Of the quit vaping podcast. My name is Andrew Cipriano and I am a certified life coach that has a very long history with nicotine. So before I get started into my backstory today, I'm just going to tell you about my name and how it's kind of funny. So today I call myself the quit vaping coach and I do that for really obvious marketing reasons.

It's very clear what I do, but it's kind of an inside joke for me and my friends because for the last five to 10 years, I was known as the friend who was always quitting whatever form of nicotine I was on at the time. So I've always been known as the quit vaping something and now I'm the quit vaping coach kind of a fun backstory All right So today you're gonna hear my story of how I went from someone who grew up in a very nicotine heavy Environment to someone who was vaping pretty much every second of the day at age 25 and had been using nicotine for the last nine Years to today.

I am 27 years old and I have no desire whatsoever for nicotine and I genuinely never thought Ever in a million years, I would get to this point where not only do I not feel like I'm sacrificing anything, but I can just be around it all the time and genuinely not have the desire or urge to do it at all whatsoever.

So truly an amazing transformation that I never thought would be possible. And here we go with the story. So I am 27 years old. I grew up in an Italian American family in Michigan. So I grew up with cigarettes being very, very normal. Um, I was a 90s kid. I was born in 1995. So back in the day. Smoking is pretty much allowed everywhere as today.

It's really not. So there would be like smoking sections at restaurants. I remember there would be like literally a six inch platform that would lead up to the smoking section and the smoke would just be wafting in the restaurant, like 10 feet away from the other guests. It doesn't make any sense to me looking back to it, how that's any better for the other guests or why there's a section and it's not like walled off or anything like literally the same dining room, six inches platform, same everything.

Never understood that. Um, but yeah, every restaurant we went into, we had to go to the smoking section. Um, my parents would. I love my parents. They're great parents, by the way. So I hope if they hear this, it's not like anything bad. Um, but they did use nicotine. So I'm going to talk about it. They would smoke like on the way up to vacations and in the car.

And like, there would always be smoke. And I remember literally we would go to like Michigan in the winter. We'd go on like a vacation or something and it's freezing, right? It's like 10 degrees outside and both windows would be down and me and my brothers would just be in the back seat with our faces literally like.

Frozen trying to cover up smoke and cold air wafting into the backseat. Whenever we went to hotels, we would have to get a smoking room and I don't even know if they have those anymore. I think I went with the last time I went to Vegas is in like 2013 and I think they were just starting to phase those out.

So just smoking littered like anywhere that you can think of in the house. My dad smoked while he was cooking everywhere. Cigarettes. I was the kid who smelled like laundry detergent and cigarettes. And that's just my identity. That's how I grew up. So it's no surprise that right when I turned old enough to start, um, kind of getting into like the rebellious stage of my teen years, I started smoking whatever I can get my hands on.

Um, I smoked a lot of weed at the time. I smoked these things called Cheyenne cigars. If you guys have not seen them, uh, let me explain. So Cheyenne cigars, I smoked them when I was 16 because they were the most affordable things ever. They were like a dollar 80 a pack. I just looked them up today and they are 16 and 25 cents for a case of 10 packs.

Wild cherry was my flavor and they were literally the worst tasting horrible little cigars ever. Sorry Cheyenne, but you know what you are like you're cheap and affordable and nasty and nicotine buzz and ugh. But I used to smoke those and I just remember like when I was 16 I'd be like around a bonfire smoking a freaking Cheyenne cigar after I smoked like a bowl or something.

Uh, so yeah, that's where I kind of started was about that age, 15, 16, um, getting into that. And then I went on probation. So when I was 18, I got pulled over for a DUI. Um, apparently I didn't know this at the time I was 18, I was doing some stupid stuff. So I was driving with pretty much like, I guess it was intoxicated with weed.

So I had been smoking weed and then I drove, so I got a DUI. So I wasn't able to smoke any kind of weed. So I literally just kind of steered the ship into the legal form. That I was allowed to smoke, which was nicotine at the time when I was 18. Uh, this was 2013 and I was still allowed to smoke nicotine.

It wasn't yet 21 and up for the nicotine age. So I got into hookah. I got into cigarettes. I got into more Cheyenne cigars. Um, vapes were not a thing yet. Ironically, they kind of were, but it was box mods and they were just starting to come out. So we weren't really into those. I think the closest thing to a vape was called a blue cigarette.

And you guys can look those up. I don't know how old you are, but my dad had one. We got them for Christmas for like three years. I ended up using that. He didn't care to. So, yeah, I started with Cheyenne cigars and then I moved to hookah when I was on probation. If you guys have ever heard of hookah or smoked hookah, literally, it is like this wet, like you buy like a jar of it.

It's like a metal jar. You open it up and it's like this wet, gunky tobacco that's like coated in wet flavoring. Like it literally looks like a wet lung, ironically. And it's always flavored. So you put like This wet gunk in a bowl, you cover the bowl of tinfoil. So that's gotta be healthy. Right. And then you'd light the tent, like you put holes in tinfoil and then you light it with a literal coal, like a flaming coal that's burning.

Um, you put it on top and then you just like smoke this thing indoors. So there was like a two year phase where. Um, I got coal burns all over everything because the vape would always get knocked or the hookah would always get knocked over because there's like four of us ripping on this thing. It's got this big hose and someone would pull on it.

So like all my mom's furniture at lover to death has like hookah burns in upstairs in my old bedroom. And I remember like you would literally smoke that thing. You would light it and it would just go for like 90 minutes. So there would be like 90 minutes where you're just getting completely tobacco to nicotine out to the point where like almost throwing up.

So that was a lovely phase during that time. I was also doing manual labor. I started smoking cigarettes in the box trucks. Like everyone smokes cigarettes. So that became a thing. Um, my three favorites were Camel, Turkish Royals, Marble 27s and Newport menthols. By the way, back in the day when I was smoking those, they still had like the little menthol ball crushy thing.

And I looked it up today to like, look at the prices. And apparently in 2022, last year, they removed the ball. Because it was like enticing people to smoke when you could crush the menthol ball. It was like a, I don't know, made more people want it or something. So apparently they got rid of those. I'm not sure.

And then after SIGs, we switched to the vape mods. So I think it was like 2013 to 14. I smoked SIGs and then I started to switch over to vapes. I don't know who's listening to this or like how old you guys are, but, um, they had like vape mods where you would literally have like your own cotton, your own tank, your own mod with a battery.

And like, You had to buy all that stuff, right. And then juice. And it was a huge mess. There was like a million different flavors of juice, all different nicotine levels. You literally had to like. Learn how to use, um, the Ohms versus the volts versus the Watts to make sure that you weren't going to burn it.

I always burned my cotton. I had friends that were like, one of them's an engineer. So he always helped me with like getting the Ohm and everything set. And then he would just like, he'd be like, don't touch it. Don't touch it. And I would always burn it. Literally on probably 50 occasions, I smoked burning cotton.

So that's probably great for my lungs. So yeah, those are like the mods. And then also there was a time in between the big box mods to the disposable vapes they have now where they were like rechargeable tanks. I don't know what the brand was, but literally. So it was this little thing you plugged in with like a little.

I don't know, like a usb charger or some random lightning charger. I don't know what it is, but I remember I used to go to music festivals and I would take my vape juice. I would take the disposable. I would take an extra cartridge that was empty because you had to fill them at the time. So it was like still the refillable cartridges, but you had to buy new ones with new cotton.

And I would take my mom's phone charger. portable phone charger, and I would literally be walking around a music festival, um, with one hand had the phone charger, the other hand had the vape, and there was a cord in between them. I looked insane, and I was just ripping on the scene for like eight hours straight, you guys.

So that was a phase. And then finally, I switched over to the disposable vapes, um, and I used those for probably the last four to five years when I was, uh, quitting. They kind of, like, idiot proofed the whole, like, How many watts you need what flavors like all the juice stuff all idiot proof you could just buy it in a nicely little sealed delicious little flavor and Kind of just vape mindlessly with that.

So my favorites were grape ice and strawberry ice cream Alright, and then when I tried to quit this was like I've tried quitting probably 50 times in my life Like truly no shortage of 50 times I tried the nicotine gum in the lozenges and what happened was because I wasn't actually dealing with the addiction I was just kind of switching it over.

I ended up using the gum and the lozenges at work and then just vaping outside of work. So when I use those things, I actually strengthened my addiction to nicotine, which I know is not the point. I get it, but that's what I did, right? Because I wasn't really getting to the root of the issue. So I I tried so hard.

Like, all I wanted to do was quit nicotine. And I mean, like I struggled, you guys, I struggled with myself on this. I hated myself. Just so you guys know, it was just like ammunition against, I already didn't have high self esteem and that was just ammunition against myself. I didn't trust myself. I tried quitting all the time.

I would like. Just, I was so bad. I'm sorry. I'm just like remembering it and I'm getting anxiety talking about it because I felt so out of control in my life. It was such a not fun thing. And I'm sure if you guys have addiction, you know this. Um, I would like go to bed. The first thing I did in the morning was grab my vape.

The last thing I did was grab a hit right before I'd fall asleep on the way out, drifting away. I'd like wake up really fast and like rip my vape again. And like, try to go to sleep with a buzz. I almost got fired from a job. Like just, Oh God, it was never ending. Um, it was never ending. So. Anyways, I tried quitting a whole bunch of ways.

I tried the nicotine gum and lozenges, kind of like I mentioned. I tried throwing my vapes in water or out of car windows. I guess I wasn't very environmentally conscious back then. I tried willpower, like telling myself that I hated it and just like white knuckling it for four to five days. I love, this is my favorite.

I did the all you can eat. quitting method where I literally would just like gain 15 pounds in a couple of days. No, it would be like a couple of weeks. I'd gain 15 pounds and then at the end of it just still be vaping. I tried not buying my own vape. That one was my friend's favorite, right? When I just like, no, I'm quitting.

And then I'd end up just hitting my brothers anyway. Uh, he called me a fiend. It's like you're a fiend, you're quitting again, aren't you? I stopped spending time with my friends and my brothers, like I literally tried to just get out of the world of vaping and my social circle altogether. I tried chewing an obscene amount of normal, not nicotine gum, like an obscene amount, where I'd have like five pieces in my mouth at once, white knuckling, trying not to hit anything.

I tried lying to myself about wanting it. I tried resisting it. I tried learning about the psychology and addiction by getting a psych degree. So I actually decided that my life wasn't going how I wanted it to. And I was going to go into a psych degree cause I'm like, this will help me figure it out. And then I also at the same time decided to work at the psychiatric hospital.

So a lot of people know me from tick tock my psych hospital videos during that phase of my life, I was trying to learn about other illnesses and stuff like that and help people through them. And I thought that I'd learn more about addiction in the psych hospital. Because it was somewhere that helped with substance abuse.

But ironically, when I got to the psych hospital, they were very, very heavy on pushing nicotine gum. They weren't forcing people to take it, but anyone that was there, they offered nicotine gum too. They always like kind of use it. I saw the staff use it as like a reward, which is like. You know, if you're going to a psych hospital and you're trying to get your life straight and you're going through crisis, I just don't think it's appropriate to be like rewarding people with addictive drugs.

But Hey, that's, um, a whole nother conversation, but long story short, I didn't learn about nicotine addiction in my psych degree or at the psych hospital. All right. So in 2021, I was still vaping regularly. Remember at the time I was doing the nicotine lozenges in work and vaping outside at work. So I was probably my heaviest nicotine use in my entire life.

And I kind of honestly just gave up. I'm like, you know, once I figure out my career stuff and I get settled on a career, then it'll be an appropriate time to vape. What I was really doing was putting it off, but I didn't feel that way at the time. I really had convinced myself that right now just wasn't the right time and I would have to wait until I was less stressed.

So I decided to make the decision to go into life coaching. So this was like a long process for me, by the way, because I had my own very bad stereotypes about life coaches. And that's actually why I wanted to get into the clinical world because I wanted to get a formal, um, master's degree in order to help people with their mental health.

But I didn't want to do clinical. So it was actually a really tough decision for me to get into life coaching because I didn't take the field seriously, to be honest, but I knew like there was something about it that just resonated with me. I'm like, this is different than clinical psychology. I just have to get more of this.

And I know that. I want to start living a life of integrity with myself and I have to do things that my heart's calling for. So in 2021, I decided to go into a certification for life coaching and really jump all in. The certification costs over 20, 000, which was a lot at the time for someone who was making 15 an hour and.

Right when I made it, I knew I made the right choice. Like I had followed my heart and I listened to my gut and I just knew immediately I'd made the right choice, even though it was expensive and scary. So it was awesome. So I started learning how to process my emotions and questioning my beliefs for anyone who doesn't know what life coaching is.

It's pretty much, it's nonclinical, but it's still mental health related. Like what we're doing is helping you understand your emotions and get awareness over your thoughts and emotions and what you're doing with your life so that you can decide to do things that you want to do and actually follow through and stop doing things you don't want to do, like overeating, overdrinking, vaping.

So as I was learning these life coaching tools, um, one of the big things in life coaching is like, you have to learn how to process your emotions and you have to be able to follow through on what you say and just deal with all the drama and emotions that come up. So I decided to throw my vape in a water bottle and kind of like a rash decision.

Another like, Oh my gosh, half half assed quitting attempt. You know, where I throw my vape in a water bottle, shake it up, watch the little light go out. And to be honest with it. I didn't really think it was going to happen. Like I didn't think I was going to quit this time. So the life coaching tools were fantastic and they got me so far, but I was still kind of tempted by vaping and I didn't feel like I had quit permanently.

This has been, it'd been about three to four weeks. So that's like a really good for me, by the way, three weeks to a month is like fantastic. And at the time I was just kind of like looking around and I found this guy named Alan Carr. He's very famous for helping people quit smoking and I read his book and it complimented my life coaching tools and it helped me kind of eliminate.

Any more beliefs that smoking had any or vaping had any net positive effects. So like everything that I had been claiming nicotine did for me always came with the costs that outweighed the claim or the benefit. And this, this book kind of helped me articulate what I already knew. And the life coaching tools helped me with the emotional part.

So like together with these things, it was just like a bombshell went off inside of me. So literally over the next month, I had become so certain in myself that I was never going to want to vape again that like the desire was gone, which is crazy, like the desire for vaping actually in a way. And I wasn't like, listen, I wasn't like lying to myself or brainwashing myself or fighting against or using willpower, like none of that.

I had learned how to process my emotions without needing nicotine, which was a huge part of the battle thanks to life coaching. And then I has also learned how to do thought work. And Alan Carr gave me a bunch of thoughts that just logically made sense. But then I've added up. Bunch since I found his book.

So pretty much what happened was I invented this thing called the only two method. And that means that if you're still vaping, and if you have a desire for nicotine, there's only one of two reasons, maybe both. The first one is your emotions, right? So we've talked about that. Either you're using nicotine to cover up your emotions.

You might not be aware of this, by the way, that's not typically a conscious thing. And that's where, um, you know, learning how to feel your emotions in a life coaching kind of sense, very practical, pragmatic, hands on approach is going to be very helpful. And then the other part is that you either have belief systems still in place.

That's gotta be one of the two things. And with this work, I'm not asking you to brainwash yourself. I'm asking you to unbrainwash yourself while also teaching you practically how to feel the vibrations, the emotions in your body. So this is my only two method. I haven't found anything this compelling in this good on the market.

I found, uh, you know, like I said, Alan Carr's thing, which is okay, but it doesn't have the actual life coaching, practical, pragmatic tools to apply in your life. And then I've also found a whole bunch of other smoking crap, like nicotine replacement, all that crap, which obviously by now, we know that to take more nicotine, to get unaddicted to nicotine.

Probably not the best strategy. I'll do a whole podcast on that in the future. I'm really happy you're here. You're going to enjoy the show. This podcast, it's great. You're going to love it. You're going to learn a ton and yeah, I want to hear from you. So if you guys get value from the show, please remember to like subscribe, share it with people who might help have a fantastic day.

I will see you in episode two.