The decision

You've got the argument and the three stages. What's left is to decide, and I'd like the decision to fit in one sentence.

The vape lives in a drawer, not on me. I decide each draw. And I'm bringing the line down to nothing by a date I've set.

Three parts.

The first is the ending. Drawer, bag or glovebox. One draw, put it back. Three places where it doesn't come. The tally. A week of this before anything else.

The second is the decision. Every draw is one you went and got, and before you go you do the breath twice and ask whether you're going. Sometimes yes. The habit is in the asking.

The third is the date and the route. Either the fade, strength and number together, longer gaps, the date for zero. Or the day, with an adviser and a fast-acting product. Choose one before you start, and write the date down.

There's a form of planning that helps with rules like this, and it's been tested many times. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran reviewed ninety-four studies of it in 2006. You decide in advance what you'll do and when, in the form "when this happens, I'll do that", and people who plan that way follow through much more often than people who only hold the intention. So write three.

When my hand goes to my pocket and finds nothing, I'll breathe out slowly twice and then decide whether I'm going to the drawer.

When I've had a draw, I'll put the vape back in the drawer before I do anything else.

When a fall arrives and I've decided not to go to the drawer, I'll get up and walk for five minutes.

If you're an ex-smoker, add a fourth. When a gap makes me want a cigarette rather than a draw, I'll go to the drawer and have the draw, and I'll ring the stop smoking service that week.

What to expect. This is my expectation and not a finding. The first two days of the drawer will be irritating, because the reach will happen every few minutes and find nothing, and each time you'll have to decide. By the end of the first week the reach will have thinned, because the hand learns quickly when there's nothing there. The tally will have dropped by about half without your having tried to cut anything. Somewhere in that week you'll have the forty-minute experience from chapter 5, and you'll know the size of the fall. If you go on to the fade, each step down will bring a smaller version of the first week, and each will pass. If you go on to the day, the first week will be the hardest and the third will be mostly ordinary. Sleep will be worse for a few nights and then better than it was. The three o'clock draw will go early. The calm you've been getting from the vape will, some weeks in, turn out to be what you feel all the time when there's no line to hold, and that's the point at which most people stop thinking about it.