Quitting vaping when you drink alcohol

Why drinking makes vape cravings harder to resist#

The clearest lab study we found was on people who smoke. It recruited 100 heavy alcohol drinkers who smoked 10 to 30 cigarettes a day, and gave each of them placebo, a low dose or a high dose of alcohol on different days. Everyone then waited while they tried to resist smoking. The authors concluded that alcohol can reduce the ability to resist smoking in a dose-dependent way, partly because it increases the intensity of smoking urges. After the high dose, people smoked 6.36 minutes earlier than after placebo.¹

Real-world data point the same way. Relapse to smoking often occurs in the context of alcohol consumption, and the reasons for this are not clear.² None of this is a study of vaping and alcohol cravings. It is a reasonable guess that the same pull works for vapes, since many people who vape also drink, but we haven't seen the trial that tests it.

The practical point survives the caveat. Alcohol lowers the bar for the first puff, so the plan for a drinking night needs to be made before the first drink, not during it.

A night out plan, stage by stage#

Write this plan on your phone before you go out. Each stage has one or two decisions, so you aren't making them all with a drink in your hand.

Before you go

• Decide now whether you will vape at all that night. A yes or a no is easier to keep than a maybe.
• Choose your drink limit and the rough time of your first drink, and tell one person the number.
• Eat before you drink. Hunger makes a craving harder to sit with.
• Leave the vape at home, or in the car, or with a friend. Out of reach beats a willpower test.
• Pick one line for when someone offers you a puff, from the script below, and say it out loud once.

At the venue

• Get a drink in your hand that isn't alcohol before you need one, so you aren't waiting at the bar.
• Avoid the spot where people vape. If the smoking area is the only exit, use the craving steps before you go out there.
• Decline rounds. “I'm good for now” is enough.
• When the urge spikes, step away for the five minute craving sequence in our guide to vape cravings. Do it outside the crowd, not at the bar.
• Check your drink count at the same point each hour. A set time is easier than a feeling.

The moment someone offers

This is the hardest moment, and it is short. Have the line ready so you don't have to invent one. The script below is for turning down a vape from a friend without a debate.

Getting home

• Log the night before you sleep: puffs, drinks, what set them off, and how you felt. Keep it factual.
• Keep the vape out of reach overnight, and decide tomorrow's plan before you go to sleep.
• If you vaped, don't treat it as the end of the quit. Note it, and go back to the plan the next time. Our guide to slipping after quitting vaping covers the difference between a lapse and a full return.

A short script for turning down a vape#

Keep it to one or two lines. Long reasons invite a debate.

1. First line: “Thanks, I'm off them for now.”
2. If they push: “I'm not having one tonight. Ask me again in a few weeks.”
3. If it's someone close: “It's the drinking that gets me. Can you stay out here with me and not vape either?”
4. Then move on: change the subject, go to the bar, or step outside with your drink. Don't explain again.

If a friend keeps offering after you have said no clearly, that tells you something about the friendship, and it may be worth telling them that the offers make the quit harder.

Cutting back on drinking for the first weeks#

You don't have to stop drinking to quit vaping, and this isn't a lecture about it. What the research we found does support is the direction: the lab study showed that a higher dose of alcohol had a bigger effect on resisting smoking than a lower one.¹ A simple version is to drink less during the first few weeks of the quit, and see whether the nights get easier.

We don't have a study that tests a set number of drink-free weeks for people who vape. If you find that you drink most days, or that you can't stop once you start, talk to your doctor about it, alongside the quit.

Alcohol is often one trigger on a longer list. The guide to vaping triggers shows how to log where else the urge turns up in your week, and our practical guide to quitting vaping sets out the whole sequence, so the night out is one part of a plan rather than the whole plan.

Run the night out in ExHale#

We built ExHale for nights like this. Before a puff, ask up to three friends from your quit crew, who answer Go ahead, Hold on 10 or Breathe with me, and an urgent ask reaches a friend even in quiet hours, once every 24 hours. Craving SOS has box breathing, 4-7-8 breathing and quick minigames for the minutes in a car park or a toilet queue. When you get home, one-tap logging records the night's puffs and cravings, and if you slipped, it is something you log, with bounce-back quests back to your plan, not a reason to start over.

Questions about quitting vaping when you drink#

References#

1. Kahler CW, Metrik J, Spillane NS, et al. Acute effects of low and high dose alcohol on smoking lapse behavior in a laboratory analogue task. Psychopharmacology. 2014;231(24):4649-57. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24858377/
2. Ashare RL, McKee SA, Borland R, et al. Length of smoking deprivation moderates the effects of alcohol administration on urge to smoke. Addictive Behaviors. 2014. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4007211/