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Today I am 8 days into quitting vaping after 4 years. To be honest, it was a lot easier than I expected. I’ve done my fair share of googles on what quitting vaping and nicotine all together is like, so I assumed that I would be in a constant state of panic for 2 weeks straight with some of the worst symptoms known to man. Was I being dramatic to think that? Yes. Was I crazy to think that and also be so down to white knuckle it and quit semi-cold turkey? Maybe. Now I’ve had a few days in the past week where the motion sickness, irritability and constant background headaches were a lot to handle, but I honestly made it through pretty smoothly.
It was a very simple and quiet decision that I made to quit entirely, and it was in 3 steps that I made it happen and got to the point where I’m typing this without the urge to pick it back up again after only 8 days. The first step was no longer buying new vapes, so I could only hit the near-empty ones I had lying around the house. Not a very glamorous thing to say out loud seeing that I had about 15 of them hiding in random places in my apartment and car, but nonetheless it helped to get the process started. The faded and worn out flavor, plus the disappointing lack of “smoke” exhaled from each hit felt like it was training my brain to no longer rely on vaping to give me the same sense of satisfaction that I once received from it. The experience was now a lackluster excuse for a bad habit. Did I continue to do it? Absolutely. I reluctantly used up all 15 of the near empty vapes in about 2 weeks, and by the end of it I was almost glad to be done with them.
Step 2 was a huge jump, but somehow it felt easy. Here’s what happened leading up to it in reality… I cheated the process, but not without good reason. I finished my last used vape on the way to the airport to fly out to Atlanta to see my family for 2 days during Christmas. When I landed and got picked up, I had already decided in my mind that I was going to buy one last vape for this trip, because I couldn’t bear to let the withdrawals kick in while I was with my family. That was just something I didn’t see going well. So I purchased myself a cheat day vape and went about my holiday before throwing it out as I left for the airport to head back to LA. Step 2 was now in effect. This was the rule of no longer having any vapes to myself, and only being able to take 1 hit of my best friend and roommate Crispin’s vape per day. Luckily I was in the studio for the majority of my time during this phase, so I would either come home around 9pm and hit it once after a full day, or, if I wasn’t in the studio, wait until about 3pm after I had already worked out or hiked before allowing myself to knock on his bedroom door and be met with his answer before I even asked the question.
Step 2 lasted for about a week and some change, and on January 5th, something miraculous happened in perfect timing. I was in an all-day session until 10-11 pm that night and returned home to take a nap before needing to drive Crispin to the airport early in the morning. He was already asleep and I didn’t want to wake him up with my nicotine junkie tendencies, so I refrained from knocking on his door. Somehow, without even noticing it, the clock had struck midnight and I had officially made it a full 24 hours without vaping at all. Not even a single hit. It didn’t occur to me until I was getting back up out of bed to leave for the airport, but when it did I was surprised and proud. I decided that there was no turning back from it, and I would go without my Elliot Smith-esque last hit moment. There was no fond farewell to a friend. I had officially quit vaping for good. It was time for step 3.
This past week has been strange when it comes to the specific experience of completely quitting. I remember moments of nausea, headaches, lack of focus, and compulsive eating, but never once did I feel the urge to make all the discomfort disappear by taking the easy way out. I stood on the word that I gave to myself and refused to budge. I gained a lot of respect for myself this week, respect that was earned by choosing my future over my present. I showed myself tough love, real care and kept a promise. I don’t know what version of me is going to be able to see that promise come full circle and be able to say “I’m so thankful I made that decision”, but I’m looking forward to being that version of myself, no matter how far away that is. I proved that I’m worth being looked out for, taken care of, and respected, even if only by myself. I showed myself that I matter by doing this, and I set an example for all the other parts of me that I want to work on and improve. If I can do this, what else can I do?
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I couldn’t find the power to focus on the conversation in front of me. My thoughts kept moving from corner to corner of my mind, creating questions that all of a sudden I needed answers to. The what-am-I-doing-all-of-this-for style existentialism started to boil over and spill into wherever my moods are kept and arranged. I got caught in the loop again, and it was dragging me out of the moment. The loop is something that I’m assuming almost all of us have become familiar with in one way or another, especially if you’re a creative person looking to share your work and yourself with the internet. It’s the mental cycle of losing your sense of meaning, just to find it again, just to lose it again, and so on in a matter of minutes or hours. Your work or art goes from being a precious gift to mankind that you’re sure will solve all war and hunger in the world, to an absolute waste of time that no one will ever give a shit about ever. Funny enough, with a few turns around the bend of your own self-talk you manage to find a way to make it make sense again and instill a sense of confidence in what you do and who you are, just for it to spin right back around the block to absolute despair in an almost hilarious fashion. How does this even happen? For me it starts with two words: Vanity Metrics. I’ll spare you the cliches that I’m sure you’ve heard enough of before to know you don’t want to hear about it again, and just give you a raw account of what I experienced and felt today. It was hardly an enjoyable process, and I don’t think I necessarily solved the issue by the end of it either. But I think I spiraled far enough down that rabbit hole to notice some things that I think are out of place in my life.
Like I said, it started with vanity metrics. The view counts, likes, streams, followers, the good stuff. I guess I should say lack thereof, because the feeling I felt and the thought that came to mind was a dissatisfaction that it seems I’m doing everything I’m doing in a bubble or echo chamber, and have felt that way for a while. Now I know damn well I have no one to blame for that but me, seeing that I’m absolutely terrible at sharing myself and my creations on social media and have only dropped two songs in my new chapter of total artistic freedom (that’s a story for another day in the near future), but I am a human being so I felt what I felt. The feeling was pointlessness. I’ll make my case by asking this question: If everything I’m making and sharing goes unnoticed other than by the people I already know personally, why not just keep it to myself and share it with those people when I see them? Not a very fun question to toy around with in your mind obviously, as that can lead to some pretty dark places when it comes to the idea of pursuing your artistic visions and dreams. But if I’m being completely honest my mind goes there a lot, and I have to do the work each time to crawl my way out.
What came next was the simplification process. I needed my mind to stop spinning out of control, so it was necessary that I simplified what I was feeling into the most straightforward explanation I could present to myself.
“I feel like I’m not connecting with people.”
“I feel like I don’t know if this is ever going to go anywhere.”
“I feel like I’m letting myself down by not being where I want to be.”
There’s a part of me that creeps in around this point that starts to shift the perspective, because it’s almost funny to hear myself say these things when I look at it from a logical point of view. How many songs have you put out again? Only 2? Okay. When was the last time you really put yourself out there consistently? Right. How do you expect to be where you want to be at the beginning of your journey? You need to think clearly Deion. I understand the feelings, given your history and all the work you’ve put in behind the curtain, but showtime is a different type of time. It’s okay to be where you’re at. It’s also okay to feel so complicated about where you’re at. It’s all okay.
That was a beautiful thing that just happened there. I just parented myself. Even while typing that I felt a fatherly presence within my being, correcting my course and nudging me in the right direction. But I need to be honest; that doesn’t solve the problem. It’s just an anxiety reliever. So what’s next? Go deeper. What’s the core problem here? What’s at the center of it all? How do I find the solution in this? I’m going to break down those three feeling sentences from above and put together a puzzle to figure this out in one move.
“I feel like I’m not connecting with people.”
“I feel like I don’t know if this is ever going to go anywhere.”
“I feel like I’m letting myself down by not being where I want to be.”
Connecting with people by going where I want to be.
I don’t know if that conclusion will make as much sense to you reading this as it does to me, but I also have an entire lifetime of experience as Deion to add everything up and know that this is what I’m missing out of life right now and understand how that’s connected to my internet woes.
This is what it boils down to: I’ve grown out of my environment. I don’t feel connected to it anymore. It’s a little abstract and hard to explain from my perspective because I don’t necessarily mean my friends or the people I work with creatively. I guess it’s more about the places I go, the people I come across in passing, the circles and environments I encounter through my creativity and passions… It’s the pockets and corners of the world I connect to. It all feels stale right now. It’s very much time for me to make a change in that, and place myself in a new space where things are fresh, inspiring, and feel like a fit for the person I’ve become. To bring it full circle, I think that’s where I’ll connect more with people, I think that’s where my creativity and career will start to find its way into the world how I’ve wanted it to, and that’s where I’ll find myself in a place I want to be. I think that’s how I’ll learn to solve my vanity metric problem. When my life and what it’s connected to feels far more valuable than social and monetary numbers, I’ll start to forget about them. I’ll find my way out of the loop.
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I laced up my shoes at around noon and took off down the sidewalk, keeping my pace until reaching Fryman Canyon. With the first 2 and a half simple miles out of the way, I slowed to a walk and made my way uphill. Honestly I was expecting to have already tired out by then, but something in me hit that autopilot button and I just kept going. I know that feeling so well. The sensation of being an observer inside my own body, just watching my arms and legs do things. Pain, fatigue, breathing, thirst… all irrelevant. There was just my presence, the greens and browns and blues around me, and the music blasting in my ears. I didn’t need any motivation or reason to be doing this other than to prove to myself I could. Each step I took revealed to me another glimpse of my resilience, my power and my determination. I was showing myself the true nature of what I’m capable of, not so much just with my body, but with my mind. I had every reason to slow down, to take a break, to rest before I needed to. I could’ve turned around and called an uber home. I chose to continue forward through the 2 mile trail at Fryman, and picked up the pace and ran another 2 and a half miles home without stopping. I did that to be proud of myself, for the reminder that I deserve to feel powerful. I deserve to know that I can push forward through anything and make it out the other side, even if I have to take the focus off of how my body feels and just let pure will take over. I deserve that small victory.
I feel a huge sense of gratitude when I think about things like this. It comes from the knowing that in my younger years I had to survive something traumatic or adverse to experience that feeling of resilience and strength. My sense of self-value used to come from what I was able to survive. That autopilot feeling I’m so familiar with developed from days of walking up and down Hollywood Blvd for 6 or 7 hours straight at 19 years old, passing by the McDonalds over and over again, knowing I couldn’t afford anything more than a water cup and maybe a small fry if I was lucky. During those times I learned to drown out the world, myself, and everything in between. It would be just my presence, the gold trimmed starry names beneath my feet, and the music blasting in my ears. I could’ve decided to leave LA and go home to my family, take an easier and safer route for my life, and chosen an experience that made way more sense than waiting my turn to achieve any sort of success and stability through music. I could’ve quit. But for whatever crazy reason, I chose to just put one foot in front of the other and drown everything else out.
It took some time to transform a skill in dissociation that acted as a barrier between me and the world into a type of tool for perseverance that I could turn on and off. Sometimes I still get stuck with the switch on, and have to remind myself that I don’t need to shut the world out to survive anymore. Things aren’t as certain in life as I may want them to be, but I’m sitting here typing this in my apartment with food in my fridge, clothes on my back and a view of the sun setting behind the hills across the way. And I feel powerful today.
It’s just my presence, the gold trimmed blue sky, and the music blasting in my ears.
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