"What About People Who Quit and Regretted It?": The Fear of a Wrong Decision

Before you quit, you want reassurance that it will work out. So you look for stories. Not stories of people who quit and flourished, those are everywhere and do not help right now. You look for stories of people who quit and regretted it. If someone else tried it and wished they had not, then your hesitation is not cowardice. It is wisdom.

This search feels like due diligence. It is usually something else.

What the search is for

Looking for regret stories serves a psychological function: it provides evidence-based permission to stay. If quitting has a meaningful failure rate, if real people with real lives tried it and wished they had not, then the rational choice is to wait until you are more certain. And certainty, conveniently, never arrives.

Zeelenberg and Pieters’ theory of regret regulation describes how anticipated regret shapes decisions [3]. When people imagine regretting a choice, they often choose inaction, because regret from action (doing something and regretting it) feels worse than regret from inaction (not doing something and regretting that) [6]. The asymmetry is not rational, but it is consistent: the known discomfort of change feels riskier than the familiar discomfort of the status quo.

The impact bias

Research on affective forecasting has found that people consistently overestimate the intensity and duration of their emotional reactions to future events. Gilbert and colleagues called this the “impact bias” and demonstrated it across six studies: people predicted they would feel worse, and for longer, than they actually did after negative events [1].

Wilson and Gilbert’s broader review confirmed the pattern: the “psychological immune system,” the set of cognitive processes that help people adapt to and make sense of new circumstances, works faster and more effectively than people expect [2]. The regret you fear is likely to be shorter and milder than the regret you imagine.

A fictional example

The following is an illustrative example, not a real person’s story.

Aaron has been thinking about quitting cannabis for three months. Each time he gets close to deciding, he finds himself reading forums for people who quit and felt worse: anxiety increased, sleep worsened, social life shrank. He bookmarks these posts.

• What he thinks: “See? Some people are better off just managing their use. Quitting isn’t always the answer.”
• What he feels: Relief, followed by a quiet unease.
• What he does not notice: He never bookmarks the posts from people who quit and felt better, and those posts outnumber the regret stories considerably.

Aaron’s research is selective. He is not gathering evidence. He is building a case for the defense.

What the data actually shows

Research on smoking cessation provides some of the clearest data on post-quitting regret. A population-based survey of smokers who had quit found that the overwhelming majority did not regret the decision [5]. Regret, where it appeared, tended to be about the difficulty and discomfort of the quitting process rather than the outcome.

This does not mean quitting is painless. It means the pain is temporary and the satisfaction tends to grow. The first weeks may involve withdrawal, social awkwardness, boredom and loss. The months that follow usually involve adaptation. The studies on affective forecasting predict exactly this: the difficulty of the transition is real but shorter-lived than expected.

Making a revisable decision

The fear of regret assumes the decision is permanent and irreversible. For most habits, it is neither. You can frame quitting as an experiment rather than a life sentence:

1. Set a defined period. Thirty days is enough to learn something without feeling trapped.
2. Commit to the period, not to forever. You are gathering data, not swearing an oath.
3. Track what changes. Sleep, mood, energy, social life, money, time. Some will improve quickly; others may get worse before they get better.
4. Evaluate at the end. If you genuinely feel worse in most dimensions and the costs of quitting outweigh the costs of the habit, you have learned something. If you feel better, you have learned something else.

This approach defuses the all-or-nothing framing that makes the decision feel so heavy. You are not deciding who you will be forever. You are deciding what to try next.

For the thought that uses past failure to argue against trying again, see “I’ve tried before and it didn’t work”. For the ambivalence that makes wanting to quit feel dishonest, see wanting to quit versus wanting every part of quitting.

When to get more support. If you have been researching the decision for months without acting, or if the ambivalence itself is causing distress, a conversation with a counselor trained in motivational interviewing can help. Their job is not to push you toward quitting but to help you understand your own reasons and resolve the ambivalence at your own pace. In the US, SAMHSA’s National Helpline (1-800-662-4357) offers free, confidential referral. In the UK, your GP can refer you to talking therapies. If you are in distress, call or text 988 in the US, or contact Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland.