# Give me a reason to quit **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 17, 2011, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904 "2011-01-17T04:19:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/41 "2011-01-19T05:08:22Z")
> [@Scotty Mo](#): > > I don’t know what to say. It’s like I’m addicted but not really. If I had to stop for something, I would. In fact, at one point in my life I had stopped for around 6 months. And I don’t recall it ever being an issue. But if I don’t have a good enough reason to stop, then I’m addicted and I can’t. > > Sometimes, I actually enjoy it but most of the time I don’t and I don’t understand why I do it except that I want too. Bollocks. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/42 "2011-01-19T06:33:22Z")
Posters here are evaluating you, based on what limited, possibly incomplete context you provided to us, and offering their opinions about you (probably based on life experiences and/or knowlege that is not appropriate to your situation). We don’t have the complete picture of you. It’s not your fault. It’s not our fault. It’s no one’s fault. It just is. A family member or close friend is in a much better position, although potential objectivity and brute honesty would be questionable. Ultimately, you have to decide for yourself, regardless of what others may offer to you. Because unless you decide for your life, you will always have an excuse to hide behind and continue along a path you yourself are unsure. Continue your lifestyle, or change it. It’s your life, it’s your decision. FWIW, your decision will be better made and a greater chance for success if you seek a local counselor you can trust, with the professional expertise in helping you to decide which path to take. I wish you well. Keep us posted. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/43 "2011-01-19T07:00:05Z")
Use your inner sloth! For a while at least, get even lazier. Don’t get up and go around looking to buy more pot. Smoke up what you have. Have a beer! Sleep in! Watch that _Law & Oder_ rerun for the tenth time. Slacking is your best approach to dealing with any vice. Just choose to do nothing rather than those things that will cause you harm. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/44 "2011-01-19T23:29:33Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > Slacking is your best approach to dealing with any vice. Just choose to do nothing rather than those things that will cause you harm. This is actually working for me, for dieting. The food’s all the way downstairs, in the kitchen. I don’t want to get up and go down there, so it’s easy to avoid getting myself a snack. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/45 "2011-01-20T00:54:07Z")
One of my series of proposed Slacker books will be “The Slacker Diet”. FYI, there will not be a Slacker exercise book. ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/46 "2011-01-20T01:06:06Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > Fair enough. I’ve never been to any kind of addicts anonymous meeting, and my perception is based entirely on what I’ve read, and what people I’ve known have told me. If NA is more camaraderie based, and less super-magic-cult based, that’s worth something. It obviously varies, sometimes different groups even within the same city can have distinctly different vibes, but overall the impression I get is that AA is a lot more super-magic-cult based than NA, and a lot less camaraderie and mutual support based. A good group can be a real boon when one needs understanding and encouragement, and a bad group can be counterproductive at best. Unfortunately, the only way to find out whether a group is good or bad is to check them out. I dunno if there’s a way to evaluate a group other than just going to their meetings. Of course, if one finds it’s not worth their while, it doesn’t cost anything to stop going. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/47 "2011-01-20T01:22:20Z")
Huh. Duly noted. I have known) **a lot** of people who have been to AA meetings (some forced! :eek:), and their complaints have been uniformly consistent. A million years ago, it never occurred to me to question AA or their methods. My thought was always, “They’re the ones that help people with problems. Good for them.” A few seconds of poking around, prompted by person after person lodging the same complaint, and looking at what their twelve steps actually were, I thought, “This reminds me of total bullshit.” I don’t know a lot of people who have been to NA (two, to be exact) but I guess it was easy for me to lump it in with AA as a Twelve Step Hocus Pocus Program. Of course, I don’t discount what my friends have told me, as experiences obviously vary by group, but I am willing to believe that generally NA is not as ridiculous as AA. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/48 "2011-01-20T01:47:27Z")
"The downside of coming off junk was I knew I would need to mix with my friends again in a state of full consciousness. It was awful. They reminded me so much of myself, I could hardly bear to look at them. " I wish I were 24 again. I think you’ve nestled into a lifestyle of which pot plays an integral role. Shake things up, maybe even move a few hundred miles away. Let mom and dad know you’re trying to turn stuff around and you’d appreciate their moral support. Might work, might not. ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/49 "2011-01-20T21:45:11Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > Huh. Duly noted. I have known) **a lot** of people who have been to AA meetings (some forced! :eek:), and their complaints have been uniformly consistent. A million years ago, it never occurred to me to question AA or their methods. My thought was always, “They’re the ones that help people with problems. Good for them.” A few seconds of poking around, prompted by person after person lodging the same complaint, and looking at what their twelve steps actually were, I thought, “This reminds me of total bullshit.” > > I don’t know a lot of people who have been to NA (two, to be exact) but I guess it was easy for me to lump it in with AA as a Twelve Step Hocus Pocus Program. Of course, I don’t discount what my friends have told me, as experiences obviously vary by group, but I am willing to believe that generally NA is not as ridiculous as AA. I’ve heard the same things about AA from friends who’ve experienced it. I’ve never attended their meetings for myself, and based on what I’ve heard, I wouldn’t want to. I have known people who benefited from Al-Anon, but don’t know how they compare to the AA format or attitude. My NA experience is both my own and what I’ve heard from a few people I know. I did not go through the twelve steps, and I didn’t keep going for long, only about 8 months, but it helped a lot, not only with the smoking which was my main addiction, but also with an increasingly disturbing difficulty with alcohol that I’d developed over the previous few years. While I did start smoking again later, I never did return to drinking to the same extent, and still find years later that I have no desire to do so. I also know from the experience that I can give up smoking and how much better it feels when I do. In the long term it has helped a lot with my self-awareness and ability to judge my own reactions and functionality in respect to intoxicating substances. I don’t know that I’ll ever have it control me to the same degree again. I’ve been abstaining from practical necessity for most of this past year, and while I do think of it a lot and often wish for it, it doesn’t rule my life anymore. It was one of the hardest and most emotionally harrowing things I’d ever done, going into that first meeting, and it was kind of forced on me as well, or at least pushed as an ultimatum by my partner at the time, but the acceptance, compassion and support were immediate and apparently genuine. If I had felt I was having the hocus pocus shoved down my throat, I would have turned and run, ultimatums be damned. I found that one of the things that kept me going during those first and hardest months was having the milestones to look forward to, being able to say “I’ve been clean \>this long\<” and have people sincerely exclaim “Go you!” 😉 I was hoping to make it at least to a year, and get the glow in the dark keychain and the party with cake. 😉 Oh well. Overall I found it a positive experience with the group that I started out in, though there were other groups in the same city that I didn’t feel so comfortable with. I think I helped some other people in that group as well, by sharing my thoughts and experiences with them honestly and compassionately. I hope so. Just being with other people who knew from their own experience what a struggle it was really helped me. As with everything, of course, YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/50 "2011-01-20T22:00:08Z")
You’ve already got more than enough reasons to quit. What you need is another environment. Move, date someone (else?), get another job, and take that switch as an opportunity to quit. Worked for me. I do still smoke weed occasionally (it’s legal here, so I can say that, right?), but when I moved, I quit for 3 months (main reason for me was that it made me jittery and slightly paranoid), and since that, I’ve averaged one smoke every 2 months or so, which is perfectly fine by me. I just completely lost the urge to smoke every damn day, and I lost it quickly too. Quitting tobacco is much harder in my experience. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/51 "2011-01-20T23:00:49Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > You’re 24, so being “that stoner guy” is not cool any more. Yeah, this. My brother (27) became friends with this nice kid Joe (26) when they were 14/13, and they’ve been good friends ever since…until recently. At Christmas my parents asked my brother why he didn’t talk about Joe very much the past few months, and he looked really sad. Everyone but Joe has grown up past spending their freetime smoking pot, and Joe is beginning to lose a lot of friends over his death grip on his bong. It wasn’t a big deal when they were younger, but people are expected to do more with their free time than get high, so Joe has fallen behind. If the OP isn’t careful, he’s going to be home, alone, smoking pot before very much longer too. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2011, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/52 "2011-01-21T07:10:15Z")
I heard the song [Taxi](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AkrldanUuA) on an oldies station tonight and I thought of you. It’s a very poignant song from the 1970s about this. ---
**Author:** ![Super\_Kapowzler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a698b9/32.png) [@Super\_Kapowzler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Super_Kapowzler)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2011, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/53 "2011-01-21T18:23:47Z")
I can’t. Sorry. Word ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2011, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904/54 "2011-01-21T19:44:20Z")
> [@Super\_Kapowzler](#): > > I can’t. > Sorry. > Word I am totally crushed. I suspect your perspective on this topic would be intriguing. And shit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-a-reason-to-quit/567904.md?page=2)