Long term weed habit - getting control or quit

[wolfyt78]

Hi people
Ive been lurking an reading all your posts for quite awhile now . it makes me feel better to know there are people who have actually succeded in beating this.
My story in brief I'm 39 male ive been smoking weed almost my entire life as far back as I can remember parents smoked and still do! also most of my social circle.i apologise for my bad grammer was stoned all through my teenage years .somehow I have a decent job,, great partner,. brilliant kids.I am healthy go to gym religiously. people looking in must think I have my sh** together buts its all a front . I quit for about a year couple years back but stupidly started again jus a little at first then back to full on. I'm on day 5 and am so ready to finally get clean for good ! the withdrawals have started already cant sleep ,sweating severe depression but i know they will only get worse . good luck to everyone on the same path it will be long.. It will be rough but hopefully we can come out the other side . your posts help a lot thanks

[Furtive]

Gold luck wolfyt78 and thank you.

I think Pearl Jam's song RearViewMirror expresses a lot of the feelings of getting clean.

'Saw things so much clearer
Once you were in my rear view mirror.
I gather speed from you f**k**n with me.
Once and for all I'm far away
hardly believe...finally the shades are raised'

Also I like to think how my mind changed since I started this thread.
Getting control or quitting.
Hmm.
Now I think that was a false choice and the title should really be:
Getting control IS quitting.

[Furtive]

Been having some cravings recently
Hot sunny days and physical work can bring a sense of 'deserving it', celebration of achievement is a trigger for my old habit

I know beyond any doubt that getting stoned would be disappointing AND bring the cravings back worse tomorrow
I know I've beaten my way through much worse cravings than this before
And that it's often darkest just before dawn (recovery comes in waves)

Just got to hang on sometimes and wait

[Purplemoonpie]

Hi, I just came across your post. I dont know who else to talk to about this. I am a 32 year old female who appears, from the outside, as a chick who doesn't smoke weed. I am a girly girl, I run five miles a day and had a really good job until about a month ago. I don't talk about weed unless someone brings it up, and I won't use it around people I don't know aren't okay with it. But I am I guess what you could say is a pot head. I started smoking weed in college and quickly started buying it after. I don't want to know how much i've spent on weed. But it pretty much dictates my life. I love to smoke in the mornings, on my lunch break, and when i work out after work all i can think about is getting high. Then I get high all night long. It is such a comfy drug, it makes me content with living and being alone, makes me content not having much to do at night and makes me sleep like a baby. On days I am hungover, the only thing that cures the nausea is weed. I love weed. It makes me relax, makes me mellow, makes me content. However recently I lost my job and if I want a good paying job, I'm gonna have to take a drug test. So i tried quitting and only made it a few days before relapsing at a party. I bought a half eighth two days ago and have smoked that already. It is now late night, I am wide awake and bored to death. I hit up the few people I know who can get weed and to no avail. I tried scraping out the resin, I even got a flashlight and looked under the couch and found a few small buds. They were covered in dust but I didn't care. I smoked them and wanted more, and realized what a fiend I am. Everyone says marijuana isn't addicting but I disagree. I wish I could be like some of my friends, who buy weed but only smoke it on a Friday night, or special occasion...they can make an 8th of weed last over a month. I am tired of chasing it, I am tired of spending money on it, I am tired of NEEDING it (or feeling like i need it) just to get through my day. I am tired of going out and having fun and wanting to leave early so I can go home and smoke weed. I do wish it could be legal here. I find it so much better than alcohol, which makes me do stupid things and feel terrible the next day. But for now I need to quit and finding it so hard. Especially being so desperate that I'll smoke dusty bits from under my couch. I can't seem to relax without it. Days without aren't bad but nights are terrible. I've googled things to do at night besides smoke weed, I've read ways to relax without the drug, but it's tough. Did you find it hard to sleep at night? Relax in the evening? D

[Gitana]

Welcome here PurpleMoonPie - sadly your stories sound very familiar to me (and a lot of us here), but the good news is that you say you are TIRED of a lot things attached to weed: that is to me a very good starting point to get where you want to be.
So if this is the right time, yes, it might very well turn out to be a sleepless stressful time to go through, but if you keep in mind all the aspects and consequences you mentioned, that might help you remember why you do this. And you want to pass that drug test anyway (there are a lot of cleansing advice online for this and they work well (i did it).
Maybe it is time for you to start your own thread and join the party Keep us posted!

[Furtive]

Hi, ...Did you find it hard to sleep at night? Relax in the evening? D

Hi, yeh, it was hard for about 6-8 weeks when I first quit.
But the thing is, it was bad ON the weed as well.
I'd got to the point where my weed tolerance was scary, I was in a constant state of withdrawal even with a crazy intake of weed.

So I decided to fully sober up, and just endured, focusing on the improvements and moments of clarity.

I'd be interested to know how your running feels as you get through withdrawal.
The pleasure of running affects the same receptors so you might find it unrewarding for a couple of months.
Stick with it, though, and it should get better than it was.

[Furtive]

Still on the wagon. 11 months.
Obviously i’m pleased with this; I feel I’m in control and I like myself a lot more than when I was chronic.
But I’m definitely ‘on the wagon’, rather than ‘cured’.

Funny to say it like that but it has been a repeated, conscious decision to stay off weed sometimes.
Some days it’s been a craving, a wanting to feel it physically in my throat/lungs from mid-morning to night
Not quite so sure I want to actually feel stoned, though, even when I crave it like that I still don’t want to get hazy messy sluggish consequences.
So I keep that in mind when it’s tough.
It’s like I had the luxury of not struggling with craving for long enough that when it comes back it’s harder to dismiss

Most of the time, most days, I don’t think about it.
Fireworks night I must have smelled weed 20 times, but no real temptation to actually try to get it.
Often I find the smell a bit threatening rather than tempting.
Usually the person making the smell looks paranoid, or psycho, and I don’t want to be like that, obviously.
It always seems excessive - it smells like they’re hitting up about 50x more than a reasonable dose.

I don’t have any and I’ve avoided old friends who might have it.
Having a baby and being knackered & busy helps distract me from it.
It’s much easier than it was when I first quit back in December 2013.

But I’m not out of the woods yet.
But it’s okay & I’m happy

[seeingthelight]

Pat yourself on the back. 11 months is great! It’s a especially good decision when you have a baby in the picture. Stay on the wagon and keep us posted on your progress!

[Furtive]

Thanks, yes I am proud of how I’ve smashed my weed consumption for the last 4 years, and learned to live better.
Not been noticing improvement for a while and been worrying about other things.

I’ve been struggling with reduced sleep due to the baby, which feels similar to weed damage -
Knackered, memory loss, constantly distracted so can’t get things done, etc.
Guess I’d be sectioned by now if I’d carried on stoning with all this extra load.

The main thing is facing up to who I am, and what I must do to be happy at work.
I either manage stress better, or Take a radically different career path.

With weed out of the way, I can take correct steps towards a proper solution.
I used to use weed to mask the problem (which would sort of work until catastrophic fail) and not face it.

[seeingthelight]

I’d say the 3 biggest things to make you happy at work:

1. Doing a good job
2. Being a part of the company and trying to build good work relationships
3. Work on stress Management

As for feeling tired.. Having a baby is a huge responsibility. Being up all hours of the night will wear you out. Feeling like you’re hungover, sounds natural in this situation. Try and find a ways to get more rest and regain your focus. Either way, weed isn’t going to help your cause. You’ll be more tired and hungover.. And an epic fail is inevitable

[tokes]

found a few small buds. They were covered in dust but I didn't care. I smoked them and wanted more? D

Lmao

[Ade,wales]

Good on ya furtive

[Furtive]

Still clean, close to 14 months, happy to have survived the xmas/NY time without any temptation...

Just watched a film again (that I watched years ago, while bombed out of my mind). Source Code, about a soldier held in a sort of coma after a helicopter crash, forced to time travel to solve a crime.
I could only remember the vaguest hints of the beginning of it, so I enjoyed it as though I’d never seen it before.
It’s quite moving if you get into it.

Afterwards I had a chat with my wife about my old smoking habit and how odd it is to have these memory holes, to know I watched a film but have no meaningful clue about it. It’s like being properly senile or something.
She remembers trying to watch a film with me around that time, while I kept pausing it to go and smoke every 10 minutes.
She said I had the attention span of a gnat.

I do remember her complaining about it at the time, but it’s a zoned memory that has no context, no guilt, nothing like a normal memory, more like a dream.

Life as a heavy stoner isn’t life, it’s just an existence. Everything is paused.

[Furtive]

Just checking in - still doing fine

I think there are 3 bits of quitter’s wisdom I want to repeat, again:

1. You know when you’ve had your last spliff
2. Your reasons for using a drug become your reasons for quitting it
3. Runner’s high is my best way of fighting off THC withdrawal

My life’s been a lot better since 2013 when I was chronically abusing weed
But I have found that I’m naturally a bit of an arsehole without it, as well.
I really don’t like a lot of people that I thought were friends
And many don’t like me enough to put up with my faults.
I’ve had to do a lot of soul-searching to reach a stable equilibrium since sobering up.

There’s another thing about quitting, which isn’t helpful or precise, but still important to me:

4. My quit is endless. First it was just necessary to stop until I felt normal, but after a few years of mostly being weed-free I still have to decide, regularly, whether today I’m still staying clean. It’s like my relationship with quitting has evolved.

[tokes]

totally agree with the 3 points of wisdom. For me the runners high thing doesn't work as much...sometimes makes me feel worse. What works for me is weight lifting, gets the testosterone pumping round the body.

I also thought I was this supreme arsehole while coming off the weed due to the snappiness and quick temper but then realised I also have those traits even when I've been off for a long time. Close friends i've liked for years, look a bit different now with a cleaner head, and maybe I don't like them at all. Lots of soul searching too and behavioural and mental adjustment. Some buddhist principles have helped me. Craving is the sickness of humanity, we need to control the mind before the mind controls us.

I tried to get control of it as oppose to quit starting last year and that went great. I had hardly any cravings, I could function with or without it. I kept it to weekends for almost a year with no PAWs....but then boom! In March this year I started getting anxiety and panic attacks, which is something i've never suffered from. Anyway, I can't smoke it again or have anything hemp/weed related. I started using Hemp Protein powder to aid muscle growth while at the gym and it gave me a panic attack lol. It has CBD in it and low levels of THC but its enough for my body to panic and have an attack.

4- yeah I agree. Maybe in the future I could have the odd toke. But for now the power of those panic attacks have put me off for a good few years...

Peace

Tokes