Putting the ending back

The method has three stages, and the first is the one everyone does, whatever they decide about the other two. It's putting the ending back. Nothing in this chapter is stopping. It's making the vape a thing you use instead of a thing that uses your hand.

It lives somewhere, and the somewhere isn't you. A drawer at home. A bag at work, zipped, not the jacket pocket. The glovebox, not the cup holder. The point is that a draw requires you to go and get it, and going and getting it is a decision, and a decision is the ending put back. The pocket is where the loop lives. Empty it.

One draw, then it goes back. When you decide to have one, have one, or two, and then put the vape back where it lives. Not on the desk. Not on the sofa arm. Back. This is the single change that does most of the work, because it means every draw has a start and an ending again, and the gaps come back on their own.

Places and times where it doesn't come. The NHS suggests vape-free spaces, places or times where you won't vape, expanded slowly. I'd pick three to begin with. The bedroom, from an hour before bed, as in chapter 13. The car. And the first hour of the working day. Those three cover the bedside draw, the traffic-light draw and the desk draw, which between them are most of the day's number for most people. Nothing about the rest of the day changes yet.

Keep the tally going. The day's number is your instrument. Keep marking it. You'll see it fall in the first week of this stage without having tried to reduce anything, because the reach kept finding nothing and the decision kept not being made. Write the number down each evening. It's the only measure of the habit that exists, and until now it hasn't existed.

Do this for a week before anything else. Don't change the strength. Don't try to stop. Just the drawer, the one draw, the three places and the tally. This is the week that shows you what the vape is, because for the first time there'll be gaps, and in the gaps you'll feel the fall, and you'll find out its size. Most people, and this is my expectation, find that the number roughly halves and that the falls are smaller than they feared. If you're an ex-smoker and a gap produces a pull towards a cigarette, go back to chapter 11 and ring a stop smoking service. That's not a failure of this week. It's what the week was for.

The breath. When the reach finds nothing, do the breath from chapter 8. Twice, slowly. Then decide whether you're going to the drawer. Often you will, in the first week. Sometimes you won't, and the reach will pass while you're deciding, and that's the first evidence that it can.