My name is Ted. I'm 29, a computer engineering student (1st semester at U of I and am insanely stressed out a lot of the time), and have been using varying types/amounts of nicotine for the past 11 years or so. Smoked camels from about 18 y/o to 26 at about a pack a day or so at my worst. At one point, I got sick to the point of not wanting to/being able to smoke, so I switched to chew-pouches to still get my nicotine. I randomly would buy cans after that to take a break from smoking sometimes.
I have tried quitting around 4-5 times, and I switched to vaping about 2+ years ago to try and help stop smoking/lower my nicotine intake at least (slowly dropped from ~18mg in juice to what is now 6mg and has been that way for a year or so now). It really felt like it was helping for a while, and I noticed a huge difference in how healthy I felt after a few months. Once I dropped to 6mg, I noticed I was literally vaping every chance I could without being a bother to others (ie. not inside public areas). The past 6 months or so, my smoker's cough randomly will seem to come back for short bursts too.
I now have gotten sick twice since being at U of I this semester to the point of being unable to vape. Since I was sick, my addicted-self bought some pouches to hold me over per usual. I literally put one in between every class today, and wouldn't even spit half the time due to being self-conscious (yes, I shamefully swallowed that horribleness). I can only imagine how unhealthy that is considering I threw up the second I got home today...but what really, really hit me was just how utterly disgusted I was in myself and how much I hate feeling like something is controlling me to the point of being that ashamed/disgusted with myself on top of just physically feeling awful.
Well, now I somehow ended up on here and want more than anything to be done with nicotine once and for all.... I'm scared though....I already have a lot of excuses floating through my head such as how I'm too busy and stressed to put in the effort to quit at the moment. I am a very smart person academically, but my (apparently rather serious) addiction makes me feel like a dumb piece of you know what. I haven't filled out all the stuff on here yet, because I felt like telling my story might be more helpful to others and myself at first (not sure I have the time to keep up with logs and all that at the moment). Anyways...I really hope I can do this finally.
