The recommendation to use e-cigarettes (vaping) as an allegedly safer alternative to smoking, or as a way of quitting smoking, is a counsel of despair and almost an insult to smokers. It’s merely another way of continuing in slavery to nicotine which could last for the rest of one’s life.

Vaping means inhaling – typically hundreds of times every day – a nicotine-laced aerosol also containing a chemical soup of propylene glycol, flavourings, tobacco-specific nitrosamines, metal nanoparticles including arsenic, volatile organic compounds, and traces of other toxicants and carcinogens.

Nonetheless, for former smokers (or for those who have not previously smoked) who find themselves hooked on vaping, with the Symonds Method you can return to the happy state of being nicotine-free without a struggle.

The Symonds Method, as with smoking, is based on helping vapers demonstrate to themselves the real reason they vape and why quitting seems so hard. Once these are understood, vapers will find there should be no difficulty in refraining from something they don’t want to do anymore.

One-to-one sessions to stop vaping take place online or in person if you can visit Symonds’s office in Tokyo.

The sessions are conducted in a supportive, non-judgemental atmosphere. There are deliberately no vaping breaks. This is because it’s important for vapers to become aware what they experience – if anything – when they haven’t vaped for a while.

Most people will have vaped shortly before the session starts, and at the end of it, when asked how they are feeling, usually say they feel fine and can easily cope with any lingering desire to vape.

In the unlikely event that you have still difficulty quitting, up to a total of five sessions are available within six months of the first one, without extra payment.

To learn how to stop vaping and become nicotine-free, follow the same steps as for stopping smoking by clicking here.

Dr Symonds has also written a book about how to stop vaping in which, among other thought-provoking background material, you can learn why the foundation of the claim that vaping is 95 per cent safer than smoking is built on sand.

Available from Amazon UK, Amazon US, and all good bookshops.