Many people increase their puffs during a holiday – but why? Aren’t holidays a fun day away from work and “real life”? Shouldn’t it be easier to reduce on a holiday?
It turns out holidays can be more stressful – triggering your desire for the soothing effect of nicotine. Let’s look at some of the reasons holidays stress you out and easy ways to stay in control:
- Maximizing your time off: the pressure to create a perfect holiday experience, from cool things to do, new places to eat, hosting a party etc. creates stress. For vapers, this stress triggers increased nicotine use as a temporary escape.
- Emotional reunions: we often spend the holidays with family and friends – but sometimes those relationships come with baggage and expectations that send us running for our vape.
- Social Interactions: You don’t have to be an introvert to feel overwhelmed by strangers at holiday parties — meeting new people, remembering their names, keeping conversations light and happy – are all stressful
- Loneliness, grief, and regrets: for some people, holidays remind them of happier times or people they’ve lost, the feelings can be overwhelming and lead to additional puffs.
- Finances: sometimes holidays, even if they aren’t gift-giving holidays, create an extra expense we really can’t afford, thinking about how you’ll pay the bills may lead to extra puffs.
Ideas for Coping
All the issues above can increase our vape usage, so what can we do to avoid coming out of a holiday feeling bad about our vaping?
- Plan ahead: before the holiday think about your plans – who and where can you anticipate feeling stressed or overwhelmed? Can you reduce your exposure to certain events or people to stay in control? Visualize not puffing more during the stressful event before you go
- Buddy system: talk to someone you trust about your concerns – extra points if they will be at events with you! Let them know you may need their support with certain people or situations and be specific with your requests.
- Boundaries: This last suggestion is the most important – whether its people, finances or travel time – set boundaries with your friends and family ahead of time. Be open with your constraints — including your budget and remember that declining an invitation or conversation is OK.
HabitHalo knows controlling your puffs and quitting your vape is hard – that’s why we developed the HabitHalo solution that combines an app on your phone with RipLok — a connected locking case for your vape. The phone app tracks your puffs and uses a proprietary algorithm plus your preferences to develop a custom reduction plan. The plan helps you gradually increase the time between your puffs until you are weaned off of your nicotine habit. The app sends your plan via Bluetooth to RipLok, then RipLok unlocks and re-locks your vape – restricting your ability to take a puff and keeping you on track.
Get the HabitHalo app today and pre-order RipLok for delivery this fall on Indigogo