of you that has always known this was not who you are. The name is yours to choose.

Be honest with yourself, which is harder than being honest with anyone else. Be willing before you are sure. Certainty comes after, if it comes at all, and waiting for it means waiting for ever. Sit with a feeling for a few minutes without vaping past it and see what happens. Let one or two people know you, because shame is the thing most likely to send you back to the vape, and being known is the opposite of shame. Be kinder to yourself than you are used to. The harsh way has had years to work. When you have something to give, turn round and help someone behind you, because your own freedom is kept there.

You need not believe, confess, apologise, fight, grit your teeth or endure. The chapter on making peace is there for when you are ready and the ground is safe. No stopping date is chosen for you. Nicotine support is legitimate. Patches, gum, lozenges and prescribed medicines are options to discuss with a pharmacist or clinician. These pages do not choose for you. You need not bring up feelings you would rather leave alone. If you slip, you are still welcome here. A slip is a thing that happened on an afternoon. Tell the truth about it and come back.

Two practical things belong here rather than in the chapters. The first is safety. Try the practices when your hands are free and you are at rest, and never while driving or operating anything. A craving at the wheel can wait until you have parked, and it does wait. The second is help. A pharmacist, a doctor or a stop-smoking service knows more about nicotine than any book does, and if anxiety or low mood is making ordinary life hard, arrange a conversation with a doctor or a mental-health professional. Keep the appointments you have made and any checks you have been asked to do. If a symptom is new or getting worse, ring for medical advice and say what has changed. Nothing in this guide takes the place of that, and nothing in this guide is harmed by it.

A word on evidence. The spiritual frame of this guide is offered, and you may take what rings true and leave the rest. The practices are a different matter. The core one, allowing a craving and letting it pass, has been studied under other names and found to help. The advice on sleep, movement, breath, nicotine support and the people around you follows the research as it stands, and where the research is thin or uncertain the guide says so. The studies behind the practical chapters are listed at the end.

Read it in order the first time. The chapters build. You learn to see the craving, then to let go of the feelings beneath it, before turning to other people and ordinary life. After that, return to whichever chapter you need. Many readers keep the appendix on the moment of craving somewhere they can reach it, and read it standing up.

People stop from all kinds of lives, most of them certain it would never work for them. You have heard a small device tell you that you cannot cope without it many times a day. You have half believed it.

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The Free Breath

A Spiritual Guide to Letting Go of Vaping

A Note Before You Begin

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