Something Else

Vaping cravings, and the ten minutes after

An urge to vape is usually described as a wave of wanting. What people notice in practice is narrower than that: a specific pull, in a specific place, often with a hand already moving.

This page is about what to do in the ten minutes after that starts — and about the arrangement that means it starts less often in the first place.

Urges pass, and you can outlast one

Most urges pass within ten minutes. That is not a promise about how they feel; it is the reason the ten minutes is worth waiting out rather than argued with.

Waiting is easier with something to do. Trying to sit still and want something less is one of the harder things a person can attempt, and it is not what the research points at.

Occupy your eyes and hands, not your mind

Elaborated Intrusion theory describes cravings as sustained by mental imagery — the picture of the thing, kept alive and elaborated. Loading visual working memory with a demanding task interferes with that imagery. Studies using a visuospatial game found reductions in craving intensity while people played (Kavanagh, Andrade & May, 2005; Skorka-Brown et al., 2014, 2015).

Practically, that points away from relaxation and towards something to search, count, arrange or trace. Something with a beginning and an end you can see arriving.

Things that work where you already are

The best replacement is one you can start without going anywhere, because the urge does not wait for you to reach a sink.

Read every word on the nearest label or packet, front to back, and find the longest one. Pick a colour and find five things that colour without moving your feet, then five of a second colour. Empty one pocket onto a surface, line everything up by size, and put it back in reverse order. Count the tiles or boards between you and the far wall, then count them again and check your guess.

These sound trivial written down. That is part of why they work: they are small enough to actually start.

What to avoid

Anything that needs equipment you do not have on you, because fetching it is a decision and decisions are what you are short of. Anything with no end, because “distract yourself for a while” does not tell you when you are done. And anything whose whole purpose is to calm you down — being calm is not incompatible with vaping, and plenty of people vape while perfectly relaxed.

Driving is the exception

If the urge arrives while you are driving, none of the above applies. Nothing that occupies your hands and eyes belongs in a moving car.

Set the car up before you go: the vape travels in a zipped bag on the back seat, put there before you get in, never the front. Do the rest — mirrors, seat, wheel — before you turn the key. Once you are moving, the only job is driving.

The better fix is upstream

Everything above is for the urge you get anyway. It is a second line, and it works better when it is not the only one.

The first line is where the vape sits. Most urges people describe happen with it within arm’s reach — on the counter, in the drawer, in the door pocket. When it is in another room, the same pull arrives and meets a few seconds and a deliberate walk instead of a reflex.

That does not make the urge disappear. It makes the ten minutes something you spend rather than fight.

A slip is not a verdict

If you vape anyway, the useful question is which situation it was and what was within reach, not what it says about you. That is also how you find the next change worth making: almost every slip points at an object that was closer than it should have been.

Something Else has no streaks and no day counts for this reason. There is nothing for a difficult Tuesday to break.

When it keeps arriving in the same place

If the same situation produces an urge most days, that is worth treating as its own problem rather than as bad luck. A moment that comes back is a moment with something in it — a place, a time, an object in reach — and the thing in it is usually easier to move than the urge is to argue with.

Write down where you were and what you had just finished doing, for a few days. The pattern tends to be narrower than it feels, and the narrower it is the easier it is to work on.

Ten minutes, in the app

Something Else has a ten-minute timer with a small task in it — either following a moving dot with your finger, or deciding whether a shape has been turned or flipped. At the end it asks one question: still want to vape?

Whichever you answer, nothing resets and nothing is scored. The rest of the app is the upstream half: it finds the situations you vape in and gives you one small change each morning for one of them, across eight weeks. It is an iPhone app, paid once.

The assessment below maps your own situations, which is where the upstream work starts.

Map the moments you vape

Something Else is £38.99 for the first hundred people who buy it, then £79.99. Paid once, no subscription. Bought here, there is a full refund within 14 days of buying. Bought through the App Store, Apple handles refunds and Apple’s process and timing apply.

References: Kavanagh, D.J., Andrade, J. & May, J. (2005). Imaginary relish and exquisite torture: the elaborated intrusion theory of desire. Psychological Review, 112(2). · Skorka-Brown, J., Andrade, J. & May, J. (2014); Skorka-Brown, J. et al. (2015). Playing Tetris reduces craving. Appetite / Addictive Behaviors. · What we are not claiming.