\n<\/p>\n
SINGAPORE: The first thing Emily (not her real name) did every morning was reach for her vape – a habit she picked up after friends pressured her to try it at school when she was 13.<\/span><\/p>\n By 15, Emily had started to use Kpods, which are <\/span>vapes laced with etomidate<\/span>. The addiction left her struggling with brain fog and frequently skipping school and work.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI started to vape because of stress, but after a while, it became a habit,\u201d said the now 19-year-old.<\/span><\/p>\n “The hardest part was convincing myself I didn’t need to vape.”<\/span><\/p>\n Her turning point came during a six-month stint at the Reformative Training Centre (RTC) last year for an unrelated offence. There, she attended a rehabilitation programme that included weekly counselling sessions.<\/span><\/p>\n The sessions taught her to better manage stress, which in turn helped with her vaping addiction.<\/span><\/p>\n “I found out that I bottled my feelings up too much,” Emily said. \u201cI would let it build and build until my breaking point.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n While Emily underwent rehabilitation through a general programme, her experience reflects some of the challenges counsellors encounter when working with vape users trying to break free from addiction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ms Nicolina Ng, a counsellor at the National Addictions Management Service (NAMS), said that many participants develop greater self-awareness over the course of rehabilitation.<\/span><\/p>\n They become better able to identify the situations, emotions and people that trigger their cravings, while learning healthier coping strategies to manage them.<\/span><\/p>\n Since <\/span>anti-vaping enforcement<\/span> was stepped up in September last year, 520 offenders have been placed on vape rehabilitation programmes as of Mar 31, according to the Health Sciences Authority (HSA).<\/span><\/p>\n Of these, 123 have completed their rehabilitation, while 10 have reoffended.<\/span><\/p>\n Research shows that outcomes among participants of mandatory rehabilitation programmes can be comparable to those who engage voluntarily, provided the therapeutic approach is appropriately tailored, said Ms Eliza Yong, a senior counsellor at NAMS.<\/span><\/p>\n Psychoeducation, which teaches individuals about the specifics of their well-being and symptoms, plays an important role in counselling sessions, Ms Yong added.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMany participants – particularly younger individuals – may be unaware of the physiological basis of etomidate dependence, and understanding this can reframe their experience of cravings and withdrawal as clinical phenomena rather than personal failings.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE: The first thing Emily (not her real name) did every morning was reach for her vape – a habit she picked up after friends…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--qo97CNrN--\/c_crop,h_899,w_1599,x_1,y_1\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/06\/18\/istock-2199840682.jpg?itok=0lkWMDsl","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[924,1514,19855,7093,7305,653,342],"class_list":["post-61916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-escape","tag-lives","tag-rebuilding","tag-rely","tag-substance","tag-users","tag-vape","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/61917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\n
Read Full Article At Source <\/a>
\n