"It got me off cigarettes and I'm not touching it"

If you used to smoke, this is the chapter where you'll want to close the book, so let me say the first thing quickly. I agree with you.

The vape got you off cigarettes. That was the best decision in this whole story, and nothing in this book asks you to undo it. The NHS says you should only stop vaping if you're confident you can do it without smoking, and that if you're struggling, using a vape for a short time is fine, and that going back to a vape is much better than starting to smoke again. All of that is right. If, at any point in what follows, you find that the alternative to a draw is a cigarette, have the draw.

Now the second thing. Almost nothing in the first half of the method is about stopping. It's about putting the ending back. The vape lives in a drawer instead of your pocket. Each draw is decided. There are places and times where it doesn't come. None of that is stopping. It's turning an uncounted habit back into a counted one, and it's safe for an ex-smoker, because the vape is still there, still yours, still available when it's wanted. The difference is that it's available on your decision and not on your hand's.

What that will show you is the thing in chapter 5. You'll feel the fall, at forty minutes, and you'll find out what size it is. For most ex-smokers, in my expectation, it's the size described there, a small, specific restlessness that doesn't keep climbing. If that's what you find, then the belief that you're one gap away from a cigarette is a belief about the switch as it was three years ago and not about you now. You can find that out without risking anything.

And if it's not what you find. If a real gap produces not a restlessness but a wish for a cigarette, an actual pull towards the shop, then that's important information and you should act on it. Not by buying cigarettes, and not by pushing through. By keeping the vape exactly as it is and talking to a stop smoking service, who work with people in precisely this position and can put a patch alongside the vape, or look at the strength, or make a plan with you. The NHS says you can use patches with a vape for steady background nicotine and top up with the vape for cravings. A gap that wants a cigarette isn't a failure. It's a sign the switch isn't finished, and there's help for finishing it.

So the answer to "I'm not touching it" is that you don't have to. Put it in a drawer and decide each draw. If that's all you ever do, you'll have gained something, and you'll know a great deal more about what the vape is doing for you than you know now.