Weed habits are insidious. They creep up on you. One year you’re only smoking socially, the next you can’t pull yourself away from the TV. Wasting your life taking bong rips is no way to live, and deep down we all know it. Unfortunately, quitting weed is hard. About 10% of stoners are clinically addicted, and among those that aren’t it’s a pain in the ass to get them to stop smoking for a bit. Even when weed doesn’t impact your money, it messes with your lifestyle, particularly your social life. When you’re stoned and dazed, you don’t have the energy to follow through on pursuing your passions. Women also become less interesting and exciting to me when I smoke weed. This probably isn’t a healthy thing if you’re a young male.
So how can we actually get ourselves to stop smoking?
I find that this is a 3-step process. Quitting a habit as serious and entrenched as regular weed use requires a conscious shift in mindset. Smoking is likely a subconscious habit, something that you’re doing to fulfill an urge that you don’t completely understand. The first thing you need to understand is this fact. It will take self-examination to quit your weed habit. That being said, it’s really easy with these three steps.
Figure out why you smoke.
Whether the reason is physical or emotional, we all have a reason for smoking. Usually, there is some deficiency in our lives that we use ganja to cover up. For me, it was my anger. Over the course of my life I had become stressed out, angry, and bitter. This was due to a variety of reasons, and my emotions were all-encompassing. When I felt stress, it was impossible for me to hold myself back. I would yell, I would shout, and sometimes worse. Whether or not I was stressed, I always had to have weed to soothe me in the moment and make me feel OK about things in my life. It did a lot to soothe the mental anguish I was feeling, and I found a day without weed to be long, boring, and extremely irritating. For a long time, I couldn’t go without it. Sitting alone with my anxiety and rage and nothing to make them stop made me feel like I was dying. Thankfully, once I realized what was going on and understood my own emotions things began to fall into place.
Work on Fixing the Deficiency
This is the hardest part of the process and requires a lot of discipline, self-awareness, and determination. You need to take steps to fix the deficiency in your life without using weed. I personally had to learn how to calm down and live in the moment. This meant taking deep breaths when necessary and taking the required time to live in the moment. Mediation is very hard if not impossible for me, and it’s probably because I used to smoke like a chimney to escape the moment. Right now, I just try and look back on recent moments and catch myself getting angry. I try to eat well. I do trauma release. Anything to fix the constant knots of rage that tend to twist themselves up in my stomach. I try to stay present as much as I can, and when I was smoking, I made an effort to stagger my spliffs rather than keep the high going. Taking the time to do these things not only made it much easier to quit, but it took me away from the typical junkie lifestyle.
Find Productive Things You Like to Do and Fill Your Time with Them
I personally have a few favorite hobbies: making money online and working out. These might sound like serious hobbies, and many people may wonder how driven I am by materialism. While I do like the finer things in life, that actually isn’t why I engage in them. I engage in these things because I truly enjoy them. My mind is always working. I like solving problems and playing with ideas. So, what do I do? I schedule a quota for my work and for my hobbies. This keeps me busy and makes it so that if I want to keep my life together, I simply don’t have the time to be smoking weed all day. Outside of working out and making money online, I’m learning Portuguese and playing chess. Right now, I’m living a fairly secluded life, but in due time my hobbies and interests should attract not only good fortune, but also the right people.
Stop Smoking Altogether
You may be following my steps as part of a taper, but the most important part of quitting weed is that you have to actually stop. At some point, you need to avoid going out and seeing your dealer. Set this date, and keep your promise to yourself. The easiest way to do this in my experience is to exercise your willpower, and make a mental commitment that you’ll stop soon. I used to do a lot more than smoke weed. I stopped by telling myself: “I won’t be doing hard drugs at 21”. It worked, but only because I stopped a week before my birthday.
As you can see, getting sober is a mix of work and pleasure. It’s imperative that you follow through and work hard, but if you can’t create pleasure you won’t have motivation. As a general rule, don’t take yourself too seriously. Take accountability if you relapse, but don’t beat yourself up. Life is a journey. Just make sure to live as much of it as you can rather than sitting around with your head in the clouds.
