Day 18 after quitting vapingThe stress it was causing

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

In shortA vape calms mostly the dip caused by the previous puff, and with a vape those dips were small and frequent. After six weeks or more without nicotine, studies show lower anxiety, depression and stress than in people who kept smoking. Use SOS when pressure rises.

What's happening in your body

Most nicotine users say it calms them, and in the moment it does. What it calms is the tension of the time since the last dose. Between doses a dependent person's mood dips below where a non-user's sits, and each dose lifts it back to normal. With a vape those dips were small and frequent, smoothed over every few minutes, which is why they were so hard to notice. When studies follow smokers for six weeks or more after they stop, anxiety, depression and stress end up lower than in people who kept smoking.

What to expect

A bad day, and the thought that this is exactly what the vape was for. For a few more weeks that thought will feel like common sense. It is built on real experience, because for years every puff did bring relief. What it relieved was mostly the dip the previous puff had caused. Stress itself does not leave with the vape, and for a few weeks it arrives without the old ritual to meet it.

If anxiety keeps building instead of settling, or it has been spoiling sleep and work for weeks, talk to a doctor. Help for anxiety works without nicotine.

Try this

When the pressure rises, leave the room, open SOS and take the minute of paced breathing.

What else you could do

A pause and a few slow breaths were the useful half of every vape break you took, and you are keeping that half. Put the stressor into one plain sentence, even just to yourself. Move for five minutes. Talk to someone instead of chewing it over alone.

Sources. Measured in smokers, the mechanism is nicotine. Parrott AC. Does cigarette smoking cause stress? Am Psychol, 1999. Taylor G, McNeill A, Girling A, et al. Change in mental health after smoking cessation: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ, 2014. Taylor GM, Lindson N, Farley A, et al. Smoking cessation for improving mental health. Cochrane Database Syst Rev, 2021. Not yet measured after quitting vaping.