Hello and welcome back to the quit vaping podcast. As always, I'm your host, Andrew Cipriano. And if you have not listened to episode two, I would recommend you go back and do that. That's kind of where I show you the foundational life coaching tools I use in order to help you quit vaping permanently without willpower.

And today we're going to do an episode that's special. So I had somebody messaged me on Instagram and they said, thank you for the podcast. It's been helping so much, but I have this one dilemma when I drink alcohol, I feel like I always relapse and I vape, even though I've been really, really good throughout the week.

And we're going to talk about why that happens and kind of give you some tools on how to not let that happen. So, um, as you guys know, I'm gonna start with the emotional part and then we're going to go to the thought part. So as you guys know, I use this too. Different kind of like approaches to quit vaping.

The first part is learning to feel your emotions, feel your negative emotions, feel the urges, allow them in your body without reacting to them. And then the second part is getting to your belief systems, right? So let me explain what happens when you drink. When you drink alcohol, it lowers your inhibitions, which pretty much means that you're way more likely to do things that are overall not good for you, right?

You're more compulsive reactive because that's what alcohol does. So pretty much when you drink, you're more impulsive. So the problem with this is that as you guys know, I teach people how to allow their emotions in their body and their urges. And when you become more impulsive with your urges, you're going to respond to them a lot easier.

So that's part of the issue with alcohol is like when you're drinking, it's way easier to just hit a vape. And to justify it and to want to do it and react to that urge. Now, the real solution when it comes to alcohol is the belief systems. Remember, I literally have no desire for nicotine anymore. And the reason is because I changed my beliefs about how nicotine worked in my life.

I no longer believe that nicotine is important. I don't believe it serves me. I don't believe anything that makes me want to vape. So I literally have no desire to vape. Remember guys, there's two different kinds of addiction. There's the mental addiction and there's the chemical addiction. The mental addiction is way stronger.

And the mental addiction is what I deal with as a life coach. Remember the thoughts and the emotions. Whereas the chemical addiction, it only lasts like two to three weeks. Even for a quote unquote really really heavy vapor. So when it comes to alcohol, it's like of course you want to drink and smoke together.

Like they go together, you're already drinking, you're getting

the emotions and your urges. So that's what's going on. So yes, you could go around alcohol. And you could really try to manage your urges. And I recommend that you practice that whenever you can, like sit with your emotion, allow the urge in your body, be curious and compassionate with yourself. Don't respond to it.

But when it comes to drinking, if you just want to eliminate your concern for being around nicotine and alcohol and like having to quit drinking or whatever, avoid alcohol while you're quitting. Like the big thing you want to get to is your belief systems. And we've done this in previous episodes. Like you want to question everything that you believe about.

Nicotine. And I also want to question everything you believe about drinking. So it's like a lot of people have really hard problems finding their belief systems, the ones that are still attaching them to things they don't want to be attached to. And a really good way of finding them is just by observing your life and asking really good questions.

So I want to offer, if you're having trouble with like vaping and drinking. When you think about drink, like think about the next time you're gonna drink alcohol. Maybe you're going out on a party this weekend and typically you'd vape and think about removing the vape from the situation and what comes up for you.

And that's a really good way to find your belief systems. Like, are you scared that you're not going to have that good of a time? Well, that probably means you have a belief system that. You need to have a good time with nicotine and drinking and nicotine have to go together to have a good time. Are you scared that you're going to be anxious?

Well, that shows you that you still have a belief that without nicotine, you're going to be anxious and you can't process anxiety without nicotine. Um, are you scared that you're going to just be bored, right? Well, without vaping, I won't have a good time or I'll be bored all the time. You know, that shows me that you have a belief system that.

Nicotine is helping you with boredom, which if you guys remember, you know, from the last episodes, nicotine doesn't actually solve boredom. It just releases a dopamine hit over it. So it covers it up temporarily, but it's not solving it. And to be honest with you, boredom doesn't really have to be solved.

If you just sit with boredom for like literally a minute, two minutes, just sit with the emotion, like. Describe it in your body. Like to me, it's like a compelling energy in my stomach. It makes me want to like get up and get away from it. If I can just sit with that emotion, it actually does go away. Like if you sit with boredom, it goes away.

It's okay to have boredom come up. Sometimes you don't need to respond to it. But the problem is in our society is that we're constantly being berated, barraged with things that we should, um, use to get away from boredom because it's profitable, right? Oh, you're bored. That shouldn't happen. Go smoke a joint, go on Tik Tok, go on social media, go watch porn, go buy a vape, go buy a.

Whatever alcohol go, but I got a lottery ticket. Like you have to always be busy. You have to respond to those urges. So the main work when it comes to quitting vaping, as I've said a thousand times, and I'll always say it is making sure you change your belief systems. Like really question everything that you believe about nicotine and displace in your life.

But then the second part sitting with your urges. So when you drink harder to sit with urges, it makes sense that you're having a difficult time when you're drinking. And again, you want to question these belief systems. So if you think that your life is more fun with nicotine, you're always going to crave nicotine.

So if you have any desire for nicotine still in your life, it's because you have belief systems somewhere that with your light or with nicotine in your life, your life's better. You have to, or else you wouldn't like it. Like, I genuinely don't believe my life is better with nicotine. And I allow myself to have it.

It's the weirdest thing. Like I don't stop myself from having nicotine. The conversation in my head now is like, if you want to go hit it, hit a vape, like that's fine, you can do it. It's not a big deal, but I don't have a desire because I believe that I don't actually want that. Although it might feel good for a second and I get that dopamine rush.

Like, I don't think that deep down, I actually want that. Cause I know all the negative that comes with it. And I know that if I start vaping again, I really can't see myself as a strong life coach who's managing their emotions. So when it comes to drinking, like on a Saturday night, I do drink still and I have no desire.

It just doesn't fit in with who I am. And that's ultimately the point that you want to get to with nicotine. And this isn't the podcast for this, but honestly, if you want to do the same thing with alcohol, it's the exact same process I'd recommend. It's the exact same thing. Like nobody needs alcohol. So you could always just.

Decide that your life's better without it and find proof for that, which I promise you, if you look for proof that your life's better without alcohol, nicotine, you'll find plenty of it. And again, like I still drink, I choose to, but I, I don't want to question my beliefs about alcohol. So I could always do that and find plenty of proof.

And then eventually quit drinking. And I do do that sometimes just want to offer to like, I've gone three, four months without drinking. Um, in the last couple of years, I've done this a couple of times and it's always been nice. I can always find that my life is just as good, if not better without alcohol.

Um, but it's okay to put those things in your life if you want to. And that's important to understand. Like I don't, I'm not anti nicotine. That's not what I am, but I'm anti nicotine when it becomes a problem that people don't want in their life. So that's the important element. I don't try to help people quit vaping who don't want to quit vaping.

And I have tried that before and man has that gone miserably. So if you want to quit vaping and you're having problem with drinking, like just recognize that your inhibitions are lowered with alcohol. So it's going to be more difficult to manage urges. So I would recommend you really practice them a lot managing urges.

And you can do this with anything, by the way, like practice managing your porn urges, practice managing your food urges, practice managing your alcohol urges, your social media. Like if. Practicing managing an urge is a skill set, so it doesn't matter what urge you're practicing managing. It's just a vibration in your body.

If you can sit with it with compassion, you're practicing all the time. That's great, and that'll actually help you drink less. Also, by the way, at parties, if you can practice managing your babying urges, then maybe you won't drink so much at parties, but what often happens is people replace the urges like so people will quit smoking and they haven't actually learned how to process the urges or question their thoughts.

They've just decided that they can eat over the urges as opposed to smoking over the urges, so make sure that you're not doing that to a lot of people. Also, what's going to happen. Is there going to go to a party, they're not vaping, so they're going to drink heavier. And then ironically, because you're drinking heavier, you have less inhibition to hold your urges and then you're going to vape over it.

That's what I imagine happens to a lot of people. So you want to just practice the skill of building, managing urges. And that's the best skill ever, because then you can go to a party, you can drink moderately, have a good time, sit with the uncomfortable emotions that come up, and then there's no big deal.

You don't have to respond to them. And then you don't have to vape. Really. Ideally. Long term strategy for vaping is just getting rid of all the beliefs that are, that are attaching you to nicotine. Cause then you won't have to manage any urges when it comes to nicotine. Again, you can do the same thing with alcohol, but it's whatever, it's your choice.

That's not what this podcast is for. So the big thing is like, when you drink, you're going to have to manage urges when you drink. If you have no desire to vape, that's because you've eliminated your beliefs. So then there's no managing urges. To be done with in that department when it comes to vaping. So hopefully this podcast helps.

I really appreciate the person to ask question. It was a great idea for the podcast and hopefully this is one of the last episodes you've had to listen to in order to quit vaping. Thanks guys so much. I appreciate it. Have a fantastic day and I'll talk to you next week.