How to quit smoking or vaping in Australia: cravings, Quitline, NRT and app support

In Australia, quitting smoking and quitting vaping are increasingly talked about as the same problem, not two separate ones, and the official support reflects that. Quitline, My QuitBuddy and nicotine replacement therapy all now cover both. That is genuinely useful, because the underlying craving cycle behind a cigarette and a vape is largely the same, and having one clear starting point rather than two separate systems makes it far easier to actually begin.

Getting started with Quitline and My QuitBuddy

Quitline, reachable on 13 7848, also written as 13 QUIT, offers free, confidential advice from trained counsellors and can arrange a callback if speaking straight away is not convenient. It remains one of the most consistently recommended first steps for anyone quitting in Australia, whether the habit is smoking, vaping, or both.

My QuitBuddy is the free app from the Australian Government Department of Health, recently redeveloped with a new design and expanded features. It now supports dual quitting, smoking and vaping together, and includes progress tracking showing days, hours and money saved, a range of distraction tools for the moment a craving hits, a personal journal, and the option to nominate friends or family you can reach out to during a difficult stretch.

There is also Your Quit Plan, an online tool that walks through your habits and helps put together a plan tailored to you, and QuitCoach, which does something similar based on your specific smoking or vaping patterns. Both are free and worth using before your quit date, not after.

NRT options and what has changed with vaping

Nicotine replacement therapy remains the most widely recommended pharmacological support for quitting in Australia, and health authorities specifically note that combining a slow release product, such as a patch, with a faster acting option, like gum or a mouth spray, tends to work better than relying on just one.

How cravings actually work, and what officially helps

A craving feels like it will keep building until you give in, but it will not. Australian quit guidance specifically recommends delaying the urge to smoke or vape for at least five minutes, because it tends to pass on its own. That advice lines up closely with what the underlying research shows more broadly, that a single craving typically peaks and fades within a short window, whether or not you act on it.

In the moment, a few other things help. Keep your hands and mouth occupied with something else, water, a snack, a fidget object. Move if you can, even briefly. And notice the thought sitting underneath the urge, since naming it tends to loosen its grip.

Why habits and beliefs matter beyond the craving itself

Cravings are rarely random. They are usually tied to a specific routine, the drive to work, a coffee, a break at the pub, a stressful call, and the thought behind each one is often something like this always goes with this moment. That thought, more than nicotine alone, is what keeps the craving coming back in the same situations long after the physical withdrawal has eased.

This is where Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, becomes genuinely useful. Rather than only asking you to resist the urge through effort, CBT works on the belief feeding it, so the pull weakens on its own over time. This is the approach Smono's thirty day program is built around, working through one trigger and one belief at a time, and it applies whether the habit in question is smoking, vaping, or both.

Combining official support with a structured program

None of this is a competition. Quitline, My QuitBuddy and NRT handle the practical and physical side of quitting well, with genuine, trained support behind them. A structured CBT program adds the piece that addresses why the urge shows up in a particular moment in the first place, working through the beliefs and habits that made smoking or vaping feel automatic.

Used together, official support and a daily CBT structure cover both sides of quitting, the body and the thinking behind the habit, rather than leaving one of them unaddressed. If you want to understand more about why resisting cravings through willpower alone so often falls short, our piece on why willpower fails when you quit smoking goes into that directly.