Introduction to Vaping and Addiction

So we know that nicotine is the third most addictive drug. So not most harmful, but most addictive. we know that it exacerbates people with depression like it did with me. We know that once you stop the nicotine and you go through that initial withdrawal period where you may get a worsening of your mood symptoms and you come out, it’s as powerful as antidepressant for someone with depression and this is like high level of evidence this isn’t like a random study published in a crappy journal

Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White, and today I’m hanging out with a new friend, Dr. Mark Picco. And I really was interested in our conversation because I saw that he was a medical doctor in the UK, and he actually is now a big advocate for helping people live vape and drug-free. So he’s specifically targeting helping people with vaping and cessation. I was like, hey, do you want to come on the show? And he was so generous with his time. So Mark, thanks for hopping on and welcome to the show.

No problem, Jake Thank you for having me.

No problem. Well, I have to know, man, what’s your story? Why did you get into this field? I mean, I’m sure being a doctor is really cool and now you’ve added this other element of helping people with vaping prevention and I guess recovery and cessation. So how did this happen?

So it was really kind of like a passion project how I fell into it and it’s based on my own personal story. So I’ve had my own struggles with mental health in particular depression and basically I became burnt out as a doctor and I suffered from depression and then I was put on to antidepressants and I tried antidepressants and I tried a number of antidepressants and they all gave me this side effect called akathisia. Now this side effect basically is intensely distressing. Anyone who has had it will tell you, even in the mildest form. It makes you very, very agitated. It makes you very, very restless. You can’t sit still. You’re constantly moving around and it’s not just a movement thing, it’s an emotional thing as well. So it makes you feel absolutely horrific. Like there’s not even another word to describe it. So I had tried a number of other medications to try and stop this side effect from happening. None of them worked, went through about four or five. I was under a specialist in this condition. And then I came across a paper online about nicotine and how it helped. 15 out of 17 people who had akathisia and were put onto nicotine in the form of patches. But I tried it in, in vaping form. So first of all, it didn’t really work for me or it probably actually made me feel a bit worse. Definitely made my depression worse. But after a week, I was hooked, properly addicted.

So I had gone from maybe vaping once every three or four hours to putting it in my bed at night time and then picking up first thing in the morning, like vaping all day every day. Like within a week to a week and a half. Like that’s how quickly it basically got me addicted to nicotine. So being the third most addicted drug behind heroin and then cocaine there’s a reason why it’s nicotine is addictive, highly addictive on all packs of cigarettes and vapes over there. So yeah, so that’s really how I got into it. So I then tried to get off of it. I actually use nicotine patches which would actually be my second recommendation. I probably advise people normally to cut down the amount of nicotine they’re taking.

I was so sick of vaping and the effects it was having on me. just wanted to just, I took an inhale, I took an inhale, I made my restlessness instantly worse. So I couldn’t handle cutting it down. So I actually went for patches. There’s a number of options that you can try. So there’s cutting down the nicotine content, along with cognitive behavioral therapies. There’s nicotine patches and then there’s cold turkey and with behavioral, cognitive behavioral support is the main evidence. So yeah, so I used patches, came off of it and then yeah, so it was a horrific year for me. It was a difficult withdrawal phase for me. And then afterwards, I started seeing all the problems that there were, stories of nine-year-old kids vaping because of all the marketing that’s around. Everybody knows about the colorful colors, all the fruity flavors, like clear marketing tactics of kids. The criminal behaviors that they were committing, raiding petrol stations over here, like just ransacking the base. I just thought, alongside the fact that when I went through the withdrawal period, I could not find anything online and there was very little in terms of formal support for people available who suffer from vaping addiction. So it all started from there. I sort of took it on as a passion project. So I wanted to vastly improve the quality of resources that are available online to people who are suffering from vaping addiction. Not only that, but to raise awareness for parents the educators and anyone who’s interested in vaping. And because it is a societal problem on a whole, it’s a growing pandemic.

And I wanted to help these people and in a way where it’s not just like a leaflet or a flyer or an online page to read, but formal support it’s a passion project from my own personal story to seeing a big void in help for other people going through what I went through and wanting to combine it to with my medical background as a really fulfilling project, if you want to call it that, and something I could work on.

The Environmental Impact of Vaping

I wanted to, my vision was to create this really, uh, useful platform, which is going to be my website. Um, and it’s going to contain a whole hub of content resources. So educational resources, health risks, which will involve no scaremongering, just up to date, high quality evidence. It’s going to involve support for parents and schools about how they can educate their the pupils and not punish them because that’s not been shown. It’s a message that’s not been shown to work as I’m sure you’re aware. But also formal support like a formal therapist or a formal health coach, which is what I am as well. So I want it to be this platform where they can seek formal support if people need it. And the last thing is, I looked at the, when this is when I was trying to quit, was I was looking at quit vaping apps, because there’s lots of quit smoking apps out there. Again, I was like, maybe an app will help me. And the apps that I found are, again, they’re just so poor, basic, like they don’t even look good. So my vision is I’m just trying to seek some funding for it over the next few months but mobile app in an age where kids especially like are digitally obsessed and that is going to be really important so that’s what’s driving me forward with that as well.

That’s cool. that’s, dang, that’s quite a bit from your story what really struck me though is that I think the companies who manufacture these products, especially in the beginning, they do want to put out articles or they want the perception to be that they’re a health product, right?

It’s vaping started as a smoking cessation tool, which I don’t know how that, how long that marketing was there, but it soon was marketed differently, right? To get students involved in it. And now it’s creating a generation of new smokers. but to see that even someone who is in the health profession can see or experience that as well is pretty eye-opening.

But I wanted to pinpoint something that you shared, is that you mentioned that there were environmental effects of vaping. And I don’t know if you meant like the waste or something like that, but do you remember what those pieces of information were or what you learned that alluded to that?

Yeah, so it’s the waste. it’s basically the single use plastic disposables just being chucked on the floor. And obviously they come with batteries in them that need to be disposed of. So it’s not only visually not nice to see all this litter amongst the road. And you walk down the road now and there’s just, you can obviously my eyes are probably more open to it, but you can see empty packages that people have ripped open and thrown on the floor. You can see the single disposable vape. So it all came about because all these bits of plastic had been thrown away. And now that has actually been the push behind getting the band in the UK. So in June of 2025.

They are being completely banned. And the biggest push behind that wasn’t anything to do with nicotine or it was an environmental factor because of the fact that there’s so much plastic littered everywhere from these single use vapes. They’ve got to dispose of the batteries properly.

And it’s the same where I live as well. So I’m from a tiny little island called Jersey in the Channel Islands, not New Jersey is a 99 % Americans thing, but it’s a tiny little island. So our ban has been approved and there was a provisional date for April of 2025, but that hasn’t actually been pushed through Parliament as yet. it was the environmental factor that was the push the pollution essentially from all these bits of plastic.

Wow, okay. That’s so interesting. And for people listening, I think that’s where my learning or something that I want to learn from this episode is the environmental impact. that’s what the younger generation in America, they’re really obsessed with, is they want to save our environment. And we’re tasked with getting these young people involved in drug prevention and helping them make healthier decisions. So if that’s an angle to speak to what they care about, the environment, then we need to use more of that. So that’s really cool to learn.

Yeah, I think it’s because perhaps they’re not aware or perhaps they don’t care, but there is a battery inside them. So it’s not just a piece of plastic. So it has to be disposed of properly. it’s not just the fact of sweeping them up and just chucking the plastic away. It’s got to be separated out. So it was a big environmental thing.

Obviously that’s not a problem with the refillables, but it is with disposables.

Okay, and how is it in the UK? So in the US, it’s kind of state by state or county or city. The local place gets to decide whether they want to recycle or if they can afford to. So some places you go, they’re great about recycling and they would be like, yes, if it’s damaging the environment, we need to set this up so they can recycle it safely and this policy change might be more attractive to them.

To other places though, they’re like, we don’t even have the money to recycle anyway. Like we’re not going to do it. We’re just going to throw away all the waste and you know, it’s not a priority. In the UK, is it similar where it’s based on the region or is recycling and environment a big push in the UK?

No, is this is a, so how the recycling is actually done is done on a local basis, but the policy was made by the UK government. So it was a, it was a, it was done by the conservative party, which is one of our political parties who have now been voted out. They made this, they made this bill that’s just been pushed through by the Tory party that’s just come in. So it’s something that’s been debated at the highest possible level in Parliament. it’s not like, you know, we have like counties for example, it’s not a county to county basis. It was at the highest possible level the decision was made.

Okay, that’s cool. Wow. Do you have any advice for people who are listening to this podcast? They’re wanting to help students who are vaping and there’s a lot of students that want to quit. But just like you said, there’s not that many resources out there. Sometimes there’s a stigma around it or something like that. But if someone is hearing from a young person, hey, I want to quit vaping. What advice would you give them to help them?

Strategies for Quitting Vaping

First question I wanted to ask is how motivated are you to quit? And on a scale of 0 to 10, if they’re not at least an eight, I would say they’re not ready because nicotine is the third most addictive drug, as I’m sure you’re aware. It’s highly addictive. You have to be motivated. Any drug you know, again, I’m teaching you to suck eggs, but you’ve got the cycle, the pre-contemplation phase, and then you enter into the actual breaking the addiction phase. So they have to be motivated. So if they say, I’m not quite sure, they’re not ready. If they’re motivated, mean, motivating them would be, I could do that, and that would be a different side topic that I could go into.

We’ll talk about the people that are motivated. Say, hey, Mark, I want to quit. Help me. So I can help them in various ways. So the first thing is just to go with them before they even start. Right. What is your why? Why do you want to quit? Why is this important to you? And that why is going to stay with them for the, and I would work with them if I was working with them the whole way through the quitting process. And we’re always gonna return back to that why. Health reasons, financial reasons, is it for behavioral reasons that I spoke of? Is it affecting your relationship? What is that why? Because that’s your motivator, why you’re doing this. So it’s always gonna be that why. So we work on the why, and then we basically will explore any concerns they’ve got going forwards.

If you’re like, why have you not stopped before? What’s stopped you? Have you tried? Is it fear of withdrawal? it, you know, other factors? Do you think it’s peer pressure? Is it wanting to fit in? What are the barriers that stopping you? Cause we’re going to have to work on those barriers, overcome those barriers, to then move on to the next phase. So, you know, if they’re, for example, I was really fearful that my depression would get a lot worse because one of the withdrawal phases obviously you mood symptoms or mood disorders. So that was my fear, even though was making me worse enough. discussing those barriers and then talking through with them what those barriers are, educating them on the barriers. So if I was talking to myself, a year ago, I would say that if you are going to experience symptoms of low mood, it’s generally mild and generally transient and lasts for up to a month. And the majority of people, it will just go away by itself once the feel-good chemicals in your brain get restored. But occasionally, people do need help.

That’s only occasionally and we’ll come across that bridge if or when we come to it. So it’s about exploring those barriers. So once we’ve explored the why, once we’ve explored the barriers, then we can move on to the actual practical aspects like, right, how are we gonna do this? How do you wanna do it? I’m gonna present a number of options to you and we’re gonna talk about how we actually do it. So three ways. Firstly, reduce the nicotine content that they’re currently on. So just for ease of argument, there’s obviously Freebase and Nixxels, but we’ll just say that they’re on a Freebase. That’s if they’re on refillables, but I guess if kids are smoking disposables, it’d be a slightly different route that we could take. So if they’re smoking, if they’re vaping a disposable, there’s a number of behavioral things that they can do to help them to quit. So for example, first, when you first wake up in the morning, what time do you vape? If they say straight away, I reach for it straight away, pick up, you say, okay, goal number one, give it 20 minutes. Leave it 20 minutes and then you can have a vape. That’ll just be your first week. Just give it 20 minutes. Week two, give it 40 minutes then you can have a week. Week three, give it an out. And you keep extending that time. So you’re extending the time between how they’re, how long they’re vaping. And you can do that with other factors as well. So for example, if they’re in school, say on the break between their classes, a lot of youth may go to the toilet and have a vape.

Just say, you’re not gonna do that. You’re gonna promenage yourself, you’re not gonna do that. And you’re gonna think about your why. Why am I stopping? When you start walking towards that toilet, I want you to think long and hard about that why. And for me, was, I’m making myself, I’m making myself ill here. What am I doing? So I would think about that and I’d stop. So these sort of, so like things like that. then after school, you know, who are you hanging around with, for example? Who’s your group of friends? How many of them vape? Do a lot of them vape? Do none of them vape? Do all of them vape? You might want to consider, just while you’re quitting, perhaps socializing in different circles of friends, if they’ve got different circles of friends. Or just saying to your friends, and if they’re good friends,

Look, I’m trying to quit at the moment. So like, I’m really sorry. know you’re going to be hanging out, having a, you know, having a drink, having a date. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be around that right now. And I know that sounds really difficult, but it’s incredibly important. It takes an exceptionally strong willed person to be around people vaping or drinking or smoking or whatever addiction it may be. When they’re trying to quit and not do it. It can be done, but it takes a hell of a lot of willpower. So the sort of avoidance. So look at your triggers and avoid them basically.

Okay. So yeah, there’s three, yeah, there’s triggers and you need to identify those triggers. So for example, when you’re stressed, what can you do other than reaching for a vape? Can you call a friend? Can you do some form of exercise? Can you play a video game? What can you journal?

What can you do? And try and be, like, I try and be specific with them, because, like, do some exercise, bring a friend. Like, it’s quite generic, and this is a lot of the content I found on the internet is just really one, do exercise. No, you need to have a game plan here. What exercise you going to do? Are you going to go for a walk? Are you going to go for a cycle for half an hour? If you’re feeling really rubbish, a walk is a form of exercise.

You can just do a little walk. When I, one of my, again, wardrobe symptoms was I felt really, really weak. So I could only manage a walk. So I went for a walk. Then I built it up to more, more exercise. So cycle and then it will run. And now I’m really into swimming. So you’ve got to have a game plan that’s specific, not just do exercise. Just go for a half an hour walk or be specific. But with that individual, it’s always got to be tailored to who you’re working with and you’ve got work with them. So make it specific. yeah, so as I said, stress, boredom, similar sort of things again, same sort of factors you can use to overcome it. And then the social situations as I discussed, like alcohol, what are you gonna do about alcohol? Are you gonna be tea-toeful and not drink, which is highly advisable?

What are going to do when you’re around people that are drinking that might be a trigger? Are you going to try and avoid that? You got to talk through them with it, try and normalize what that if they decide to say, hey, it’s probably not a good idea for me. That’s probably a really good idea. And if they’re their friends, a good friends, they would understand that. so yeah, it’s really gotta be quite tailored to the child or young adult as to what the plan is. But a generic game plan just isn’t going to work. And that’s what I found. It’s just do exercise, do reading. I don’t know, reading? I find that more boring than just sitting there staring at a wall. So not quite. Not quite, but you get my point. It wasn’t tainted to me. It wasn’t tainted to me.

So to recap quickly. So sorry to interrupt. It’s the why, then it’s the barriers, then it’s the identifying the triggers and it’s the behavioral aspects of disposables because if it’s refillables they could actually cut down the nicotine content by three milligrams every one to two weeks over two months. That’s a very brief summary.

If it’s disposable, it’s increasing the time between their vaping. And it’s also another tip is instead of them having their normal inhale, just sip it. So instead of just like having say a three second inhale, just one second inhale. And then that’s another behavioral tactic that you can use to just to basically slow the nicotine intake down over time until you’re at zero so it’s those balls are more tricky because they’re obviously it’s difficult to You know properly wean them and then nicotine content is I know you guys in the States have Jewel up to five percent, which is I don’t know if you still got that but I know you used to have it it’s crazy like absolutely crazy how cool.

In Jersey where I live, the law is actually weak enough, 5 % as well, but none of the vape shops will stock it because they’re actually quite ethical about it. But at 2%, even that is seriously strong, especially for a kid. Like, that is not good for their growing brains. Like, so bad so addictive, so bad. So to get them off of a 2 % vape is tricky, it’s quite tricky.

Creating Supportive Resources for Vaping Cessation

Wow, yeah. Okay, this has been really, really helpful to know that there’s a plan when someone is trying to quit, that even if the resources aren’t there, that you can find a partner and somebody to follow those steps, like you mentioned. And what I imagine the fun part of working with someone is you get to discuss how that plan is unique to them. “Hey, well, we’re going to move your time from, you know, vaping right when you get out of bed, that 20 minutes. All how do we make that easier? Or how do we make it more difficult for you to vape and make it easier for you to do the alternative?” And that’s, to me, that’s kind of the tailored part that I’m sure is really fun. And why working with someone like you or someone, you know, on this call who’s part of this is, it’s not just helping them quit a drug, it’s very addictive, it’s actually improving their overall life and overall health outcomes, their mental health, and teaching them to do something really difficult. Because if you can overcome addiction, there’s a lot of things you can do now. Like that takes a really strong person who knows their why, who’s identified as a path to do something better. So it’s really, really cool work that you’re doing, Mark. I really appreciate you.

No, I just wish I could honestly do more and I really appreciate being on the podcast because I’m just trying to create some online visibility because everything on my website and this isn’t a promo to my website, but everything on there is going to be for free. All the resources. I’m going to start really knocking out the blog posts. There’ll be five minute reads.

Well, tell us a little bit, because I know right now, like you’re building this as a passion project. You also have your medical job. But by the time this airs, it’ll probably be mid-February or something. You’re working on your website. It’ll be up. Yeah, just kind of tell us where to go, what to look for. And I’m excited to check out your app when it’s ready, too, all that stuff. yeah, do you’re not

Don’t feel bad, please tell us where to go to check out all your stuff.

Okay, so the website’s name is called LiveLifeVapeFree.org.uk So it was kind of a play on the sort of… I wanted to make it a little bit fun, maybe it was a bit of math attempt but… You laugh… laugh… laugh… I don’t even know what to say. You know what I mean, those three words? Livelifevapefree.org.uk and dot org dot uk identifies it. It’s mainly obviously a British thing at the moment but it definitely is. The resources on there will be of the global audience definitely. So it will mainly be housed on there. I’ll have social media channels where I’ll try and obviously target the youth. So TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn for more for professionals I’ll be recruiting. So yeah, so it’ll all be on there, but the blog will be really useful. Especially for people who are just like your audience who are interested in that. So not even going through the quitting process, but just to read like how it’s done and how it can be done with an individual that they’re working with.

So I’m going to have like about eight categories. So educational categories, statistics, withdrawal process, parents, schools, app, my personal journey and testimonies from others. And one more. can’t remember. There’s eight, there’s eight. So yeah, so it’ll be housing all these these blog posts. So yeah, I want to go into the depth of what to do when you have a craving. And it’s not going to be go for a walk, bring a friend, you know, it’s going to be in like a lot of websites have found out it’s going to be in depth and it’s good. you can tell you can, you don’t have to go through everything and each individual gets that.

You can pick little bits out and say, okay, this is pertinent to the individual that I’m working with. They really enjoy skateboarding. Okay, right. So when they get a craving, they go out and they get on the skateboard like straight away. So like it’s tailored to the individual. So that’s their exercise. So yeah, so I’m going to be doing these blog posts and again, my goal and I’m working towards this probably within the next few months. Once I’ve got lots of blog posts out, I’ll start to create PDFs, like five page PDFs, which you can just download and read through and have on your phone at ease of access. And then from there, I want to scale it up to actually a full blown book. That’s my goal. I’ve got two main goals. One is to get a book published in the Amazon store.

And secondly is the development of the app. So the app is another big project that I’m going on. So I’m going big. I’m not holding back. I’m holding back here. I’m going big. Yeah. I only actually work as a doctor. I’m only actually working around 20 hours a week and I’m doing this the rest of the time. I do more work on this than I actually do work as a doctor. So yeah.

This has been awesome. Thank you again, Mark. This has been so cool. I definitely learned a lot and I know our audience is going to have a lot of takeaways. We will check out livelifevapefree.org.uk. Check out where that is when this is published and on all the socials you can find Mark, Dr. Mark Picot and we’ll have some links below where you can check that out. But for everyone who’s listening, you are doing important life-saving work.

Keep it up, we know it’s not easy, but it’s absolutely worth it. And if you need anything, we are here to help you. Go to vive18.com, learn about getting youth involved in this work and know that you’re an advocate, someone who’s walking alongside them to make a better life possible if they are using and if they’re not to help keep that choice for as long as possible. Because we live drug-free lives and think that’s a great way to do it but we have to help students discover their why. And that’s gonna keep the world just a little bit better every single generation. So we’ll see you next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.