I have quit cigarettes successfully (for ~10 years now) and found it wasn't too difficult. However, I have known people who could quit indefinitely and pick it back up without issue and people who are going through rounds of quitting, returning, quitting and so forth.

I personally believe there are additional elements involved that could be genetic or psychological.

I used to both smoke and extensively used pure Nicotine (gums, sprays etc.)

In my opinion, majority of the people who are stopping Nicotine (not just smoking) approach it as an incredibly hard challenge. The process is demonised and described as something that is really hard to complete. That's exactly what I would like people to think if I'd be to work in a marketing department for tobacco corporations.

While there is a longer story behind it, I quit cold turkey in March this year. This time was much easier - I didn't approach it as something that is hard to do. While this might sound banal, I focused on what am I getting out of it, not what I'm loosing. Everything, from my gums to my muscles got better.

Nicotine in its pure form is definitely great brain stimulant, I'm still a big fan. I just don't think it's worth the cost, both from financial and health perspective to use it often.

cigarette smoke also has a bunch of other stuff, including MAOIs. it's definitely not _just_ the nicotine. iirc, cigarettes also have additives to make the nicotine hit harder / cross the blood brain barrier faster, which probably doesn't help

I dunno about that. Personally, I smoked cigarettes for about 5 years, then quit for about a decade, and then picked up vaping a few years ago.

I’m definitely just as addicted to the Juul as I ever was to cigarettes, if not more so, and it definitely seems like it will be harder to quit. Cigarettes are so gross it’s almost a benefit, you need to go outside to smoke, the vape is just so easy and so much cleaner, I’ve definitely found it much harder to cut down.

My friends who took up vaping (esp in pandemic) ended up vaping near-constantly

It's not the 80s, so vaping allows one to sit around the house and duff it in a way that most people wouldn't do with cigarettes.

I feel like nicotine intake can dramatically increase with vaping.

Mathwise it's about 6mg of nicotine adsorbed per cigarette. That gives you a way to compare dosage of nicotine to vaping a certain concentration of juice.

Probably not a great 1:1 because there are other things in play with smoking, but, ballparky enough.

If you wanted something closer, you'd need to figure out how the other compounds in cigarette smoke affect nicotine adsorption and activity.

I was an occasional smoker for over a decade and only got addicted to nicotine when I started vaping. It's more anecdata, but I don't think vaping is any less addictive than smoking cigarettes, and for many people vaping will increase their likelihood of addiction just because it's easier to vape unnoticed and there's no natural stopping point like there is with cigarettes.

I've also temporarily quit nicotine and caffeine when I got sick, and I think part of the reason is that the withdrawal effects are less noticeable and/or maybe you attribute them to the illness. Also, if you get sick enough to take time off from work, that tends to coincide with the worst withdrawal effects, which last about three days in my experience.