"Everyone does it now"

The last belief is a social one, and it's short.

Everyone does vape now, or it can feel that way. There are four on the pub table. Half your office has one. Nobody sends you outside. And that normality does something quiet, which is that it takes away the last of the ending. A smoker had to leave the room, and leaving the room was a decision, and a decision is a gap. A vaper doesn't leave. The pocket, which I've been describing as a thing about you, is also a thing about the room. The room lets the loop run at full tightness because nobody in it minds.

I'm not going to argue that vaping should be banned indoors, or that your friends should mind. The point is narrower. Normal isn't the same as fine, and the fact that no one's asking you to step outside means no one, including you, is putting a gap in your day. The gap has to come from you, because the room won't provide it. That's what chapter 16 is for.

There's an identity in it too, and I don't want to pretend otherwise. The device you chose, the flavour, the small ritual of the refill. For some readers, especially younger ones who never smoked, the vape is part of how they're seen. I'd say only that the identity was chosen at a time when the loop hadn't closed, and that you get to choose again. Most people who stop find that their friends noticed the vape less than they thought, and that the identity was mostly in the pocket.

One more thing, because the NHS is firm on it and so am I. Everyone doesn't do it. Non-smokers shouldn't take it up, and under-eighteens shouldn't at all. If there's a teenager in your house watching you vape at the kitchen table, they're learning what normal looks like from you, and that's a reason, on its own, to give the habit an ending.