Almost everything written about nicotine withdrawal was measured in cigarette smokers. That is not a reason to ignore it — the dependence is on the same molecule, and the CDC's position is that the benefits of stopping are likely similar — but it is a reason to say which is which. Below, anything measured in vapers specifically is marked. Everything else is extrapolated, and you should read it as a good estimate rather than a clock.
The first day
Withdrawal begins within hours of the last dose, not the next morning. For a heavy vaper — someone reaching for the device every twenty minutes — the gap between doses has never been long enough to feel it, so day one is often the first time the sensation is recognisable at all.
What shows up: irritability that arrives faster than the thought behind it, difficulty holding attention on one thing, a restlessness that is physical rather than emotional, and hunger. The hunger is real and it is not a failure of discipline.
Day two to day four — the peak
This is the worst of it, and it is worth knowing in advance that the worst has a date. Symptoms peak around the third day and then begin to decline. Sleep is usually poor here. Mood is usually bad here. Neither is a signal about how the quit is going.
One correction to the copy you have read elsewhere. The line that "a craving lasts three to five minutes" is coaching material, not a clinical constant. What is true is more useful: an urge crests quickly, within a few minutes, and then subsides on its own whether or not you act on it — and it comes back in waves, several times an hour on a bad day. You do not have to defeat a craving. You have to be somewhere else when it crests.
Week one to week two
The physical part resolves over roughly two weeks. Concentration returns before mood does, which is a strange order to live through: you can work again while still feeling flat about it.
This is also the stretch where relapse is most likely — the discomfort is falling, the vigilance falls with it, and the situations that used to include a device start coming around again.
Week three to week four
Symptoms become episodic rather than constant. They stop being a background state and become events: a specific bar, a specific drive, a specific argument. Those triggers can keep their power for months after the chemistry is finished, which is not a sign of weakness — it is a sign that a habit had a shape, and the shape outlives the substance.
A caution on the milestone lists you will see: "twenty minutes, twelve hours, one year" charts are cigarette data — heart rate, carbon monoxide, cardiovascular risk. They do not transfer cleanly to vaping, and no honest source claims they do.
The part that is actually encouraging
A common fear is that nicotine was holding anxiety down and stopping will let it up. The Truth Initiative's work points the other way: around nine in ten people who quit vaping reported less stress, anxiety or depression afterwards, not more. Withdrawal feels like anxiety. It is not the same thing, and it ends.
This is the stretch where a counter earns its place. Day four feels identical to day three from the inside; a number that says otherwise is the only external evidence you have that anything is moving.