Welcome back to the podcast and welcome to episode five. So if you have not listened to this podcast before, I strongly recommend you go to episode two, because I'm a life coach and episode two kind of breaks down the framework I use to help people understand nicotine and really get away from vaping if they choose to.

But if you are a returning listener, welcome back. And today we're talking about the third myth that keeps people vaping and it's the, it helps with anxiety. Myth. So this one is really important. It's actually my favorite one of the, um, misbeliefs with vaping because it's, I think it's the most common one and it's one that has been advertised to us by a lot of different companies and celebrities and everything and our friends and family and it's You know, perpetuated by vapors all around us.

And I used to believe it myself. So people think that vaping helps with anxiety and the right and the wrong. And today we're going to talk about it. Now, remember the whole entire point of this podcast is not to force you to believe things you don't believe it's to question your current beliefs. And once you do that with nicotine.

Like our, our beliefs that keep us vaping, they're like a house on a very rocky foundation. Once we actually questioned the beliefs and we seek for the truth underneath them, we find that the beliefs usually fall apart. And then we're like, okay, actually this makes sense. Maybe I don't need nicotine in my life.

That's the whole point, right? I'm helping you as a life coach, believe new things, but I'm not forcing you to believe new things. I'm having you question your own beliefs in a logical way. So that you can end up making choices that serve you as opposed to being addicted to things that aren't serving you, right?

Alright, so today we're talking about the anxiety myth. And I want to go and do a little bit of backstory on how addiction works so that you can understand this. So, when you get addicted to something, it's so simple. The body, when it doesn't have that something, Creates anxiety. That's all you have to know.

And I know there's going to be people on here who are like addiction experts and everything. And yes, you can spend all day long talking about addiction, but the very root framework of addiction is that your body gets dependent on something. And when it does not have that said something, it creates anxiety.

So right there, any logical person who really wants the truth can see that the anxiety myth is just going to fall apart. Remember, this anxiety myth is built on a very rocky foundation. And now here is why people have this myth. This is where it comes from. So you can understand it. Um, and especially if you're currently believing it, let's talk about it.

So if you believe that it helps with anxiety, you're kind of right, but you're also wrong. So when you create an addiction, when you use that substance, so in this example, it's nicotine. The use of the substance introducing it back into your body reduces the anxiety, but it only reduces the anxiety caused by the addiction.

So beforehand, before you ever started vaping, let's say you had anxiety because you guys know by now hopefully that I consider anxiety a very normal emotion. Negative emotion or discomfort in life is very, very normal. There's nothing clinical about a normal amount of negative emotion. So when you have negative emotion and you believe that anxiety is going to help, you look for reasons to prove that belief.

Remember. Your thoughts create your feelings, which drive your actions and create results. So if you are believing that nicotine helps with anxiety and you have anxiety, you're always going to be driven to vape. So that's why it's so important to get on with these belief systems. All right. So back to my point, if you had anxiety before in life and you started vaping, the vape actually creates anxiety.

And then when you hit it, it cures the drug. Addiction related anxiety. So you've perpetuated this mistaken belief that vaping helps with anxiety. It doesn't, it actually just relieves the anxiety caused by drug addiction. Very important to make that distinction. So when you use nicotine, it is helping with anxiety, but it's only helping with the anxiety that's created.

All right. So imagine that your friend walks 10.

Outfits and like they find 20 bucks under the bed stand. They take like whatever, everything that's in your room that they want, your watches, your chargers. Like they just have a whole field day. They walk out with a whole backpack full of stuff. And then the next day you're like, Oh my God, I cannot find my phone charger.

I just don't know what I did with it. And they're like, Oh, here, I've got one. And they give it to you. And then you're like, super thankful for them for giving that to you. As if it was a gift, like they've also stolen a thousand dollars worth of stuff from you also that they're not giving back. But you're so thankful to them because all you're seeing is that they've given you a phone charger that you didn't know they had stolen in the first place to use, by the way, to borrow, not to give back.

All right. So this is exactly how nicotine functions, right? It creates all this anxiety for us because drug addiction, remember the entire point of drug addiction of addiction in general is to create anxiety when you do not have it. It makes sense, right? So when you hit your vape and it relieves that anxiety caused by the addiction that the vaping created, you're like so thankful for it.

You're like, look, this vaping helps with anxiety. But what you're overlooking is the massive amount of anxiety that vape is causing in your life all together. And it's just giving you a tiny fraction of that relief back. And in addition, what keeps happening with any addiction is you have to use more of it over time to get the same results.

So eventually you're so anxious all the time, even the nicotine isn't going to solve it. Because you can't get enough nicotine to relieve the anxiety. So like overall you have like a thousand times more anxiety in your life and the only time that the vape is helping with that is when it's relieving the exact drug addiction related anxiety for like one second when you're using it.

But overall there's just always this buzzing of anxiety in your mind about vaping and all the thoughts related to it, right? Like think about how anxious you are when you can't hit your vape and you know you want to. That's anxiety, right? Think about how anxious you are when your vape dies in the middle of the night, or even worse, like when you're up North on vacation or you're on a holiday and there's nothing open.

So like your vape dies and you know that you're just like literally Christmas is over at that point. Is that not anxiety provoking to you? It sure was for me. Like, I remember when my vape used to die and we were up north or something, I'd just revert back to smoking cigarettes because I had so much anxiety that I didn't even care if I was smoking cigs.

And I don't even like cigarettes. They're gross. They're nasty. But I was willing to do that to avoid the anxiety caused by the addiction. So remember, vaping does help with anxiety, but it's the drug related physical anxiety caused by addiction. It is completely and perfectly normal to have anxiety. Like, there's nothing clinically wrong with anxiety.

And I want to make a distinction. Yes, I understand there are anxiety disorders, and that's not what I'm referring to. The normal amount of anxiety that we have in life, completely normal. That's not diagnosable. Not every anxiety is diagnosable. So, when you go externally for anxiety to deal with it, it's telling your brain that you need something to fix anxiety.

Well, there's nothing wrong with anxiety. And the proper way to sit with anxiety is just to do that. Sit with it with compassion with yourself. This is called allowing an emotion. And you can do it completely without nicotine. Alright, now here's kind of the fun part. So, if you have anxiety, like, I'm just a naturally anxious person.

I'm very extroverted. I have a million things to do all at once, all the time. I'm never going slow. I have a motor in my butt all the time. And I'm just anxious. Like, even in social settings, I get anxious. I'm very extroverted, but for some reason I still get anxious socially. Which surprises people. That's okay.

When I was vaping, I had a very low tolerance for anxiety. Because I needed to always use the drug to relieve it. Also, I had a lot more anxiety in my life because I was addicted to drugs, literally. So, I had always thought that vaping was good for anxiety, right? I would, I would have to use it in anxious situations.

When I was at work and I could not use my vape, I would literally hide in the bathroom and rip on my vape until the, like, to the point where I would actually almost, I almost passed out one time because I hit my vape so hard. It was a stressful day. I went into the back room. I hid for like five minutes in the bathroom.

I hit my vape so hard on the way out that when I walked out, I was ghosting it. So, because someone knocked on the bathroom door, I'm like, Oh, I'm out. Like I panicked. So I walked out ghosting this vape, which if anybody doesn't know what that is, it's like holding it until like, there's literally no vapor visible.

And I almost passed out literally in the middle of my job, almost passed out because I was trying to get away from anxiety and use my vape to do that. So when I was vaping, I was so, so anxious and I really thought that it was going to be an issue when I quit vaping and what happened was, yes, initially for like the first week it was uncomfortable.

I was addicted to nicotine at that point, so I was irritable and I had a lot more negative emotion just surface up that I hadn't been dealing with, but now looking back, it's been a year and a half. And by the way, this didn't take nearly this long to say this, this is how long it's been now. But, um, after a couple of weeks, really around the first month period, my anxiety level started dropping.

And I'm not just saying that, like my anxiety is so much lower now. And in addition, I learned how to tolerate anxiety without nicotine. And that's the big thing that is really important for you guys to learn. Remember, I don't know if you guys have taken my course or know much about me, but I'm a life coach.

And I always say that quitting vaping is just the start because when you have a life that you're not really that happy in. And you're using substances to deal with your emotions. What it's allowing you to do is tolerate a life that you're not happy with. So when you cut out nicotine, I always say to people, it's like the first step in creating a life that's extraordinary that you really want, because it's going to force you to deal with your emotions.

without needing a crutch to do that. And when you can do that, you'll learn how to voluntarily put yourself in negative emotions, like putting yourself out in front of people, being scared, starting a business, setting big goals for yourself, asking the person out. And when you're tolerating your life with any kind of drug and avoiding your emotions with it, it's much easier to be in a life that we're not happy with and not step out of our comfort zone, which you don't have to do when you quit vaping, by the way.

But I will say that when you're not using any kind of drugs to. Kind of excuse your emotions for you, you learn how to deal with them and learning how to process your emotions without anything else External is such an important skill in creating the life you want. So remember this is a quick episode today Nicotine does help with anxiety But only the anxiety it creates and in general it creates a lot more anxiety in your life than it can actually help with when you stop using nicotine You can just take a deep breath, sit down with your anxiety, like literally just sit down with it.

Take a deep breath, put your hand somewhere on your body that feels okay to you. It feels comforting and say, this is anxiety. Explain what it feels like to yourself. Where is it in your body? Is it in your chest? Where's the buzzing? What's it make you want to do? Get comfortable in this emotion. You do not need anything external to process it.

And I do want to add this. If you do have like an amount of anxiety, that's like actually. Making you non functional in certain areas of your life. I want to recommend that you go to the clinical world, go see a therapist or a clinical psychologist, and they will help you. Because if it's so much anxiety that you can't function, well then it's potentially entering the clinical zone of anxiety.

But most people who vape don't have clinical anxiety. They just don't process normal anxiety without using drugs. Which is unnecessary. All right. So thank you guys for listening. Have a fantastic day. Sit with your anxiety this week without reacting to it or using anything external and I'll see you next week.