Emily McDonald

And the way that I would do that is I would actually just, I would keep the vape on me, but just out of reach.

So to kind of create space between the craving or the cue and the initial response.

And yeah, you could have done it cold turkey, but that wouldn't have allowed me to train my brain to think it was disgusting.

And also just from, you know, my own personal experience was that I would be anxious without it.

Like I would be anxious, like I was addicted.

So I would be anxious if I didn't have it on me and that drove craving even further.

And that's not good.

So yeah.

So that's what I did.

And then every time I would give into the craving, right?

So I created space and that helped.

Sometimes I would have a craving and I could just take a deep breath because there was space and I could, you know, just take a deep breath, take a sip of water maybe and just move on.

But then there were some times where I would give into that craving.

But when I did that, I would really sit with how disgusting I felt after I would do it.

And over time, every time I would have a craving, it would be like, no, it makes you feel disgusting.

That became my automatic response and not the, oh, yeah, I want that.

And that was really helpful because when I finally did throw it away, I still did experience those cravings in maybe rarer moments further separated by space and time.

But when I would have those moments, I could remember, oh, no, that thing makes you feel

disgusting and that and that would kind of allow me to sit back but also right like like aversive therapy right but but then replacing as well like what behavior I'm gonna do right like I replace it with a deep breath and so replacing the behavior with something else because a habit is also a neural representation right it's a pathway in the brain and you can't at least we're not like men in black where we can't just zap the pathway and all of a sudden and we just

It deletes from our brain.