I second (third?) the NA suggestion, if you’re comfortable going that route. It can be difficult to open up to a bunch of strangers at first, but with the right group you can get a lot of really beneficial support and sympathy from people who know exactly what you’re going through because they’ve been there themselves.
I’ll give you a reason to quit, beyond the ones you have provided.
Because it’s controlling you. Stop and think for a minute, if any other thing in your life exerted this kind of control over you, you’d be fighting it tooth and nail. A girlfriend? A parent? A boss? You’d be railing against it, struggling against the yoke with all of your spirit. You admit it sucks both money and ambition from you, would you let a girlfriend or parent do that? Or would you scream and shout and fight to free yourself? You should think about that, I think.
Like other have said, you don’t need anymore reasons. Hell, just a few of those reasons are more than enough. Hell, a few of em are bad enough they are reason enough even if they were the only single reason you had.
Also, as other have said, its who you hang out with. I hang out with folks that are quite active, funny, smart, and reasonably “succesful” in life in general. Of course none of them are all these things and the range obviously varies. Most of em are what you would call middle class.
Those type of folks pretty much describe the type of folks I have been hanging around with for decades. Once in a GREAT while somebody might pull out a joint and use it (for their own use). And I suspect some of them do a bit of weed once in awhile on their own private time.
But, the important thing is that the appearance of weed when being around those folks is zero for all practical purposes. We have loads of fun and weed has nothing to do with having that fun. Now, if you are addicted to weed, you’ve got problems for sure if it makes its rare appearance. But, if its mostly habit, just find some nice weed FREE people to hang out with and the rest may work itself out without any real drama/misery.
Find some kind of hobby and a local club with which to hang out with. Hang out with the ones in the club that DON"T make weed a regular part of the ritual.
Best of luck
Don’t join NA unless you like wasting time and being preached to about a “higher power.” I’d say blowing your money, pissing off your parents, and inability to be motivated are three compelling reasons to quit. While quitting might solve two of the aforementioned problems, do you think quitting will automatically produce drive and end your series of “many fuck-ups”?
Oral cancer is a damn good reason to quit provided you quit before you get it. Voice of experience here.
Most of the NA members I know think the actual program contains a lot of bullshit; the value is mostly in the friendships you make with other members, and most of the bonding is conducted away from ‘meetings’. If nothing else, it gives you a conduit to friendships with people who don’t get intoxicated socially, which can be hard to find. I’m lucky to have a lot of friends who don’t get drunk or high, so when I wanted to stop getting drunk and high all the time I just switched over to them and away from my friends who didn’t do anything else. Most people who have addiction problems are stuck in a whole social group with addiction problems, and it makes it so much harder to get out.
It’s always worth a try. A lot of people try NA/AA and hate it/find it useless, but some go once and keep going for the rest of their lives.
Man, I was just thinking about starting up again. It’s been years since the last time. I never had a problem with it though and even during high school, when I used it the most it, was only two or three times a month.
I had a ton of friends who would wake and bake every day. Only one of them ever tried quitting and, even though he started up again, I’d call it a success. This guy would get a serious addiction to it. Fortunately, his friends, even the ones that smoked, were very supportive. We just stopped letting him smoke with us and, with some pressure from his family too, he was able to quit. After about half a year, he tried smoking again and after one day, he was addicted again and smoking daily. He eventually stopped again though.
Good luck.
Thanks for all the responses.
One thing to be clear, yes having friends who do it too can make it difficult to stop. But if I only ever did it with friends I’d be doing well.
It’s the fact that I do it by myself so much. And it’s weird too because I can’t tell if I’m addicted or it’s just a very strong habit. They say you can’t become addicted and I believe it’s true. Like sometime last year I quit for a little over a month, for a job and it was no problem. I just knew that I had too if I wanted that job.
So that’s partly why I say give me a reason. I can rationalize everything on my list. It’s costly but I can afford it. It’s bad for my health but not that bad. I exercise a lot still. It’d be terrible if I got caught, but I never have and don’t plan on it. I’m usually pretty safe about it too. And my parents get pissed about it but I don’t always feel like they have a right too. It’s just not that big of a deal. Or I’m just a dickhead.
Here’s where my problem lies. I don’t always see a reason so it’s like “why not”. If I want it, I’ll go get it and everything else goes out the window. But 9 times out of 10 it’s a waste.
I’ll just point out its pretty damn rare for folks to plan to get caught. And planing to not get caught doesnt really have much to do whether you get caught or not.
Everyone is different. I hate smoking weed, but my wife smokes several times every day. She is a brilliant biologist and well respected among her peers, as well as one of the hardest working people I know.
Perhaps you’re spewing stereotypes because hard-working smart stoners don’t go around advertising their personal choices. You only know of stupid stoners because, by definition, you’d have to be stupid to let people know you do it.
Gee,
I wonder why that might be?
Spewing?
Nevertheless, your internet anecdote has convinced be to discard all the notions and biases that I have accumulated from 40 years of watching friends and acquaintances squander their talent and their time on this planet. Kudos!
NA isn’t nearly as preachy as AA in my experience. The groups I’ve visited seemed much more focused on the mutual support aspect, and much less so on the “higher power” bit. They’re also much more inclusive in terms of what can be considered an addiction, whereas AA focuses entirely on alcohol to the exclusion of all else.
It’s not a waste of time if it helps.
Seriously just save the money, My new years resolution was to quit Pot and smoking, so far no pot, but damn I cannot ditch the smokes, not giving up yet though. The reason I stopped smoking pot is that the time I was spending high wasn’t really entertaining, certainly not like it was when I started smoking pot. Basically I figured that I could watch tv and play halo sober, and if they weren’t entertaining enough sober then I needed new hobbies.
I certainly don’t have a low opinion of people who smoke weed in fact I think its a habit that is basically harmless, honestly I just think getting baked all the time is boring, and I decided I’d rather spend my time doing other things.
There are different meanings to the word “addicted”. When people say that pot is ‘not addictive’, they generally mean that it does not cause physical withdrawal symptoms when one stops doing it, unlike certain other drugs (such as heroin and, to a much lesser extent, cigarettes).
However, the physical aspect of addiction is by no means the most important. Far more significant is the psychological aspects. Almost anything can be “addictive” psychologically - gambling, computer games, pot.
The real issue is this - do you find your pusuit/hobby/habit both not really all that enjoyable, and interferes with aspects of your life you find enjoyable, and has bad effects on your relationships with your family and friends - but you are doing it anyway and rationalizing away all the reasons not to do it? If so, it sounds very much like an addiction.
Now, that says nothing about the inherent nature of the activity. Where I think you are going wrong is that you have, rightly, rejected all that ‘reefer madness’ nonsense about the evils of weed - but have absorbed, as if by counterweight, the equally-fallacious notion that pot is a generally harmless habit. It is true that for many people, maybe most, pot is a generally harmless habit. That’s because those people do it in moderation. It isn’t the pot that is harmful, it is the fact that you (at least, I get from your posts) can’t really do it that way - it is all-or-nothing for you, to either flat-out smoke dope a lot, or not at all.
The “reason” lies right there - do you want to be, in effect, doing something you have ceased to enjoy all that much all the time, harming your relations with your parents, spending a pile of money, and damaging your health? Seems to me that the key is to recognize that there really isn’t much of a middle path for you - it is either smoke or not. I sympathize, because I was that way with cigarettes - admittedly a much more harmful vice.
It sounds like you have been doing this so hard and so long that you no longer know the difference between getting stoned and having fun.
If you want to quit, you will have to find new ways to relax, and to have fun. You need play therapy-LOL! Instead of thinking about what you don’t want to do (smoke) think about what you’d like to do instead. This is the sort of thing that a “cognitive behvioral” therapist would specialize in. They don’t do psychoanalysis, or dig into your dream life, they just ask about what you have done, and how it is working for you, and help you find alternatives for the strategies that are not, in fact, working.
You missed an important step in development - the whole part about healthy ways of recreation and relaxation. Filling that knowledge gap is essential in finding a more fulfilling lifestyle. You can probably do it on your own, and the folks at NA can help you immensely. But NA (support and fellowship) plus cognitive behavior therapy (building new strategies with expert guidance) would get you happier, faster.
And that’s your real goal. Happiness. It really sounds like you’ve been substituting high for happy.
hth
Pot may not cause physical withdrawal symptoms, but I have known enough people who smoked their lives and relationships away that I think it’s obvious that you can be dependent on the stuff, and I’d call that an addiction. You sound addicted to me.
And no one plans to get caught; that statement just makes you sound like you’re desperately searching for rationalizations. If you have to try that hard to deny your problem, that’s a good reason to quit.
No one else is going to do it? Okay. If you go to NA, you may be yelled at by Bob Saget.
I think **Malthus ** sums it up well. Even the pro-pottiest-pothead pot smokers I know would read the OP and say ‘Dude, you need to stop.’ It sounds like the OP has issues with his or her parents, so maybe quitting feels like ‘giving in’ to them, like admitting they were right and it is evil or something? Forget them. Beyond the cliché of ‘I could quit if I really wanted to, but I don’t want to’ which seems to be present, maybe the OP also knows that, once he does stop, he won’t have a convenient excuse for not doing the things he talked about while stoned.
I have a friend who walked away from AA because she thought their methods contained too much bullshit. Even worse than that is when he attempted to make some non-drinking friends out of it, she discovered that most of the people who hang around at that kind of thing are “crazy.” Her word, not mine.
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.
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.