Sinead Corcoran Dye: How I stopped vaping

Vapes contain nicotine, which is a highly addictive, toxic substance. Here's how Sinead Corcoran Dye quit her decade-long nicotine habit. Photo / Getty

Sinead Corcoran Dye bids farewell to her decade-long nicotine habit.

I quit vaping a month ago and I’m still a bit angry about it.

I didn’t want to quit, you see. I’m not one of those people who think vaping is an embarrassing hobby for tweens. I vaped for a decade, and I loved it, I felt no shame.

Because it’s not like cigarettes, which, to me, are just fundamentally gross, smell awful and are anti-social.

My vape was mint flavour. It smelled and tasted delicious, and I could do it anywhere and everywhere. It was an extension of my arm. I was Captain Hook – Captain Vape.

But I write this weekly health and wellness column don’t I? I’m supposed to be healthy and well.

And while vaping is said to be less harmful than smoking cigarettes, it’s still not remotely ideal to be sucking a mini aerosol directly into your lungs.

Vapes still contain nicotine, which is a highly addictive, toxic substance. It raises your blood pressure and spikes your adrenaline, which increases your heart rate. There are other chemicals in there which the body would be delighted to live without.

Emerging data also suggests a link between vaping and chronic lung disease, asthma, and cardiovascular disease.

I found myself using Allen Carr’s Easyway method, endorsed by celebrities including Ellen DeGeneres, Ashton Kutcher, Sir Richard Branson, Pink, Anthony Hopkins, and Robert Pattinson. If I’m going to quit, I may as well be in good company.

Carr was the world’s most successful anti-smoking guru. Before he died in 2006, he ran 30 quit-smoking clinics in Britain, and 70 further clinics in 30 countries.

His book Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking, first published in 1985, has sold several million copies.

He also wrote books on how to stop smoking for women, how to stop your children smoking and how to control over-eating and alcohol consumption.

I started off by reading the book, which is filled with anti-smoking messages designed to infiltrate the subconscious and reprogramme the brain to believe that smoking is pointless.

The best part about the book was that you were allowed to keep vaping while you read it, right up until the end.

Unfortunately, by the end I still wasn’t quite ready to bin the vape. The brainwashing, or the undoing of the “Big Tobacco brainwashing” as they called it, hadn’t worked on me. I was still a junkie.

So, I enrolled in an all-day virtual seminar with a bunch of other people.

The seminar is expensive, around $700, so there’s a lot riding on it to work, although they do offer a money-back guarantee if you’re still vaping by the end of it.

Roughly each hour, the seminar tour guide instilled a new message in us about how we didn’t actually like vaping. Despite believing we did like it, vaping didn’t actually relax us – rather, it was the root of our anxiety.

By the end of the seminar, I was ready to quit the vape.

I ceremoniously attempted to flush it down the toilet but then panicked about the turtles, so fished it out and began my next three days of uncomfortable nicotine withdrawals.

According to the Allen Carr method, nicotine addiction is just one percent physical (the little monster) and 99 percent mental (the big monster).

The seminar had supposedly killed the big monster, and it would just take a few squirmy and irritable days to kill the little monster.

Two weeks into my vapeless life and the withdrawal pangs had subsided, but truth be told I still missed my vape.

So, under the guidance of the Easyway tour guide lady, I signed up for a three-hour refresher seminar to try to kick it once and for all.

It’s been another fortnight since my last seminar, and I still haven’t vaped. Although there have been times I’d love a blast, especially after finishing a meal, like an after-dinner mint, I can resist.

The method definitely worked for me. I just think it’s going to take a while to forget about the little arm extension I huffed on for my entire adult life.

And if you’re a non-smoker reading this, I hope it encourages you to never, ever start smoking or vaping, because I can think of a lot more fun ways to spend $700 and multiple days of your life than sitting in Zoom seminars with strung-out nicotine addicts.