Day 17 after quitting vapingOne puff

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

In shortRelapse starts with a single use meant to stay single, and with a vape it is easy to tell yourself it did not happen. The thought comes dressed as moderation, reward, experiment or emergency. Write your own answer now and add it to your reasons in Settings.

What's happening in your body

Relapse rarely starts with a decision to go back. It starts with a single use that was meant to stay single. In follow-up studies of smokers, most people who had one cigarette after quitting were smoking regularly again later. Most is not all, and the road back usually takes days or weeks rather than one evening. With a vape the first step is smaller still. It costs nothing, takes three seconds and leaves no smell, which makes it the easiest lapse there is to tell yourself did not happen.

What to expect

The thought comes dressed as moderation. You have shown you can stop, so a puff at a party is under control. It tends to arrive when things are going well. It has other outfits too. The reward, you deserve one after this week. The experiment, just to check it is not special any more. The emergency, today is different. All three end in the same place. If a puff does happen, watch for the thought after it, that the attempt is ruined anyway. It is not.

Try this

Write your answer to that thought now, while calm, in one sentence of your own, and add it to your reasons in Settings so that SOS shows it to you.

What else you could do

If a puff does happen, log it. A logged slip costs one day off the total and nothing else, and it keeps the record honest enough to be useful. Throw away whatever device it came from rather than keeping it for next time. Look at what the slip was tied to, a place, a drink or a mood, and add that situation to your list from day fifteen. Then start again the next morning as Day 1, which the app does anyway.

Sources. Measured in smokers. Brandon TH, Tiffany ST, Obremski KM, Baker TB. Postcessation cigarette use: the process of relapse. Addict Behav, 1990. Muench C, Malloy EJ, Juliano LM. Lower self-efficacy and greater depressive symptoms predict greater failure to recover from a single lapse cigarette. J Consult Clin Psychol, 2020.