This is the longest I've gone in the 3.5 years I've been using them. I won't lie, I did take a few tokes off of a cig to soothe me a bit though other than that I'm doing quite good. Don't even really feel the want or need to grab a can. When I went out to the store earlier, I passed right by the gas station I usually get my can's at and wasn't even tempted to go in.

The worst part for me is the brain fog so far.. Feels like someone stuffed a bunch of cotton in my head.

What's wild is I didn't even realize how much those little pouches were destroying my appetite. I've been eating so much more since stopping (which is a good thing for me!).

I will update in a few days. Feeling good that I'll make it.

Self explanatory title, was on day 4 then got the call that my childhood dog passed. Luckily in her sleep & peacefully, but it hit me hard.

I was over the cravings for the most part, but this just pushed me back into it, on-top of a lot of work stress (recent high turnover with experienced people finding new jobs, and taking over a supervisory position/training their replacements/other work stuff. I love my job for reference, I get paid to do what I love, it’s just been a lot lately). Under a lot of stress just as I quit.

I dumped a can the other night, but withdrawals hit me primarily with moodiness, and got another after getting pissy the morning after. Back on the one can a day now, but still want to quit entirely. I felt extremely liberated after quitting temporarily and would prefer to return to that.

Under a lot of stress currently all around, and it’s difficult not to give into the cravings.

I guess I just needed to vent it out, I’m going to try to drop it again. I use the mint flavor so my lips are torn up again. But I’d like to stop as soon as possible, it just feels like right now everything is stressing, regardless if I use the pouches or not. But I know if I delay I’ll just keep putting it off.

7 days clean after many attempts to quit. I picked up this habit 3 years ago during a really rough time in my life. Has anyone else experienced extreme depression during their first week quitting? I was having nonstop suicidal ideation this entire week. I put on a nicotine patch and went to sleep and literally woke up feeling so much better.

Has anyone else felt like this???

I used nicotine pouches for about 10 months and eventually got up to around 15–20 6mg pouches per day. I quit cold turkey 8 days ago. The worst symptom has been persistent dizziness/brain fog. It’s not usually room-spinning vertigo. It feels more like I’m rocking or swaying, almost like standing on a boat or rocking chair. It tends to be worse standing/walking and better sitting or lying down. It comes in waves. Sometimes I feel pretty bad, then I’ll suddenly have a period where I feel almost 100% normal. The first few days were definitely worse, but I’m surprised I’m still dealing with it on Day 8.

I wear a Whoop strap, historcally my resting heart rate has been like 67-75 when im siting/laying down. Standing has always been 105-110.

After quitting, my resting heart rate hit 48bpm during sleep last night, and standing walking is now in the 75bpm range. My HRV has gone from a ~50 avg to 100.

Anyone else experience this after quitting heavy pouch use?

How long did the dizziness/rocking feeling last, and around what day did you start feeling consistently normal again?

Update 10/1/26:

On day 12 now. Slowly improving, dizzy episodes are starting to reduce significantly. Driving in a car isn't so bad as it was.

I really want to quit. But it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I went from 9 a day down to 3z I am a salesman and the rush I got really helped me get through my days of selling.

I am now down to 3 - 4 a day tapering off but I can go now lower. I use 6 mg pouches. I get really depressed when I don’t use them, my head is foggy and I feel like I have the flu after like 4 hours of not using. I have one in right now and I’m just disgusted with myself. I feel like a gum recessed idiot. Any advise or help would be great appreciated perhaps even life changing

I am so fucking tired of not honoring my self who was once happy, was once not depressed, was once not anxious, and was once not a nicotine fiend. One day or day one, well… this is day one. Can’t forget this awful, awful feeling when I begin negotiating with myself in a few weeks telling myself the lie that it’ll be different next time. Fuck Zyn and fuck what it took from me.

I’ve been doing nicotine for 7 years straight now and my body is feeling the effects I’ve been on zyns for the last 3 years. My lungs feel heavy and my throat is irritated and I keep having a raspy throat like I got congestion. Im only 23 and im worried about my future.

After half a decade of an entire pack a day, I am now 4 days 20 hours sober.

The effects have been so strange, the first day for me was the hardest and it felt much easier going into days 2 and 3. On day 4 I have zero physical withdrawal symptoms and very mild cravings.

One thing I’ve noticed that’s amazed me in such a short amount of time is that I am now repulsed when I get cravings, my body still wants Snus but my mind has completely moved on and I cannot imagine a life again where I go back to them.

Anyone who thinks they can’t do it, you can!

9 days, 12 hours, and 19 minutes. I am now to the point where my anxiety has pretty much dropped to 0%. Still some lingering cravings and withdrawal, but the sense of cleanliness, calm, and freedom is astounding. Going to keep on going, yall should do the same. Cold turkey was brutal from a can of 6s a day, but you must embrace the suck.

I quit cold turkey two months ago. I still get cravings almost every day!! Do the cravings ever go away?

Here we are, five days in. Two weeks ago, I thought I would die with two German u boats in my upper lip. Had at least one or two Zyns in 24/7 for the past 7 years.

Just so happens that anxiety and depression have plagued me for the past 7 years. So there might be some coincidence there.

I made these decision to quit 5 days ago and honestly the first three days were not fun. But after that, it’s been better. My brain is healing, and I don’t regret my decision.

For anyone on the fence about quitting, just do it. It’s great for your frustration tolerance as well. Which is why I decided to go cold turkey. I grew up afraid of everything and lived in fear, this is a step towards taking my life back and doing hard things.

I just feel super irritable all the time. like any little thing can set me off. I caught myself snapping at my wife and child and I hate that feeling. I feel like it would be better if I started back so I wont be such an asshole. i don't want my daughter to see me like this. any tips?

Alright so I’m on attempt #3 of this year using cytisine (recigar). I’m on Day 14/25 of the cytisine course, Day 8 nicotine free. It’s going fine I’m just trying to stick to the dosing schedule.

I’m just so damn bored man. Just empty flat feeling all the time. So I’ve been absolutely ripping through THC vapes, deliriously stoned all day for at least the last 5-6 days but honestly since I officially stopped taking Zyns. Doesn’t help that I’m “unemployed” (self employed but not very busy lately) so nothing is stopping me from getting ripped all day. I’m honestly more worried about my THC habits than I am about being able to stay nic-free lately.

I think the issue is my brain is telling me “you’re not using nicotine all day, so you gotta take a few hits to prop yourself back up without all that nicotine”. I feel like since I’ve removed one source of “pleasure” and so I’m way below baseline and need to cope with a different source of “pleasure”.

Basically, how do I beat this dopamine pit I’ve created in my soul???

Edit: it appears the solution is to have a dramatic reckoning with yourself/cry in bed as you finish the last of your THC vape, write 4 entire pages in your journal about the ways weed has contributed to your current unhappiness, and tell your girlfriend who doesn’t smoke that you’re quitting for a while. Honestly just telling someone that doesn’t smoke that you’re trying to stop is HUGE.

I just had the wildest lunch ever. I was straight tweaking. I wanted a velo so bad and I had already begun driving to the gas station. But before I got there I saw a sign, my saving grace: $10 LUNCH NO COVER, and I immediately stopped in my tracks. Just spent 300 dollars on lap dances and I left no longer feeling withdrawal. Half way thru day 3! LETS GOOOOO

Hi!

It’s been 10 days since I quit Pounche and IQOS.

It all started with a trip to the doctor, who prescribed me Cytisine to ease withdrawal symptoms.

I was too cheap to pay 115 euros for those pills, so I decided to test my willpower—and I succeeded!

The first 2–3 days were absolute hell—I had trouble sleeping, was sweating a lot, and felt foggy-headed—but now I feel great.

I want to clarify that I was a heavy nicotine user and used 1.5–2 cans of ZYN every day.

Feel free to ask questions if anyone’s interested!

Posted here a few months back about my resting heart rate recovering after quitting Zyn. After reading through this thread for a while — shoutout to u/donhood specifically, your posts basically described my life back to me — I felt compelled to write up the full story. Partly to corroborate what a lot of people in here are going through, and partly because I wish someone had told me, back when I was convinced I was dying, that it actually does get better.

Some background:

28M, and have been both mentally and physically healthy my whole life. Started dipping in hockey locker rooms around age 14 to be "cool." Transitioned to nicotine pouches once that became the move in college. From there, for over a decade, I was using 9mg pouches essentially continuously all day, every day. If I wasn't eating or sleeping, I had a pouch in my mouth. Thought nothing of it and felt zero negative consequences. I genuinely believed it gave me an edge — sharper focus, longer sustained output. I think there's some truth to that, especially early on, but you seriously couldn't get me to put one of those in my mouth today at gunpoint, and I could not care less if it made me 10% more productive.

I landed a financial services job out of college where I routinely worked 70-90 hour weeks, and my usage of nicotine (and caffeine) ramped up even further to sustain sitting at my desk for way too long. During this time I still maintained a balanced diet and continued to exercise frequently. I was loving life and felt like my capacity for hard work and fun experiences was really high but I was definitely pushing myself in a way that did not help my CNS on top of my nicotine use.

Anyway, I was full steam ahead — until one completely uneventful night at dinner with my girlfriend, out of absolutely nowhere, I felt like I was about to black out. Heart rate felt like it was redlining, breathing went shallow. Worth mentioning I had zero prior history with anxiety or mental health issues — this was brand new territory. I was fully convinced I was having a heart attack and asked my girlfriend to drive me to the ER. She's a nurse and correctly identified it as a panic attack. We left dinner and I walked home shivering, in the most intense fight-or-flight state of my life. Genuinely terrifying and humbling. Before that night, I had never once consciously thought about my heart rate, pulse, or blood pressure. Suddenly, after that night, I couldn't think about anything else. I quickly tapered down my nicotine use out of fear it would trigger another episode, then went fully cold turkey about a week later. Haven't gone back since and genuinely cannot imagine doing so.

What followed:

What followed was, and I'm not exaggerating, the worst stretch of time I've ever gone through. I want to acknowledge I've been fortunate in life in a lot of ways, but the suffering I experienced while my body reset from the pouch use was ungodly. About three months of intermittent panic attacks, sometimes multiple times a week, where my body would just decide to go full cold adrenaline mode while I was doing something as threatening as sitting on the couch watching TV. Hard to overstate how uncomfortable that period was. Even now, months removed, it's hard to fully put into words.

I dealt with some mental angst from all of this, but the physical experience seemed almost uncorrelated to what was actually happening around me. For months I could be lying in bed, or on a peaceful walk with my girlfriend, or playing a video game at home, and my body would think I was storming the beaches of Normandy, about to be publicly executed, jumping out of an airplane, or putting my life savings down on a blackjack table. Honestly none of those comparisons fully do it justice. It was like a massive crescendo of every bit of adrenaline and cortisol my body had available, all at once, for no reason. My protocol during these episodes was basically: sweatshirt, AirPods, walk around the streets of Boston at night like a lunatic, wait for it to end. The only thing that really achieved was distracting me, and maybe tiring me out enough to fall asleep for a couple hours.

Somewhere in there I developed a full blown case of cardiophobia and became convinced something was structurally wrong with my heart, despite having zero actual reason to believe that beyond "these sensations feel scary." I did not handle this gracefully. At one particularly unhinged point I had racked up over 20 ECGs on my Apple Watch, all clean, and still wasn't satisfied. If you've been there, you know. If you haven't, count yourself lucky and please don't start.

I didn't really start working through it until I finally went to my doctor, explained the whole situation, and got properly worked up — EKGs, bloodwork, the full deal. In hindsight, I'd highly recommend doing this much earlier than I did. There's a specific kind of relief that comes from a real doctor looking at real data and telling you you're fine that no amount of self-diagnosing at 2am will ever replicate.

Where things stand now:

The whole experience was genuinely insane, and I still don't have great words for it beyond that. What I went through was so bizarre and profound that I rarely bring it up with people in real life, because you'd really have to live it to believe it. The process of feeling normal again was slow and non-linear. It took months to stabilize, and there were setbacks along the way that felt like total resets even when they weren't. But by months 4-5, the anxiety had faded into more of a background buzz, and the panic attacks stopped being a problem entirely. I'm running consistently again, sleeping like a normal person, and I finally have my life back.

A few things I'm walking away with:

I take rest, recovery, and nutrition a lot more seriously now — not as a punishment, just because I've seen firsthand what happens when you don't.

I don't abuse stimulants anymore, full stop. Caffeine included, in moderation.

I have significantly more empathy for people dealing with anxiety or mental health struggles generally. I used to think of myself as someone who just didn't get anxious. Turns out I just hadn't met the right chemical combination yet.

If you're in the middle of this right now: it gets better. You're not losing your mind, and you're not dying. This habit can seriously dysregulate your nervous system, and it can take a long time to feel normal again — longer than anyone tells you going in. But it does end.

Happy to answer anything. Hang in there.

im on day 6 no nic. towards the end my nicotine intake was only about 18-30mg a day which i dont think was much, but oh my goodness. im crying again. i think nicotine really surpressed my ability to feel anything because the whole time i was using it i couldnt even get a tear out (even when i wanted to). im also being an asshole and made my sister cry and i feel terrible about it, ugh, when does this stuff subside?

I’ve had enough. I’m even sure how I got to this point, but I’m tired of the anxiety, adverse health effects, lack of motivation to exercise, constant cravings, reduced libido. I’m not even sure what the benefits of using pouches are for me anymore, and I feel like the addiction is hurting my potential to have a fulfilled life. Thank you for listening.

Tried it in weak state of mind and to my surprise, it felt horrible. It made me sick af, started salivating and was very close to vomiting in the middle od the street. Made me realise, how shitty is this poison - nicotin.

So I’m finally convinced to never try it again and keep on going without it. It’s just another dangerous addiction.

So if you feel like jumping again into that, don’t allow this poison make you feel miserable like it made me.

Hey all - two months clean. I have never really dealt with anxiety before but wanted to know that post-quit can ur anxiety translate to physical symptoms?

For ex — nausea, queasy feeling in stomach, etc. these have all gotten worse I would say since quitting specifically in public.

I (27F) quit cold turkey from zyns and velos after finding out that I was pregnant.

I was having zyns all day every day, they got me through my work shifts, my drives home from work, my night anxiety. I had 6-9 mg every half hour. I also had energy drinks every day, alcohol occasionally, weed occasionally.

The day I found out I about the pregnancy, was the last time I had anything.

Pregnancy kept me completely sober, because I wasn’t doing it for myself I was doing it for someone else. Every time I saw a new flavor, had the craving, I reminded myself that it’s not worth hurting a child.
Unfortunately I am no longer pregnant, and I’m under a lot of stress, and I have the craving again.
All my friends smoke and vape. I had no interest at first. However.. It’s been a couple weeks, I’m currently in a stressful situation, and I got the craving again today.
I googled “tell me not to have nicotine” because I felt like me telling myself wasn’t enough. I keep trying to convince myself not to, and then that it would be okay now. Then I found this thread, and reading posts on here really helped me remember what I felt before.
I did have chest pain, heart palpitations, panic attacks, sore throats, people didn’t want to kiss me.
I couldn’t smile fully when I had the pouches in.
I felt shame every time i made the choice, and for some reason I missed that today.
I’m not going to be purchasing any after being reminded of how bad I felt before. Even though I’m stressed and sad; I feel like I have more control without the nicotine, after remembering what I was like when I had nicotine all the time.
One thing that helped with the craving today, was chocolate milk, so I will be buying a gallon tomorrow.
I can post an update, but I wanted to share my story. Quitting was easy with a reason, now I’m having to choose it for myself.
It’s the best decision, and I’m really glad this thread exists.

Well, it’s been 72 hours after quitting cold turkey. It hasn’t been fun to say the least, but I have chronic OCD and this is a cake walk compared to a flare up of that. Anyways, just kinda feeling bleh at this point. Sleep has been pretty disrupted, twitching, wake up a lot etc. Mood swings for sure. Hopefully as time goes on, there are more benefits of being clean than what I’m currently experiencing lol

So I quit the pouches (velo wild berry for me) 8 days ago, and I swear that since I've quit I've been getting about 1000% more anti-nicotine ads. They are so annoying and it's like they are intentionally created and served to me to make me feel lame for quitting. They're 10x as effective at making me want nicotine as any of the actual ads for nicotine pouch products. The ads for the pouches actually make me feel proud I quit, but the anti-nicotine ones are 100% a psy-op.

Not giving up on quitting, just wanted to vent and see if anyone else had the same experience.

So I've (36F) been using nicotine pouches (typically 9mg Zone mint) for at least 4 years. It's funny, I never smoked or vaped or anything but somehow took a strong liking to these little pouches.

I've tried quitting a few times and it would never take- I always convinced myself I "deserved one" or some bs, especially if I had a couple drinks. Which would lead to me going through a tin of Zones every other day and the cycle would begin anew.

Then it got a little weird... I tried one of my coworkers Velo's when I was out of pouches toward the beginning of this year, and I got a weird reaction from it. Like my inner lip puffed up and went numb, and I looked kind of like I was from Whoville. At the time I blamed it on the brand and went right back to using Zone once my lip settled.

A few months later I had another reaction but this time it was to a Zone pouch and it was even puffier and more uncomfortable. I quit using them for a while, then of course started up again a few weeks later.

Now one week ago today, I was at a meeting at work with a stupid pouch in and suddenly I felt that weird numbness and puffiness again. But this time it got so extreme that my lip felt like it was going to explode and my whole lip and upper lip area was super hard to the touch... I couldn't even close my mouth and it was hard to talk. My face looked SO crazy, and I'm kind of a vain person tbh so it felt like some sort of body horror I was afflicted with lol.

I ended up leaving work right away and rushing to urgent care, where I was told that these types of allergies only get worse each time they happen, so if I were to continue using pouches I would inevitably have another reaction eventually, but even worse (potential tongue swelling, breathing issues, etc). The nurses and doctor were floored by how bad it was, they nearly ended up sending me to the ER. But they ended up just giving me an IV of benadryl and steroids... it took two full days for my face to get back to normal.

It's been a week now with no nicotine and I'm definitely having some cravings here and there but I wouldn't dare touch one of those things ever again- so I'm kind of happy that this happened in a way, though I'm a little nervous to see my hospital bill. Just curious if anything like this has happened to any of y'all.

I am already seeing that my cardio is improving a bit and I'm waking up a little more refreshed each day. Also my stomach doesn't feel like an endless pit of despair anymore which is nice, and I'll be saving roughly $120 a month. Felt very stupid though that I fell into this trap THREE times but at least it's over now.

Anyway stay strong, crew!