"But I never feel withdrawal"

This is the objection I'd expect from a thoughtful reader, and it looks like a strong one. If the vape were a loop of fall and relief, you'd feel the falls. You don't. You've never had the anger and the restlessness that Hughes describes. You've never felt withdrawn from anything. You just quite like a draw now and then.

The answer is that you never feel withdrawal because you never leave a gap long enough for it to arrive. That's what the pocket does. A smoker at a desk had forty-five minutes between cigarettes and felt the fall start. You have a vape next to the keyboard and the reach happens at the first flicker, before the flicker has become a feeling you could name. The loop is running, but it's running so tight that the fall never gets past the first fraction of a degree. Of course you never feel withdrawal. The line never drops.

The steady line hides the loop. I think that's the single most important thing to understand about all-day vaping, and it's the reason it's harder to see than smoking was. A smoker knew they were dependent because they felt it every hour. You've arranged, without meaning to, a supply so continuous that the dependence has no gap to show itself in.

There's a way to see it, and it takes forty minutes. Put the vape in another room. Not in a bag by your feet. Another room, with a door. Then do what you were doing and notice what happens at twenty minutes, and at forty. For most all-day vapers, and this is my expectation and not a finding, something arrives. A restlessness. A slight edge in your reactions to the email. A thought about the vape that comes back every couple of minutes and gets a little more insistent. That is the fall, seen for the first time. It's what the vape has been "calming" all day, and it turns out to be a thing the vape makes.

Notice what it isn't. It isn't unbearable. It's not the first week of stopping that Hughes describes. It's a small, specific discomfort, and if you sat with it for another twenty minutes you'd find it doesn't keep climbing. The NHS's list of what to expect when you stop vaping is the same list as for tobacco, strong cravings, irritability or low mood, trouble concentrating, feeling hungrier, difficulty sleeping, and the point I'd draw from it is that these are the fall, full size. What you'll feel at forty minutes is the fall at a fortieth of that. You've been paying to avoid it a hundred times a day.

Do the forty minutes once, this week, and then read on. Everything after this makes more sense once you've seen the thing the vape is for.