Russ WareMany people switching from smoking to vaping successfully use it as a transition stage before giving up their nicotine habit completely. Vaping can definitely work as a smoking cessation tool, but that doesn’t mean that it always does work. Nicotine cravings are hard to overcome, and many vapers find themselves in limbo: no longer smoking cigarettes but unable to move beyond swapping one habit for another.
If you are serious about quitting, one of the best routes you can take as a vaper is to use the unique properties and advantages of vaping to reduce your nicotine intake. This can be done in only a relatively few steps, to a point where that final step seems less daunting, or, if you still enjoy the vaping experience, to a point where the nicotine is less in control of your habit.
Here are six effective ways to reduce your nicotine consumption from vaping, along with some common mistakes you should avoid.
Step 1 – Understanding Your Current Nicotine Consumption
It is very hard to reduce something if you haven’t measured it. Without an understanding of how much nicotine you currently consume, your starting point, you won’t be able to accurately plan out the steps needed to reach your end goal. Thankfully, this is a pretty easy process if you stick to the basics (measuring things like peak absorption rates and nanograms of nicotine per millilitre of blood plasma are beyond the scope of most people, and of this article).
The key things to note are the volume of e-liquid you use each day and the nicotine strength of that e-liquid. If you get through 4ml of 12mg/ml strength vape juice daily, your nicotine consumption is 48mg per day. Your body doesn’t absorb all the nicotine in each puff (between 50% and 90%) due to various factors, but the above method is a good way to figure out your starting point.
Step 2 – Choose a Reduction Strategy
There are a couple of strategies you can employ to reduce your nicotine intake in easy-to-manage steps: gradually reducing the strength of the e-liquid you use, or gradually reducing the frequency of when you vape. You can also combine those strategies for faster results, although this does increase the risk of the failure of the whole process.
Reducing the E-liquid Strength: This is as simple as it sounds, involving gradually stepping down in vape liquid strength over the course of several weeks, while making no other changes to your vaping habit.
Best For: This is likely best suited to heavy vapers and “grazers” as it will be less jarring than trying to reduce how often you hit your vape.
Reducing Vaping Frequency: Instead of reducing strength, you reduce the volume of e-liquid used by vaping less often or for shorter periods throughout the day. Using the above figure, if you reduce your consumption of vape juice from 4ml to 3ml, your nicotine intake goes from 48mg to 36mg.
Best For: Likely better for light/casual vapers who already vape at set times (lunchbreaks, while watching TV after dinner, etc).
If you want to combine these strategies, it is often best to start with one before combining it with the other. If you can reduce nicotine strength for a while, introducing changes to when you vape will feel easier. Likewise, if you can reduce the frequency of your vaping successfully, your brain will get used to less nicotine, and the reduction in strength will be felt far less.
Step 3 – Reduce E-liquid Nicotine Strength, But Gradually
The idea that reducing the strength of the e-liquid you use will reduce your nicotine intake is not a complex one, but it does trip up a lot of vapers. Too many people try switching from something like 20mg/ml to 10mg/ml, experience huge cravings, assume that 20mg/ml is “just what my body needs”, and don’t try again. Small, gradual reductions in strength are the key to success.
Aim for a 10-20% reduction in each step, and give your body at least a couple of weeks on the reduced strength before stepping down again. So if you use 50mg/ml juice, drop to 40mg/ml, wait two weeks, drop to 35mg/ml, and so on. While you likely don’t want the process to take 5 years, as long as you are seeing a gradual and consistent reduction, it doesn’t matter if it takes 5 months.
If you struggle to buy vape liquids at the intermediate strengths you need, you can always mix your own (e.g., mix 10ml of 12mg with 10ml of 6mg to get 20ml of 9mg).
Step 4 – Reduce Vaping Frequency
There is no set way to easily reduce the frequency that you vape, and you might need to try a few things to find something that works for you. You could set vape-free periods during the day (e.g., no vaping in the first hour after waking) or explore the “2-minute delay” method. This is when you wait for two minutes before reaching for your vape whenever you have a craving.
If you still need a puff after two minutes, go for it. Hopefully, more often than not, the urge will have subsided, and your vape can stay unused for just a little longer.
This strategy is harder to measure than simply reducing e-liquid strength. It is worth spending the first couple of weeks taking note of when you vape and for how long. Add a note on your phone, jot it down on paper, or make use of the puff counter many vapes have nowadays. This will allow you to more clearly see which vape reduction methods work and which don’t.
Step 5 – Adjust or Change Your Vape Device
If you are stepping down the strength and reducing vaping frequency, using a high-powered device seems counter-productive. Higher-powered devices with low-resistance coils deliver more vapor per puff, and therefore more nicotine per puff. Consider switching to a lower-powered device or, if you don’t want the expense of buying a new vape, lowering the wattage and using coils with higher resistance.
As with reducing strength, it is best to do this gradually rather than jumping from 80W and 0.2Ω to 20W and 1.2Ω.
Even if not combined with one of the overall reduction strategies, this can be a great way to reduce nicotine intake in barely noticeable steps. You will likely also save money on e-liquid, as you will burn through it less and less quickly as the power goes down and the resistance goes up.
Step 6 – Transition to Zero-Nicotine E-Liquid
Reduce e-liquid strength and vaping frequency enough, and you should be ready to switch to zero-nicotine vape juice. This is the final step in reducing nicotine intake as a vaper, although not the final step in quitting (which would obviously be…er…quitting). Many vapers find using 0mg/ml vape liquids surprisingly satisfying because the behavioral element of vaping is still being fulfilled, even if the chemical element isn’t.
From this point, quitting will be about managing those behavioral elements: Identifying and disrupting routines, and eliminating triggers (morning coffee = puff on your vape, driving = vape, etc.) No matter what your ultimate end goal is, be it simply maintaining the reduction in nicotine while continuing to vape or quitting completely, every step you have taken to get this far will put you in a great position to achieve it.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Nicotine is extremely addictive, and everyone feels the cravings it causes differently. Reducing your nicotine intake can be as difficult as it is worthwhile, and making mistakes along the way is not unusual. Here are a few of the most common:
- Stepping down nicotine strength levels too quickly and then rebounding.
- Compensating by vaping more frequently or more aggressively after lowering the strength.
- Buying or using a more powerful device when you should be scaling down.
- Beating yourself up over slip-ups (they’re very normal and very common) and letting them derail the process.
- Comparing your timeline to someone else’s. Just because Mike at work went from 50mg/ml to 6mg/ml in three weeks, that doesn’t mean you have to.
The Bottom Line
No matter if the reason is to quit vaping completely or just because you don’t like how much you are currently consuming, reducing nicotine intake is very possible. It can even be relatively easy if you do it slowly, carefully, and step-by-step.
You don’t have to follow every step listed here, although doing so will likely increase your chances of success, as long as you understand the key steps: measure how much you consume, choose the reduction method that will work for you, and make every change small and consistent.
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