Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › When you use something to cope
Nicotine looks like the small problem next to everything else going on, and it is the one most likely to still be here in thirty years.
Most adults who smoke started as teenagers, and the earlier the start the harder the eventual stopping tends to be. So it earns a place on the list even when there are louder things on it. With a young person that usually means asking plainly and without fuss each time you meet, rather than saving it for a session with nothing else in it.
If you are using something to cope and it has become hard to stop, please speak to a doctor before changing anything.
Qur’an and Sunnah
do not follow in Satan's footsteps (Quran 24:21). Footsteps is what the image gives you: nothing dramatic, one after another, and going somewhere.
۞يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ لَا تَتَّبِعُواْ خُطُوَٰتِ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِۚ وَمَن يَتَّبِعۡ خُطُوَٰتِ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ فَإِنَّهُۥ يَأۡمُرُ بِٱلۡفَحۡشَآءِ وَٱلۡمُنكَرِۚ وَلَوۡلَا فَضۡلُ ٱللَّهِ عَلَيۡكُمۡ وَرَحۡمَتُهُۥ مَا زَكَىٰ مِنكُم مِّنۡ أَحَدٍ أَبَدࣰ ا وَلَٰكِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُزَكِّي مَن يَشَآءُۗ وَٱللَّهُ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمࣱ
Believers, do not follow in Satan’s footsteps- if you do so, he will urge you to indecency and evil. If it were not for God’s bounty and mercy towards you, not one of you would ever have attained purity. God purifies whoever He will: God is all hearing, all seeing
Qur’an 24:21read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A Cochrane review of mindfulness based approaches to stopping smoking found low certainty evidence of benefit and no clear advantage over other intensive behavioural support. Even well studied routes out are only moderately good. That is an argument for taking the beginning of it seriously rather than assuming it can be undone easily later on.
Jackson S, Brown J, Norris E, Livingstone-Banks J, Hayes E, Lindson N. (2022). Mindfulness for smoking cessation.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The habit that starts earliest gets the longest run at becoming automatic.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
The useful part is not the chart on the wall. It is that the person could think of things to do instead, and that took months of quiet work to arrive at.
Distant health warnings move almost nobody. The cost that lands is the one showing up this month: your memory, your marks, the work you know you could be doing.
With vaping the pull is often not the hit at all. It is knowing the thing is there in your pocket if you need it.