Introduction
Quitting Smoking & Vaping For Dummies, is a comprehensive toolkit for anyone struggling with an addiction to nicotine. If you or someone you care about wants to give up a habit, this book provides a complete recipe for quitting.
Many stop-smoking books and programs are highly limited in what they recommend. Some give you a long list of tips and not much more. Others promise that you’ll have an absurdly easy time quitting with virtually no effort (that is, if you buy their products).
We aren’t promising you anything magical. And we suggest your efforts to stop smoking or vaping will be difficult. You may not even succeed on the first try. That’s okay — we tell you how to deal with relapses.
You can count on us to give you the straight scoop about the best approaches to quitting smoking, using smokeless tobacco, and/or vaping. Guess what? You probably won’t use them all and that’s why we give you choices. If what you try at first doesn’t work for you, there’s a whole lot more you can try.
About This Book
Our number-one goal is to help as many people as possible give up the costly, unhealthy habits of nicotine and tobacco consumption. In order to accomplish that goal, we describe the various methods of smoking-cessation strategies. These include medications, rethinking your relationship to urges and smoking, increasing motivation, finding alternatives to fight urges, and more.
Tobacco can be consumed in a variety of ways. In addition, vaping devices are another way of obtaining nicotine. A second goal of this book is to let you know that these different delivery systems all have distinct risks associated with them. We describe those risks and the controversies surrounding each system in some detail. This information is particularly valuable for parents and teachers who may be worried about teens who could be experimenting with or thinking about vaping.
Throughout the book we give you examples to illustrate the points we’re making. These examples are based on real experiences; however, they’re based on composites of several people we’ve known or interviewed. Any resemblance to a specific person is entirely coincidental.
Sidebars in various chapters contain interesting information. However, they are not essential reading to the main goals of this book. Feel free to read them or not. Similarly, anything marked with the Technical Stuff icon can be skipped.
Throughout the book, the strategies we give you can be used for quitting vaping, smoking regular cigarettes, or smokeless tobacco. For simplicity and convenience, we don’t repeat all the tobacco and nicotine forms each time we bring up a quitting strategy. All our suggested techniques can be applied to any form of tobacco or nicotine addiction.
Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy — just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.
Foolish Assumptions
We assume that if you’re reading this book, you want to quit smoking or vaping. Or perhaps you know or care about someone who does. Some people may pick this book up because it gives them a lot of information about the new phenomenon of vaping. If you’re one of them, welcome!
Icons Used in This Book
Look for the little pictures in the margins. Those are called icons and they’re intended to get your attention in some specific way. We use the following icons:
This book is a reference which means you don’t have to commit it to memory. But sometimes we tell you something so important that you really should remember it. And when that happens, we use the Remember icon.
Whenever we give you a practical idea for quitting smoking or vaping, improving your health, sticking with your program, carrying out suggestions more efficiently, and improving long term gains, we mark it with the Tip icon.
When we alert you to potential risks, things not to do, or other important considerations you don’t want to miss, we use the Warning icon.
As we mention earlier, we use examples based on real people’s stories. When we do, we mark them with the Example icon.
Every once in a while, we dig deeper into more technical information that isn’t essential to your understanding of the subject at hand. When we do that, we use the Technical Stuff icon. If you’re the sort who likes to know everything about a subject, read these paragraphs. If you just want to know what you need to know, you can safely skip these paragraphs.
Beyond the Book
In addition to the material in the print or e-book you’re reading right now, this product also comes with a free Cheat Sheet available on the web. The Cheat Sheet provides tips for dealing with cravings, affirmations to motivate you, tips on boosting your metabolism, and more. To access the Cheat Sheet, go to www.dummies.com and type Quitting Smoking & Vaping For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.
Where to Go from Here
You don’t have to read this book from start to finish. Each chapter stands on its own, so you can dip into the book wherever you want. You can use the Table of Contents or Index to find the information you’re most interested in right now.
Not sure where to start? If you’re a parent scared to death about vaping and your teenager, head straight to Chapter 7. If you’re a smoker or vaper, and you just want to get a plan for quitting now, head to Part 4. If you’ve already quit (good for you!), and you’re struggling to stay a nonsmoker, Part 5 is for you.