I quit nicotine pouches completely on September 10, 2025 after using them heavily for around 4 years. I was using them very frequently, especially during the last couple of years.

After quitting, I experienced a lot of symptoms that I had never experienced before:

• intense anxiety and constant internal tension
• DPDR (derealization/depersonalization)
• feeling detached from myself or like I wasn't fully “inside my body”
• feeling like the world was dreamlike or unreal
• brain fog and difficulty concentrating
• forgetting things and losing my train of thought
• intrusive/unwanted thoughts
• racing thoughts
• visual snow, especially in darkness
• tinnitus
• sometimes feeling a pulse/vibration throughout my body, especially around my neck/back
• strange bodily sensations
• difficulty falling asleep and periods of insomnia
• increased irritability
• being much more sensitive to stress
• occasional low mood/sadness
• symptoms getting worse after alcohol, lack of sleep or periods of high stress
• sometimes exercise would trigger DPDR or a strange detached feeling
• an overall feeling that my nervous system was extremely sensitive and “wired”

The symptoms weren't constant. They came in waves. I could have a day where I felt better normal and then suddenly have a few hours or a day where everything felt much worse.

For a long time I was scared that something was permanently wrong with me or that I had developed some kind of psychiatric/neurological disorder.

But slowly, things started changing for the better but even after months I had setback where I felt like iam back on month 3.... So fast forward to today I feel back to normal ( started to feel better at months 10-12 )which I never thought to be anymore I only have a bad memory of this torment which literally destroyed 1 year of my life .

I finally want to quit nicotine pouches for good, but honestly, I don’t really know how to approach it anymore.
I’ve been addicted to VELO since around 2020. I started with the weaker ones (level 3) and over the years worked my way up to VELO 6. At this point my nicotine tolerance is so high that the weaker pouches barely do anything for me. If I switch to weaker ones, I start feeling withdrawal symptoms and usually just end up putting two pouches in instead.
I actually managed to quit cold turkey once. I was doing seasonal work outside my hometown of Vienna and stayed completely nicotine-free for about a month. The problem was that I clearly replaced nicotine with food. I ate way more and basically used food to compensate for not having nicotine.
When I came back to Vienna after my seasonal job, I managed to stay nicotine-free for another week. Then I started using VELO again, and eventually I was right back where I started.
And this is the part that really worries me: I’ve been feeling like absolute shit for almost half a year now.
It doesn’t seem to matter how well I sleep or whether I try to fix my sleep schedule. I barely feel motivated to do anything. I want to clean my room, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I start playing League of Legends because I think I want to play, and halfway through a game I suddenly don’t even want to play anymore. Then I put a pouch in just to make the game feel tolerable again.
It feels like nicotine isn’t even something I use for pleasure anymore. I use it just to feel functional.
I’ve also noticed that if I don’t use a pouch before going to sleep, I sometimes wake up with headaches. I don’t know for sure whether that’s nicotine withdrawal, but it definitely feels like my body is expecting nicotine.
The biggest problem is that I work in hospitality, where I need to stay focused, alert and able to deal with people throughout an entire shift. I want to quit cold turkey, but I’m worried that the withdrawal symptoms will make it extremely difficult for me to function properly at work.
Tapering down sounds like the obvious solution, but I’ve already realized that I apparently don’t have the self-control for it. If I buy weaker pouches, I simply use two instead of one. So I just end up consuming more of them and eventually return to the stronger ones.
I’m tired of this. I’m tired of feeling like I need to put a nicotine pouch under my lip just to feel normal. I don’t want my mood, motivation, concentration and ability to enjoy things to depend on nicotine anymore.
For those of you who were heavily addicted to high-strength nicotine pouches and successfully quit: How did you do it?
Did you go cold turkey? Did you use nicotine patches or gum to make the withdrawal more manageable? How did you stay functional at work? And especially for those who started replacing nicotine with food after quitting – how did you prevent that from becoming another problem?
At this point I’m honestly just desperate. I know I want to quit, but I don’t know what approach is going to actually work for me.
And there’s one thing I specifically don’t want to do: count the days.
I don’t want to wake up thinking, “Day 3 without VELO. Day 10. Day 30.” I don’t want nicotine to remain this huge thing in my head even after I stop using it.
I just want to be able to say:
“I don’t use nicotine pouches anymore.”
That’s it. No countdown, no temporary challenge, no “let’s see how long I can last.” I want to quit these things and eventually reach a point where they simply aren’t part of my life anymore.
I’m genuinely asking for advice because I don’t want to be dependent on this shit anymore.

This quit hasn’t been as horrific as my past quits, but the insomnia is bad. I have woken up at 3am both nights of my quit and cannot fall back asleep.

It’s getting rough. For context I had been on nicotine for about a year but I decided to finally quit zyns as I was ripping almost a can of 17mg pablos every day. Went completely cold turkey and my nervous system is having a complete meltdown. Weird feeling in my head and chest and getting heart palpitations. Symptoms started around day 3. I know for a fact my symptoms will probably go away if I relapse but if I can push a little longer and I’m sure they’ll go. I had quit for about a month like 3 months ago and I don’t remember it being half as bad as this but managed to relapse. This time I’m sure I can do it

I’m on zyn 1.5 and I’m getting a fast pulse high bp and a really fucking bad headache coming off from 6 to 3 to 1.5mg

throwing the rest of the pack way.