I have a quick question for the group today. Since you quit smoking or vaping, what is one small thing that has gotten better that you did not expect? Maybe food tastes better now, or your clothes smell fresher than they used to. If you are still on day one, that is okay. Let me know the one small thing you are looking forward to change the most. 🙏🏻 Z

A lot of quitting happens in your head rather than your hands, and understanding why you smoke or vape in the first place tends to make the habit easier to loosen. Dr. Daniel Seidman is a clinical psychologist in New York who has spent years helping people stop, and he has put his approach into a set of mini-sessions you can listen to for free. He goes into the why underneath the habit, the different reasons people reach for it, and then turns that into practical steps for handling your triggers and getting through the withdrawal without slipping. Here’s the link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/quit-smoking-now-podcast-with-dr-daniel-seidman/id1692209088 Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

For today I want to point you toward a free tool that a lot of people find useful in the early weeks, the quitSTART app. It was built by the National Cancer Institute together with the FDA, so it is completely free and there is nothing inside it trying to sell you anything. You tell it a bit about your smoking, and it shapes its tips around your own patterns. It can nudge you when you are somewhere that usually makes you want to smoke, and it tracks your progress and marks the milestones as you reach them. It also has a few small games to help cravings, for the moments when you just need to keep your hands and your head busy for a few minutes. quitSTART, from Smokefree.gov: https://smokefree.gov/tools-tips/quitstart But remember, the app won’t do the whole job, but as a small companion in your pocket for the hard moments, it is a good one, and it costs nothing. Z

One of the things that catches people off guard in the first week is withdrawal, mostly because they do not know what is normal or how long it lasts. Knowing the shape of it ahead of time takes a lot of its power away. I came across this short episode about the first weeks of withdrawal. It walks through what nicotine is doing in your brain, in the parts tied to motivation and reward, and then lays out what the withdrawal timeline usually looks like day by day. Listen to it here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/49-nicotine-101-withdrawal-timeline/id1665787161?i=1000638421491 If you are past the first couple of weeks, you have already lived this. What did withdrawal actually feel like for you, and what got you through the worst of it? Z

It's the start of a new week, and I would like to check in with everyone. Wherever you are in your quit journey, I would love to know how you are actually doing. If you feel like sharing, tell me about a high from last week, even a small one, and a low, the moment or the day that was harder than you let on at the time. And if there is one thing you could use some support with this week, put that here too, and let’s get around it together. Z