This might sound odd, but I am absolutely addicted to marijuana. As I write this, I’m about to go smoke a joint.
Now, I understand all the negative aspects. It’s a drain on my money, focus, motivation, health, etc… It’s also illegal. But everytime I go to quit, I come back to it. I’ve just been doing it for such a long time now. 10 plus years and counting.
Someone give me advice to quit this shit cause I’m sick of it.
Reported for discussion of current illegal drug use.
This guy is seeking our help and you just want to get him in trouble? What the fuck? Why did you need to do that?
I think the rules are that you’re not allowed to promote illegal activity. I hope the mods don’t shut down the thread just because he’s asking for advice how to quit.
To the OP: I think you should talk to someone in real life about it. Most people don’t quit addictions without help.
I went through a fairly rough withdrawal from marijuana myself. I haven’t gone through opiate withdrawal or anything really seriously physical, but for me it was worse than quitting smoking at first. (The nicotine withdrawal lingers alot longer though.) I remember thinking when I smoked every day how addicted I was. I couldn’t imagine a life that did not involve it.
I’ve found that if I’m not around it all the time, and don’t have easy access to be able to buy it whenever I want, it’s not that big a deal once I’m off it for a week or two. I tried the method of buying some and only smoking once or twice a week, but I could not do that. I’d just think about it all the time if I had it in the house. And if I buy some, then go a while without before buying again, the repeated withdrawal (maybe I shouldn’t be using that word, since it’s supposedly not physically addictive, but that what it’s like for me) is just not fun. It totally fucks up my sleep every time I go off, and it makes me grumpy and unpleasant.
Lucky for me, none of my friends smoke and I don’t have easy access to it, so after a while I mostly forget about it. Sometimes I think how much fun it would be to get high and go do such-and-such. I wouldn’t mind being able to get a little for a concert festival this weekend. If somebody offers me a hit, I always say yes. And my tolerance has plummeted, so one or two hits will have me ecstatic for the next six hours, heh.
I don’t know if this is helpful for you, it’s just my experience with it. But there are a million people who will tell you how weed isn’t physically addictive or it’s totally harmless or whatever. People will try to make you feel weak for thinking you are addicted to it. But for some of us, it can be addictive, whether physically or mentally or whatever it is, it can have a very strong hold on you.
If you want to quit, I’d say the most important thing is not to hang out with people who sell it or smoke it. Then try a month without it or something like that. If you are anything like me, it’s going to be rough at first. You won’t be able to sleep, then when you do, you’ll have some intense dreams. You’ll be in a bad mood all the time. But it really doesn’t last forever, even when it seems like it will. If you can make a good not-high life for yourself, with good people to hang out with and interesting things to do, it will become Not That Big Of A Deal relatively quickly.
But Geez, there are rules and then there are technicalities. I mean he was appealing to the board to help him quit this illegal activity, not promote it. :rolleyes:
Not cool, Oakminster.
Okay let’s keep this guy on the pc a little bit longer; have almost completed the tracer on ip address, Oakminster and I will be working with local police, be assisting in the raid, make sure this poster is brought to justice. Arrests will be made, warrants served, seizure and forfeiture proceedings implemented. There’s still a lot of pot talk out there, true. But we need to work together to stamp it out whenever we can. Let’s keep our message board clean!
That’s right Scotty Mo. Wait til Oakminster and I show up, you’ll wish you never smoked pot! And I will be personally confiscating and taking charge of your stash, that is if it’s up to my standards. (I’m pretty spoiled, have friends in Ann Arbor.)
What you have to do is smoke a whole pack of it, and then you’ll learn your lesson!
Scotty Mo: You might find some useful insights in this recent thread.
I’d second the suggestion that you get help. NA/AA are always there, but if you want to go a different route I’d suggest counseling. I quit drinking cold turkey and was initially completely against the idea of AA. After about 6 months of white-knuckling it I ended up getting counseling (through Catholic Charities, even though I’m not even a little bit religious) on a sliding scale. I can’t overemphasize how much it helped me.
I did eventually go to some AA meetings as well - and found it helped quite a bit, once I started attending the atheist/agnostic AA meetings. I don’t know that it would have helped me as much in the early stages, though. There are a lot of options for help, though. I hope others with specific advice about marijuana addiction will come along soon with more suggestions.
Take care of yourself.
IMO if you just want pot when you don’t have it, but you don’t suffer physical symptoms of withdrawl, you aren’t really addicted to it. I smoked pot for nearly twenty years, every day if I had it. There were dry spells when it wasn’t available, and while I was annoyed and upset at not having it, I wasn’t sickened by not having it.
OTOH, I was addicted to cigarettes, and I had all kinds of symptoms way beyond “jonesing” for it when I stopped. The difference is quite obvious if you’re going through it.
So – do you have real physical symptoms when you stop, or is it more some kind of nervous tension about the idea of getting through the day without being stoned?
What helped my daughter’s father was to get caught, go to jail, and then get sent to a deportation facility. Then he “found” Jesus.
I wouldn’t recommend that route, but it IS hard to find there.
Reported for being a dick!
I think it’s more a behavioural pattern than a physical addiction, Scotty Mo. Which kind of makes it easier to stop doing. The simple answer of course is just don’t mull up. And do something instead that feels like an achievement of some kind. After the first four days or so, you’ll find you’re sleeping better too.
Really. If you wanna give it up, it’s easier than you think. Maybe it’s the things that surround it (like your basic social life, and the idea that it’s part of who you are) are what makes it feel so hard.
You can do it. Think of other things in your life you’ve given up. Every one of them is proof that you can.
I know this will be an unpopular sentiment, but crap, there are plenty worse things in life to be involved with.
When I tried to quit and was in regular habit of it, whenever I wanted to smoke some and was feeling kind of cranky and restless because of it, would exercise til I was tired. This is what worked for me, and cravings/anxiety only lasted a few days; the loss of appetite, insomnia, grumpiness.
I had a friend who used the same technique with a stationary bicycle, hopped on and pedaled like a banshee when feeling the habit of toking coming on.
If you can tough it out just for a few days things will be getting better and you’ll be getting back on track again.
There’s a pretty convincing body of evidence now that cannabis withdrawal has a significant physiological basis as well as a psychological one. While the physical dependency and withdrawal is not nearly so strong as that for alcohol, nicotine, or even opioids, it certainly does play a factor in success/failure at abstaining for many folks.
How is it so easy for you to buy? Is there a way to distance yourself from being able to buy it such as deleting someone’s number from your phone or driving a different way home from work?
I saw in the other thread that the dude can’t just smoke occasionally because if he’s got any in the house, he thinks about it all the time. Perhaps you need to make sure there’s none in the house.
Not trying to get him in trouble, and I don’t care if he’s smoking up like Cheech & Chong. I think there’s a rule against discussing current drug use, and the OP stated his intent to go smoke a joint after posting. I reported it so a mod can decide whether the thread should remain open or not. This is not the type of thing that usually draws a Warning–just a thread closure, if the Mods feel the post is over the line. As I see it, the topic would be fine, except for the statement regarding immediate intent to smoke marijuana. Mods may or may not agree.
Our rules against posting about current drug use are intended to thwart people who’d like to promote illegal activity. Clearly, the OP is interested in getting help with an addiction. In that spirit, this thread will remain open to allow others to give Scotty Mo encouragement, advice, anecdotes and other information to help him with his addiction. No one will run afoul of our rules as long as they stay away from 1) presenting information on how to obtain illegal drugs or 2) writing glowing descriptions of drug use and/or posting while under the influence of any impairing substance.
Thanks, everyone, for your cooperation, and best wishes to you, Scotty Mo, as you face this challenge.
Ellen Cherry
IMHO Moderator