Day 13 after quitting vapingFlat days

By Yevhenii, who smoked for 26 years · Updated 30 Oct 2026 · 2 min read

In shortOrdinary pleasures can feel grey for a while, because the brain's reward circuit has turned its sensitivity down. The 2020 vaping studies measured this during abstinence. It fades in the first weeks. If low mood deepens or lasts over two weeks, talk to a doctor.

What's happening in your body

Nicotine releases dopamine in the brain's reward circuit, and a vape delivers it many times a day. The circuit compensates by turning its own sensitivity down. When the supply stops, ordinary pleasures register weakly for a while. Researchers call this anhedonia. The 2020 vaping studies measured it directly, and it rose during abstinence alongside the classic symptoms.

What to expect

Music, food, a good evening, all slightly grey. A sense that nothing is quite worth the effort. This is the symptom most likely to produce the thought that life was better with the vape. That thought is a reading from an instrument that is temporarily out of calibration. In nicotine research the flatness is strongest in the first weeks and fades as the circuit resets.

Depression is a different thing, heavier and longer. If the low mood deepens instead of lifting, fills most of the day for more than two weeks, or brings thoughts of harming yourself, talk to a doctor, and in the last case do it today.

Try this

Do one thing you normally enjoy even though it does not appeal, and give it your full attention with no second screen.

What else you could do

Physical activity is the most reliable choice, especially outdoors and with other people. Plan small pleasures in advance instead of waiting to feel like them. It might be a meal out, a call with someone you like, an hour of something you are good at. Waiting for motivation to return does not work, because doing things is part of how the circuit recalibrates. Each evening, put one thing that went slightly better than expected into the day's line in the Diary.

Sources. Measured in vapers: Hughes et al., 2020. Measured in smokers: Cook JW, Piper ME, Leventhal AM, et al. Anhedonia as a component of the tobacco withdrawal syndrome. J Abnorm Psychol, 2015.