HOW I QUIT MY ADDICTION TO MARIJUANA
A Story of Marijuana Addiction & Key Points that Helped an Addict to Quit and Avoid Relapse
During 2 years and 4 months of every day all day pot smoking of very high THC California weed, starting in June 2015, I only was able to stop for a measly 6 days in June 2016. I joined a Facebook group on Marijuana Addiction on October 7, 2017 and I quit the same day. I made a declaration of my intent kind of how you're supposed to do when quitting any vice, but it was to other marijuana addicts, not to friends or family that don't use, it wasn't a declaration to people who love pot and would laugh at me wanting to quit. There was a community of like-minded people here who were / and are supportive. The people in society who voice their unhappiness with pot addiction are too few and far between, making it hard to quit, and making relapse more possible. So this Facebook group put me at ease that marijuana can be a problem, it can be an addiction and that I'm not alone, something is not wrong with me, there are people like us that exist.
A) 2 Helpful "I's": 1) Information and 2) Inspiration
1) Information relates to what to expect. If quitting were easy everyone would be doing it for a long time, but they end up quitting for a short while and then relapsing and quitting, till this cycle tires them and makes them feel lousy, this endlessness isn't healthy. What makes us pot addicts relapse is the uncomfortable withdrawals present in a very strong type of weed that is around in the 21st Century, the most highest levels of THC in weed that has ever been around, often 40 % THC in flower, and 100 % THC in concentrates!
When we quit, we're agitated and frustrated a lot and often, we might get into road rage when driving, we might feel tired and not get enough sleep (insomnia), and as a result we forget things that make our day crappy, and at the end of the day, we justify using again because of the withdrawal symptoms and the grief they gave us, so we say: "I had a crappy day, I need some weed today, everything went wrong, I will quit next Wednesday." This is where our "I should quit," has to be replaced with a stronger "I MUST quit." Knowing that the 1st three days are difficult when quitting pot is essential, because we know and are given the hope that we have to just hang in there for the 1st 3 days, then things will be easier. When we reach the 4th day, we look forward to the next pot withdrawl hurdle 7 days, after we reach day 8, ignoring all the messed up, mean, and difficult people, we then look forward to the next hurdle 2 weeks, when we reach day 15, we coach ourselves and give ourselves a pep talk..."come on, just another 6 days and we made it to 21 days or 3 weeks.
Information lets you know what withdrawal symptoms to expect at certain stages and also what strategies to use. Some strategies are OTC headache medicines like aspirin or Ibuprofen for headaches. Other strategies are sleep aids like melatonin for another withdrawal symptom which is insomnia. Another strategy is B-12 or caffeine or energy drinks or Korean ginseng for the feeling of tiredness we experience, and so on and so on. Information is all over the web, in public libraries in books, etc.
**NOTE: Dr. Ken Starr (addiction medical specialist) recommends the co-enzyme NAD (https://kenstarrmd.com) and L-Glutamine (400 mg), to ease cravings and help with sense of well-being. He says that it takes time and a lot of effort to make it through the tough days. Hang in there and be prepared for the rough road, however, it will get better and better.
2) Inspiration is more difficult, you have to grab it out of information. You have to be creative. Writing down a list of reasons to quit is great, but all the motivational books and speakers and therapists say that it's Emotion that really drives human behavior, so you should really put emotion into reading your list of reasons that should be on a piece of paper you can fold up and take with you everywhere and pull it out when you get an urge. Get creative get passionate, use cuss words and exclamation points!! Visualize yourself clearly in you mind's eye as healthy with a clear mind and healthier teeth and gums and improved breathing and lung function. Write a 1 page contract that you John Doe or Jane hereby decided on ______, ____, 2019 that you will no longer be a pot addict! You decide to stop using because of the following reasons _______ . At the end of 1 week you will reward yourself with _______. At the end of 90 days, you will donate $___ to Marijuana Anonymous, At the end of 12 months, you will reward yourself. *Sign and Date it. Glue a passport size photo of your favorite person or your significant other or a dear friend or family member to this contract to help motivate you further. Do whatever it takes, but get creative, *and make it memorable, make it worthwhile!
Also inspiration involves finding time-tested sources of inspiration from videos, books, documentaries. It's important to find good sources, and not like a teenager's reasons for temporarily quitting pot or someone who wants to take a break from pot to pass a drug test. Some of the best inspirational books are classics and have helped me, they are widely known and respected sources: 1) Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill 2) Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins 3) Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins 4) Quit Smoking Made E-Z by Gerald Esopenko 4) The Secret DVD / movie with Rhonda Byrne 5) The Secret book 6) Seb Grant's Quit Marijuana Guide (the free version readily available on the web and on youtube, etc. etc.
Now it's best to buy these books rather than borrow them from the library and have to worry about returning them in time or renewing them. Buying them would allow you to mark up these books and underline them, important since that would work on your subconscious mind. Buying them means also that you have made an investment another sacrifice, you will have a stronger more serious commitment to quitting. Even when you've purchased these books, it may not be doable to carry them around with you to work, to the store, to the laundromat, etc. That's why it's important to write down key parts from these important respected inspirational books on a piece of paper. You will usually find key parts because they are repeated often or are underlined in the book or are in bold. Transfer them into an outline on lined 8 and a half " by 11 " computer / copy paper, *in your own handwriting to make it part of your psyche and subconscious mind* fold them up and put them in your wallet, your purse or your pants pocket. When you have "down time" at work or during lunch, or if you're waiting on a line for a cashier at a store, instead of grinding your teeth while the selfish chatty customer talks on and on and you have to be at a certain place, take out your inspirational notes and read them, you can't make the person go faster without causing conflict. You want to avoid conflict for the 1st two weeks of your quit. When you read these inspirational notes, you're actually giving yourself spiritual nourishment, you're given yourself a spiritual vaccine against any and all future pot using urges. So that's important. When you read them again and again and underline them, and read them out loud, you're giving yourself a pep talk, you're practicing self-hypnosis. For example, one important inspirational quote is: I will focus almost all of my time on a solution and only a very small bit of my time on the problem or day by day, minute by minute I'm getting better and better....or "this too shall pass."
When an urge comes it's 2 paths you can choose, when you turn down the urge path, you're actually strengthening your quit. Think of the things that give you urges. I know when I quit for 6 days, on the 7th day it was near the evening and the whole day was going crappy and someone cut me off while I was driving and I almost had an accident. I said that's the final straw the whole day is crappy and now this! So, I called my dealer and scored some pot. That was it, group members, 6 days down the drain....only 6 days of sobriety in 2 years and 4 months of being in a fog, worrying about getting into an auto accident high on weed, or wasting my money. All I had to do...was slow down....reward myself with some other interesting stuff...like buy a gallon of my favorite ice cream--chocolate chip mint and rent a film that I always loved but didn't watch in a long time.
With information, you will find what natural vitamins and herbs will help with anxiety (see Dr. Ken Starr's recommendations). You'll also learn that eating a banana will lower your blood pressure and perhaps your agitation level. You will also learn that not only drinking water, but ice cold water several times a day will cool you down so you won't be so stressed and it will also clear out all the THC toxins a lot faster.
While quitting you let a lot of crap slide. Let mean nasty people slide, don't engage with them. Ignore them. Repeat the mantra: it's your sobriety that matters most of all, everything and everybody else takes a back seat.
You let things slide like not being able to do the laundry today, you can do it 4 days later, the world won't end, but the stress might be a trigger for you to use and you don't want that.
What I humbly believe you shouldn't slide is your use of marijuana...You "must" not use, it isn't I "should" not use anymore. You've probably done the "should not" too many times and where has it got you? Nowhere! The tiresome up and down of using, quitting, relapsing, quitting, relapsing, quitting, relapsing, using but cutting down, etc. etc. This tug of war isn't healthy. When someone offers you weed or tries to sell you it, which happened to me 2 weeks ago while I was at the beach, I told him "No," to his question of "what's up man, you lookin to buy some herb?" Practice saying "No..." or "I quit." It's your time, it's your health, it's time to be selfish, don't take on too much responsibilities. You want to in an ideal situation keep conflict and responsibilities to a minimum, if possible, if not, that's ok, too. If you have to spend some time with the kids, make it an abbreviated outing, just say "sorry kids, Daddy or Mommy isn't feeling well, we can't spend 2 hours here today, we can spend 30 mnutes or 40 minutes." Do this for the 1st 2 weeks, which I know for smoking tobacco, is the hardest (the 1st 2 weeks, and it's probably like that for pot, also).
B) REPLACEMENT THERAPY
Nicotene or tobacco smokers have a "replacement therapy," whether it's Detective Kojak's lollipop or nicotene gum or the nicotene patch, or chantix....
Get creative. What works for my nauseau spells is sucking on limes. I slice a lime into 2 pieces and suck on it, it resembles the lime taste that top shelf marijuana left in my mouth and prevents vomiting or nauseausness caused by my anti-seizure really bitter medications.
Green Tea without sugar Replacement Therapy:
When do we use? Think about it? When do pot addicts use? It's like with cigarette addicts, the following 3 are the usual triggers: 1) Before they have to do something 2) After something stressful or after bad news or after they accomplish some chore or errand 3) Boredom
A cup of green tea takes 2 and a half minutes to make using a microwave. You can make one anywhere and at office jobs there's almost always a food pantry area with a fridge and a microwave and seats. Take several green tea breaks. Bring a thermos full of green tea. The green tea has herbal energy and caffeine. Remember weed had herbal energy and now that you quit that herbal energy is gone, so green tea does a wonderful job in helping with a marijuana withdrawal symptom: fatigue. Instead of smoking a bowl when one of the above 3 mentioned triggers happen, make and drink a cup of green tea. That's a lot of green tea, but it's healthy because it has lots of anti-oxidants. Don't use sugar. Drink green tea without sugar.
When an urge comes look at all your reasons for quitting, there are 2 paths you can choose from: using or not using. Shift your weight. Change you focus. The urge lasts just a little bit then it's gone.
C) ANTI-ANXIETY FOR HARDCORE EXTRA-NERVOUS USERS
You may need some type of anti-anxiety medicine prescribed by doctors or some anti-anxiety natural herbal vitamin if you have been using concentrates and dabs and /or high levels of THC. Do your research. I'm just providing an outline here.
D) A REGULAR SYSTEM OF REWARDS AND GIFTS TO YOURSELF This is actually the fun part of quitting. When you do quit, it would be wise to write down the time of your quit in addition to your quit date. For example, you quit on ___ __, 2017 at ___ am / pm. After you reach that time every day, reward yourself with some tasty pastries, or a hot shower to relax your muscles, or a relaxing bubble bath or listening to your favorite song while sitting down watching your favorite TV show, eating your favorite fruit like chilled pomegranates. You can get creative with a regular system of like every 2 hour rewards or even hourly rewards or like every 20 minutes drink a cup of green tea. A regular system of rewards takes away the Depression that may be another symptom of quitting. Weed was like an old "friend," but it turned out that to you, it was really an old "fiend," it kept you company, it had a sense of humor and made you laugh, it numbed feelings of loneliness or it alleviated boredom.
E) STAY AWAY FROM USERS WHEN QUITTING Stay away from pot smokers or pot edible users. At least for like 90 days or longer. Remember other people will try to convince you that nothing is wrong with weed, that you should cut down. But it's your Achilles heel, it's something you can't have one of, you have to have more and more. You have a problem with it. They may be "lucky" to belong to the 90 percent of the population that can use weed every weekend or once a month, but you belong to the 10 percent who can't use weed socially.
F) WHEN MAKING A LIST OF REASONS TO QUIT Don't forget to mention all the bad stuff. Sure, you want to save more money and think clearly, but how about not getting into a major traffic accident while high on weed, and ending up with your arm amputated? You want to mention all the pain that can happen. Many respected Therapists and Motivational writers and speakers and Life Coaches have said that "we do more to stay out of pain than to get into pleasure" This means that we will quit weed more in order to not lose our job because of a drug test than we would quit weed so that we would get a job promotion (if the job didn't drug test) Don't ask me why. That's just the way it seems to be. I can think of the reasons why...maybe it's because we slow down to look at an accident? or don't really pay attention when people have a good day (cause we might get jealous), but when they tell us the horrible things they went through we may take an interest? Or how about the theory that we remember things that are not mundane or ordinary like an umbrella that we take to work or to a doctor's office, but forget to take with us when leaving, but we remember Outrageous things that we say "some day we will remember this hot mess and laugh about it!" We remember big events that stand out that are either scary or super fun?
G) AVOID RELAPSE AT ALL COSTS Relapsing can be a blow to one's Ego. I know this all to well Part of my story is that I quit for 4 years then I relapsed for 2 years and 4 months only to quit again for 42 days. I was in a supermarket parking lot, not happy about my living situation. In June of 2015....it was the summer, it was hot....I may have gotten pissed off about something publicly and this stranger said "maybe you should smoke weed, that's what helped me be more mellow." He let it slip into my consciousness, it grew little by little. I used it before. I live in a state California that recognizes "medical" marijuana, other people are functioning on it, they hold jobs and drive their cars while high on weed, they seem to be happy. I'm bored right now. I've been sober for 4 years, let me try to give it another try. Maybe this time, I can have better discipline over it and actually use it to Improve my life....that was a huge mistake. Although I was fortunate not to do anything stupid during my relapse after 4 years of sobriety, lucky to not have done something stupid that could've caused irreparable property damage to something near and dear to me, or damage to my health, I could have saved 10000s of dollars, I could have fostered new meaningful relationships, instead I ended up having a relationship with someone again that had fooled me before and ended up fooling me yet again--Mary Jane. Well, I can only think of that as a blessing in disguise. My "should" never use marijuana is NOW a Triumphant "MUST" never use....and for that it's probably a huge blessing in disguise, because I stopped 1 month and a half ago before something could happen while I was high on weed that made me super regret not having stopped. It's a valuable lesson that I learn from. This is the way it was probably meant to happen. God wanted me to relapse after 4 years of sobriety only so that I could see the Huge Value in never ever ever using again. Today I'm grateful.
The 12 steps of M.A. and A.A. and N.A. have been around and have worked for many addicts.
**get in some type of program for support, groups, talk therapy, exercise, healthy eating and give yourself permission to take this time to heal.
During 2 years and 4 months of every day all day pot smoking of very high THC California weed, starting in June 2015, I only was able to stop for a measly 6 days in June 2016. I joined a Facebook group on Marijuana Addiction on October 7, 2017 and I quit the same day. I made a declaration of my intent kind of how you're supposed to do when quitting any vice, but it was to other marijuana addicts, not to friends or family that don't use, it wasn't a declaration to people who love pot and would laugh at me wanting to quit. There was a community of like-minded people here who were / and are supportive. The people in society who voice their unhappiness with pot addiction are too few and far between, making it hard to quit, and making relapse more possible. So this Facebook group put me at ease that marijuana can be a problem, it can be an addiction and that I'm not alone, something is not wrong with me, there are people like us that exist.
A) 2 Helpful "I's": 1) Information and 2) Inspiration
1) Information relates to what to expect. If quitting were easy everyone would be doing it for a long time, but they end up quitting for a short while and then relapsing and quitting, till this cycle tires them and makes them feel lousy, this endlessness isn't healthy. What makes us pot addicts relapse is the uncomfortable withdrawals present in a very strong type of weed that is around in the 21st Century, the most highest levels of THC in weed that has ever been around, often 40 % THC in flower, and 100 % THC in concentrates!
When we quit, we're agitated and frustrated a lot and often, we might get into road rage when driving, we might feel tired and not get enough sleep (insomnia), and as a result we forget things that make our day crappy, and at the end of the day, we justify using again because of the withdrawal symptoms and the grief they gave us, so we say: "I had a crappy day, I need some weed today, everything went wrong, I will quit next Wednesday." This is where our "I should quit," has to be replaced with a stronger "I MUST quit." Knowing that the 1st three days are difficult when quitting pot is essential, because we know and are given the hope that we have to just hang in there for the 1st 3 days, then things will be easier. When we reach the 4th day, we look forward to the next pot withdrawl hurdle 7 days, after we reach day 8, ignoring all the messed up, mean, and difficult people, we then look forward to the next hurdle 2 weeks, when we reach day 15, we coach ourselves and give ourselves a pep talk..."come on, just another 6 days and we made it to 21 days or 3 weeks.
Information lets you know what withdrawal symptoms to expect at certain stages and also what strategies to use. Some strategies are OTC headache medicines like aspirin or Ibuprofen for headaches. Other strategies are sleep aids like melatonin for another withdrawal symptom which is insomnia. Another strategy is B-12 or caffeine or energy drinks or Korean ginseng for the feeling of tiredness we experience, and so on and so on. Information is all over the web, in public libraries in books, etc.
**NOTE: Dr. Ken Starr (addiction medical specialist) recommends the co-enzyme NAD (https://kenstarrmd.com) and L-Glutamine (400 mg), to ease cravings and help with sense of well-being. He says that it takes time and a lot of effort to make it through the tough days. Hang in there and be prepared for the rough road, however, it will get better and better.
2) Inspiration is more difficult, you have to grab it out of information. You have to be creative. Writing down a list of reasons to quit is great, but all the motivational books and speakers and therapists say that it's Emotion that really drives human behavior, so you should really put emotion into reading your list of reasons that should be on a piece of paper you can fold up and take with you everywhere and pull it out when you get an urge. Get creative get passionate, use cuss words and exclamation points!! Visualize yourself clearly in you mind's eye as healthy with a clear mind and healthier teeth and gums and improved breathing and lung function. Write a 1 page contract that you John Doe or Jane hereby decided on ______, ____, 2019 that you will no longer be a pot addict! You decide to stop using because of the following reasons _______ . At the end of 1 week you will reward yourself with _______. At the end of 90 days, you will donate $___ to Marijuana Anonymous, At the end of 12 months, you will reward yourself. *Sign and Date it. Glue a passport size photo of your favorite person or your significant other or a dear friend or family member to this contract to help motivate you further. Do whatever it takes, but get creative, *and make it memorable, make it worthwhile!
Also inspiration involves finding time-tested sources of inspiration from videos, books, documentaries. It's important to find good sources, and not like a teenager's reasons for temporarily quitting pot or someone who wants to take a break from pot to pass a drug test. Some of the best inspirational books are classics and have helped me, they are widely known and respected sources: 1) Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill 2) Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins 3) Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins 4) Quit Smoking Made E-Z by Gerald Esopenko 4) The Secret DVD / movie with Rhonda Byrne 5) The Secret book 6) Seb Grant's Quit Marijuana Guide (the free version readily available on the web and on youtube, etc. etc.
Now it's best to buy these books rather than borrow them from the library and have to worry about returning them in time or renewing them. Buying them would allow you to mark up these books and underline them, important since that would work on your subconscious mind. Buying them means also that you have made an investment another sacrifice, you will have a stronger more serious commitment to quitting. Even when you've purchased these books, it may not be doable to carry them around with you to work, to the store, to the laundromat, etc. That's why it's important to write down key parts from these important respected inspirational books on a piece of paper. You will usually find key parts because they are repeated often or are underlined in the book or are in bold. Transfer them into an outline on lined 8 and a half " by 11 " computer / copy paper, *in your own handwriting to make it part of your psyche and subconscious mind* fold them up and put them in your wallet, your purse or your pants pocket. When you have "down time" at work or during lunch, or if you're waiting on a line for a cashier at a store, instead of grinding your teeth while the selfish chatty customer talks on and on and you have to be at a certain place, take out your inspirational notes and read them, you can't make the person go faster without causing conflict. You want to avoid conflict for the 1st two weeks of your quit. When you read these inspirational notes, you're actually giving yourself spiritual nourishment, you're given yourself a spiritual vaccine against any and all future pot using urges. So that's important. When you read them again and again and underline them, and read them out loud, you're giving yourself a pep talk, you're practicing self-hypnosis. For example, one important inspirational quote is: I will focus almost all of my time on a solution and only a very small bit of my time on the problem or day by day, minute by minute I'm getting better and better....or "this too shall pass."
When an urge comes it's 2 paths you can choose, when you turn down the urge path, you're actually strengthening your quit. Think of the things that give you urges. I know when I quit for 6 days, on the 7th day it was near the evening and the whole day was going crappy and someone cut me off while I was driving and I almost had an accident. I said that's the final straw the whole day is crappy and now this! So, I called my dealer and scored some pot. That was it, group members, 6 days down the drain....only 6 days of sobriety in 2 years and 4 months of being in a fog, worrying about getting into an auto accident high on weed, or wasting my money. All I had to do...was slow down....reward myself with some other interesting stuff...like buy a gallon of my favorite ice cream--chocolate chip mint and rent a film that I always loved but didn't watch in a long time.
With information, you will find what natural vitamins and herbs will help with anxiety (see Dr. Ken Starr's recommendations). You'll also learn that eating a banana will lower your blood pressure and perhaps your agitation level. You will also learn that not only drinking water, but ice cold water several times a day will cool you down so you won't be so stressed and it will also clear out all the THC toxins a lot faster.
While quitting you let a lot of crap slide. Let mean nasty people slide, don't engage with them. Ignore them. Repeat the mantra: it's your sobriety that matters most of all, everything and everybody else takes a back seat.
You let things slide like not being able to do the laundry today, you can do it 4 days later, the world won't end, but the stress might be a trigger for you to use and you don't want that.
What I humbly believe you shouldn't slide is your use of marijuana...You "must" not use, it isn't I "should" not use anymore. You've probably done the "should not" too many times and where has it got you? Nowhere! The tiresome up and down of using, quitting, relapsing, quitting, relapsing, quitting, relapsing, using but cutting down, etc. etc. This tug of war isn't healthy. When someone offers you weed or tries to sell you it, which happened to me 2 weeks ago while I was at the beach, I told him "No," to his question of "what's up man, you lookin to buy some herb?" Practice saying "No..." or "I quit." It's your time, it's your health, it's time to be selfish, don't take on too much responsibilities. You want to in an ideal situation keep conflict and responsibilities to a minimum, if possible, if not, that's ok, too. If you have to spend some time with the kids, make it an abbreviated outing, just say "sorry kids, Daddy or Mommy isn't feeling well, we can't spend 2 hours here today, we can spend 30 mnutes or 40 minutes." Do this for the 1st 2 weeks, which I know for smoking tobacco, is the hardest (the 1st 2 weeks, and it's probably like that for pot, also).
B) REPLACEMENT THERAPY
Nicotene or tobacco smokers have a "replacement therapy," whether it's Detective Kojak's lollipop or nicotene gum or the nicotene patch, or chantix....
Get creative. What works for my nauseau spells is sucking on limes. I slice a lime into 2 pieces and suck on it, it resembles the lime taste that top shelf marijuana left in my mouth and prevents vomiting or nauseausness caused by my anti-seizure really bitter medications.
Green Tea without sugar Replacement Therapy:
When do we use? Think about it? When do pot addicts use? It's like with cigarette addicts, the following 3 are the usual triggers: 1) Before they have to do something 2) After something stressful or after bad news or after they accomplish some chore or errand 3) Boredom
A cup of green tea takes 2 and a half minutes to make using a microwave. You can make one anywhere and at office jobs there's almost always a food pantry area with a fridge and a microwave and seats. Take several green tea breaks. Bring a thermos full of green tea. The green tea has herbal energy and caffeine. Remember weed had herbal energy and now that you quit that herbal energy is gone, so green tea does a wonderful job in helping with a marijuana withdrawal symptom: fatigue. Instead of smoking a bowl when one of the above 3 mentioned triggers happen, make and drink a cup of green tea. That's a lot of green tea, but it's healthy because it has lots of anti-oxidants. Don't use sugar. Drink green tea without sugar.
When an urge comes look at all your reasons for quitting, there are 2 paths you can choose from: using or not using. Shift your weight. Change you focus. The urge lasts just a little bit then it's gone.
C) ANTI-ANXIETY FOR HARDCORE EXTRA-NERVOUS USERS
You may need some type of anti-anxiety medicine prescribed by doctors or some anti-anxiety natural herbal vitamin if you have been using concentrates and dabs and /or high levels of THC. Do your research. I'm just providing an outline here.
D) A REGULAR SYSTEM OF REWARDS AND GIFTS TO YOURSELF This is actually the fun part of quitting. When you do quit, it would be wise to write down the time of your quit in addition to your quit date. For example, you quit on ___ __, 2017 at ___ am / pm. After you reach that time every day, reward yourself with some tasty pastries, or a hot shower to relax your muscles, or a relaxing bubble bath or listening to your favorite song while sitting down watching your favorite TV show, eating your favorite fruit like chilled pomegranates. You can get creative with a regular system of like every 2 hour rewards or even hourly rewards or like every 20 minutes drink a cup of green tea. A regular system of rewards takes away the Depression that may be another symptom of quitting. Weed was like an old "friend," but it turned out that to you, it was really an old "fiend," it kept you company, it had a sense of humor and made you laugh, it numbed feelings of loneliness or it alleviated boredom.
E) STAY AWAY FROM USERS WHEN QUITTING Stay away from pot smokers or pot edible users. At least for like 90 days or longer. Remember other people will try to convince you that nothing is wrong with weed, that you should cut down. But it's your Achilles heel, it's something you can't have one of, you have to have more and more. You have a problem with it. They may be "lucky" to belong to the 90 percent of the population that can use weed every weekend or once a month, but you belong to the 10 percent who can't use weed socially.
F) WHEN MAKING A LIST OF REASONS TO QUIT Don't forget to mention all the bad stuff. Sure, you want to save more money and think clearly, but how about not getting into a major traffic accident while high on weed, and ending up with your arm amputated? You want to mention all the pain that can happen. Many respected Therapists and Motivational writers and speakers and Life Coaches have said that "we do more to stay out of pain than to get into pleasure" This means that we will quit weed more in order to not lose our job because of a drug test than we would quit weed so that we would get a job promotion (if the job didn't drug test) Don't ask me why. That's just the way it seems to be. I can think of the reasons why...maybe it's because we slow down to look at an accident? or don't really pay attention when people have a good day (cause we might get jealous), but when they tell us the horrible things they went through we may take an interest? Or how about the theory that we remember things that are not mundane or ordinary like an umbrella that we take to work or to a doctor's office, but forget to take with us when leaving, but we remember Outrageous things that we say "some day we will remember this hot mess and laugh about it!" We remember big events that stand out that are either scary or super fun?
G) AVOID RELAPSE AT ALL COSTS Relapsing can be a blow to one's Ego. I know this all to well Part of my story is that I quit for 4 years then I relapsed for 2 years and 4 months only to quit again for 42 days. I was in a supermarket parking lot, not happy about my living situation. In June of 2015....it was the summer, it was hot....I may have gotten pissed off about something publicly and this stranger said "maybe you should smoke weed, that's what helped me be more mellow." He let it slip into my consciousness, it grew little by little. I used it before. I live in a state California that recognizes "medical" marijuana, other people are functioning on it, they hold jobs and drive their cars while high on weed, they seem to be happy. I'm bored right now. I've been sober for 4 years, let me try to give it another try. Maybe this time, I can have better discipline over it and actually use it to Improve my life....that was a huge mistake. Although I was fortunate not to do anything stupid during my relapse after 4 years of sobriety, lucky to not have done something stupid that could've caused irreparable property damage to something near and dear to me, or damage to my health, I could have saved 10000s of dollars, I could have fostered new meaningful relationships, instead I ended up having a relationship with someone again that had fooled me before and ended up fooling me yet again--Mary Jane. Well, I can only think of that as a blessing in disguise. My "should" never use marijuana is NOW a Triumphant "MUST" never use....and for that it's probably a huge blessing in disguise, because I stopped 1 month and a half ago before something could happen while I was high on weed that made me super regret not having stopped. It's a valuable lesson that I learn from. This is the way it was probably meant to happen. God wanted me to relapse after 4 years of sobriety only so that I could see the Huge Value in never ever ever using again. Today I'm grateful.
The 12 steps of M.A. and A.A. and N.A. have been around and have worked for many addicts.
**get in some type of program for support, groups, talk therapy, exercise, healthy eating and give yourself permission to take this time to heal.
