About Stub Out
Stub Out is made by one person: me, Robert. I write the app, the guides on this blog, and the replies to your support emails. There is no content team and no marketing department — which is either reassuring or alarming, depending on how you feel about the typos.
Why I'm not going to lecture you
Here's the part most quit-smoking sites leave out. I have quit nicotine several times. Not "quit once, cleanly, years ago, and now I dispense wisdom from the summit" — I mean quit, held it for a while, and went back. More than once. I'm on another attempt right now, while writing this.
I could have written a bio that sounds more authoritative. It would have been a lie, and it would have made this whole site worse. Because the useful thing I actually have isn't a success story — it's a very detailed memory of the parts where it goes wrong. Day three. The first coffee. The specific self-negotiation your brain runs at 11pm when there's a shop still open. The moment after a slip where you decide whether one cigarette becomes a pack.
That's what Stub Out is built around, and it's why the guides here don't open with a list of health consequences you already know. You're not here because you're missing information. You're here because the hard part is hard.
What that means for what you read here
Two things I try to hold to:
The experience parts are mine. When a guide describes what a craving does to your attention span, or why the hands are worse than the lungs, that's first-hand. I'm not paraphrasing a pamphlet.
The factual parts are sourced. Anything about timelines, withdrawal, nicotine chemistry or health outcomes is linked to a primary source — the NHS, smokefree.gov, the CDC or the FDA. If I can't source a claim, I either cut it or say plainly that it's my own experience. Those two categories never get blended together to sound more convincing.
This is not medical advice
I'm a developer, not a doctor, and nothing here has been reviewed by a clinician. It's a mix of well-sourced public health information and the practical experience of someone who has been through withdrawal more times than he intended to.
That's genuinely useful for the day-to-day of quitting. It is not a substitute for talking to a professional — and for nicotine replacement therapy, prescription medication, or quitting while pregnant or with a heart condition, please do talk to a pharmacist or doctor. They are free in most countries and considerably better at this than a blog.
The app
Stub Out turns quitting into something you can see. Your streak, your savings and your cravings beaten get a scoreboard — and your addiction gets a face: Nik, a smug cartoon cigarette, vape or pouch who visibly falls apart the longer you hold the line. It sounds silly. That's the point. Willpower is fragile and abstract; wanting to beat a specific smug little villain turns out to be surprisingly durable.
Your data stays on your device — there are no accounts and no server storing anything about you. See the Privacy Policy.
Get in touch
Corrections, disagreements, bug reports and "you got this wrong" emails are all welcome — especially corrections. I read every one.
📮 info.uzvesk [at] gmail [dot] com