Motivation For Quitting Marijuana - Part 2

Hi random, I don't think that you're really expressing anything that isn't a valid concern. But I wanted to point out one thing--if you're bored, trust me. You will find ways to fill it with hobbies and friends and other things. You will be able to change your life to make it more interesting. Do you have any hobbies currently?

House, Random, Burger....sounds like y'all are doing great and staying strong. Don't be so hard on yourselves if you fall off the wagon.

You keep coming back so that shows that deep inside you have the desire. That's where it all starts...inside you have to really want it. For a long time I didn't want it but one day i held firm.

I still have kept a small stash. I guess I just can't totally let go...I dunno. I got it out this weekend to smell and touch on it. lol I was good and put it away though.

I hit the 9 month mark on Nov. 23rd which is crazy...hard to believe a year is only 3 months away. 3 months seems like no big deal now whereas when I started, a month seemed like an eternity.

Keep coming back here guys and keep us updated!

Keep on keepin on and stay strong!

TH

Burger, you never let me down...I know this stuff is hard to quit...for everybody. I just pray that you get back on track and nip it in the, uhhh, bud, once and for good.

Texas, man, I'm stoked you're still on track. Wow, 9 months, that's just awesome. I just hit one month on Thanksgiving.

It's made a huge difference given that I'm surrounded by the right people now and not my other friends. While they're great people, I just need to be around healthy individuals. I'm finding that I'm dealing with things now head on, for the most part, as opposed to just medicating. It's definitely building my confidence and character.

One thing I want to share is something I read recently from The Purpose Driven Life. The author talks about how if you have a boat that's set to go due East, if you turn the wheel real hard, you can get it to turn another direction, but once you let go, it'll eventually go East again. Will power is turning the boat with all your might, however, if you really want to keep blazing, chances are you'll eventually get back on that path. I've been on and off with God for a long time, but when I started really going to church, surrounding myself with the right people, reading Biblical scripture and what not, it started changing me from the inside out. Now I really don't want to smoke, drink, even watch porn. The key words there is "I really don't want to." My direction has been changed. Plus, like I said before, now I really like myself, so I want to stay on this path.

Sorry to get preachy, I just wanted to share what's been working for me. I firmly believe I won't go back now. Yes, it's still tough sometimes, but for the most part, I don't even think about it anymore. It's just out of my mind. Instead, I'm focused on how I can help others, loving people, getting out and socializing, talking to women...oh how I love talking to women, etc. People say I sound great now and that's great to hear. I'm changing my words and thoughts now too. Less negative thinking, way less.

Stay on brothers and sisters! Weed robs you of your character, life, and mind, amongst other things.

Peace and blessings.

Today is my thirteenth days of sobriety after smoking almost everyday for six years. This matches the farthest I've gone sober in years, which was two weeks back in April. I must say that this weekend was hard. I started to justify reasons to smoke. The most prominent one was that since it had been two weeks I could smoke and get away with it. I'm glad I didn't, because then I would just be back right where I started.

Its a damn shame how much marijuana has an influence over my life and brain. Although I didn't smoke or give in, I felt my resolve weakening. I need to quit, to join the military. And I'm almost graduated from college so my time left has ran itself thin, almost to nonexistance. I'm not sure what I intend to gain by posting, but I just wanted to in an effort to help relieve my withdrawls. I feel like I'm past the hardest part of withdrawls, and considering I work out in all the time, I figure that I should be able to pass a drug test around the thirty day mark. But it sucks to think I won't be able to smoke again for years. My counselor says once a few years has passed my perspective on pot will change, but I'm not sure. I just love that green bud.

Thanks for listening.

Hello all. Well here goes. Like all of you on this thread I'm here because i want to quit smoking pot! BAD! After reading through this thread I've found that most of you are just like me. I'm 29 years old and I've been smoking weed since i was 16. Pretty much every day since about the age of 18.

Since then I've been addicted to quite a few drugs but managed to quit them with very little effort. This includes cigarettes, Ecstasy, powder cocaine, and worst of all crack cocaine. Sadly i smoked crack for about a year straight, every other day or so, spending on average around 40 dollars each session! I hid this from everybody but the people i did the drug with. Even my own roommate did not know! Now i know people say crack is one of the hardest drugs to quit and it was. But the easy part about quitting that was always worrying about my friends and family finding out and the shame i would feel. That's what made it easy to quit and also getting the people outta my life that i smoked with. Best thing i ever did. Been clean for about 8 years now from everything but weed. I just can't seem to stop!

And here lies the problem. Everyone i know smokes weed except for my wife :-D . My mom, brothers and sisters, friends, co-workers, EVERYONE! So I'm around it all the time. Right now I'm on day 2 of not smoking weed and I'm going nuts! My main reason for quitting i guess would be money. Me and the wife both have a good paying jobs and never really worry about money for the most part. But i sat down and figured out how much i spend on weed the other night and it came out to around $300 dollars a month! Usually i will get a half oz every 5 days or so. Never the expensive stuff, just regs. That's allot of money in weed! Money that could be going other places like vacations and such. So that's my reason for quitting.

Like most of you i could not do anything unless i was high. ANYTHING! I have a vaporizer that's hooked up to a timer so it turns on every morning so it would be ready to go before i left for work. I use to smoke at work all the time but have cut that out for the most part. Then after work same thing. Sit down, get high, play with my kids until they went to bed then back upstairs to get high again and play xbox.

I have not smoked today or yesterday. Last night i had a crazy dream! Like most of you said that's normal. It was actually a dream about a couple of my ex girlfriends :-S And a good one at that! But really the only thing stopping me from going to get a bag is this thread. I feel like i know a few of you, lol! I've tried to quit before but never really wanted to quit i guess. Once was for probation when i was 19. I got random drug test and i quit for a month before i figured out i could just buy a masking drink and nothing would show up on the test. It worked and i was back to smoking weed again! Never failed one test either. I sure hope this feeling of being lost without it goes away soon because I'm serious about quitting this time. My mind is set and i will do this. My first real test will come tomorrow when me and a few buds (all of them smoke) are going snowboarding. The place we go is about an hour from our houses and i know there will be more that a few blunts rolled on the way up there. Mind over matter, right? Another thing that's going to be hard to do is playing video games! I play quite a bit and getting high and playing some modern warfare go hand and hand! Its like ying and yang!

So i will be visiting this site often to let you guys know how I'm doing and hopefully i can kick this nasty habit! Thank you all for sharing your stories too! Its been that extra help I've been looking for! Oh ya, and sorry for all the rambling! I had to get it all out!

Well i went snowboarding with my buds and.......................................SMOKE FREE! In fact, i drove my buddy up there and i let him blaze in my car and i really had no urge to smoke! When we got to the hill of course my buds had to smoke again so we went back into the tree line so they could blaze. They must have smoked at least 6 blunts while we were there and i even passed it for them once because i was sitting in the rotation and still had no urge to smoke. As a matter of fact the smell bothered me just a little bit! Well its day four and so far i'm doing great. I hope this keeps up. The dreams are still there and i kinda like them. Its almost like a new movie every night! 4 days and counting! Stay strong everyone!

Props on the smoke free snowboard trip, Adam. I lived in Breckenridge, CO (killer ski/ride town) for a couple seasons, and man, blunts were the normal when we went riding, or doing anything else for that matter. I'm a much better rider when I'm sober though...I sometimes ride like a puss if I've been blazing...screw that...I like to push it.

Anyways, I was dealing with the same issues...everybody (all my friends) smoked weed. Everybody. So it was always tough to quit because as soon as I did, I wouldn't have anybody to hang out with. The other issue was that I liked to puff, then get on my turntables and skratch for hours. I've been doing this for about 10 years, consistently. In the past, when I quit smoking, I would get all lonely (again, because I didn't have any non-toking friends), plus I would get bored because I didn't want to skratch sober (it's just not that fun when you're not high). So yeah, loneliness and boredom is the perfect formula...to start using.

Well, this last time I quit (this Thursday will be two months smoke free), things were different. Prior to stopping, I've been making a lot of friends outside of the party circle. Really cool friends. Ones that you can have meaningful conversations with, not just talk about partying and what not. So when I quit, I've pretty much just been hanging out with them (thus not all lonely and bored), namely people through my church. Our conversations are intoxicating, without the, uhhhh, toxins.

Also, while I really don't like to skratch sober, I've been putting a lot of time back into DJ mixing instead, something I've been neglecting for years. I'm finding that I organize my records better now (so they mix more seamlessly with the next one) and that I'm a much better DJ when I'm not all blazed up.

My interests are changing...what I thought was awesome wasn't and what I thought was wack, wasn't. For instance, some music that I thought was great sounds like c**p when you're sober. And some stuff that I thought was c**p when I was baked sounded great when I was sober. Now I'd rather spend my time hanging out with friends, simply talking, whereas before I just wanted to smoke and then get on my turntables (thus not socialize).

So yeah, if you really want to stay off this stuff, it might really help to get some new friends and hobbies. What I'm finding is that some of these changes are hard, but they're for the better. Much better. I'm surrounded by the coolest chicks now...Wow. I know I wouldn't even be hanging out with these girls if I were stoned. So thankful I'm not blazing any more, on so many accounts.

Peace.

Thank all of you guys for your effort and dedication to this...
I've got a long story with Mary Jane that dates back to my early teens, which probably already isn't a good sign. I'm thankful everyday that after so much abuse I'm still relatively lucid and articulate and capable of coherent thoughts, but I fear for how long my good health will last.
I mean I've been told from so many different sources, many of them quite reliable, that weed's straight it's not even that big a deal it's not like it's gonna f**k you up for life and all.. It's not addictive, not as bad for your lungs, natural anti-depressant, I've heard all kinds of sh*t, so I wonder why I'm having so much trouble quitting and feeling more like sh*t about it everyday. Not to mention for the past few months I've been experimenting wayyyyy far from my boundaries. Last year it was just ganja and psychedelics, those were my boundaries.. Granted I had fooled around with yayo in high school a lil bit, but nothing was ever regular (except weed, of course) and now I'm starting to worry I'm picking up a second habit. Third I guess. Smoke stoges too, and that's what most kills me of my addictions (both figuratively and literally). I can't stand the fact that there's some huge corporation capitalizing from the slow deaths of the addicted masses. screwed up. kinda hard to quit that too, though.. I'm such a scatter brain, you can tell I still haven't quit toking up.
Lately I've been a little low, today I was straight up depressed. I haven't been this down in many years (relative to my age.. I'm 19). I first tried it in middle school and fell in love, quite simply. I thought it was the best thing in the world. I've been smoking on and off regularly since then, with the longest break probably being when I went back to Venezuela for a while to live with my dad (as a consequence of smoking weed). Anyway, this last "binge" I guess has been about a year and a half, daily. It isn't half of what most of the people here have been smoking, but it's been enough for my beliefs to be shaken; last year I believed I could live my entire life getting away with smoking weed. Now I feel like it's easier to just quit. I don't wanna want it like I do anymore. I wake up and think about it; my morning routine now involves, almost indispensably, smoking a bowl in the shower before breakfast. It's what wakes me up and gives me energy to face the morning. What the f**k? Has it really gotten to the point that at 19 I almost require this in me to keep a working profile? It's ridiculous. Pardon my language throughout this, by the way.
I can't support my habit; I live with my mom and can only get a job at the university due to my visa status (long story) and I can only get a job there if my grades are real good and I think my grades aren't as good as they should be because I'm smoking so much gosh darn pot. Another thing: neither my mom or dad have any idea how much weed i smoke. I tricked myself, and them, but mainly myself into feeling better about lying to them by "coming clean" and telling them i smoke on weekends only and that it doesn't interfere with my studies. That way, when they test me it'll be alright if I come up positive for weed! Hah-hah! How clever! I've made a point of sneaking around absolutely everybody just to smoke, finding cash somehow to buy it, using eyedrops, hand sanitizer, lying constantly, stashing sh*t, stealing sh*t... I lie through my teeth everyday. I'm not desperate or anything yet, I haven't hit rock bottom, if you will, but i'm starting to feel really uncomfortable with who I am, to be honest. I don't like the life I'm living.
Well i've been sober for.. some hours now. At some point this afternoon I came to a sort of epiphany as I tried to find out why I was so sad, and I haven't burned it since. I don't feel good at all right now, in fact I feel much worse and haven't been able sleep. It's 4 AM. I feel pretty shitty. I have resin but I don't wanna smoke.. I know i'd feel better and probably go right to sleep but i don't feel like it's worth it, I feel like I can't smoke.. I'm selling my pipe next week anyway and it's my only smoking utensil, so hopefully that'll make it easier as well. I didn't know what to do really but I read many of the posts on here.. my head feels crammed but i'm actually tired and sleepy now, I think i'm gonna finally nap for a while.
Sorry about the long post everyone. I had a lot to say I suppose. I had some more but I forgot it.
On a side note, have any of you long term users felt a significant decrease in your.. smarts, say, over the years? Like your wits have dulled? I sometimes find it hard recollecting a word.. Granted I'm learning new words but I wonder if I'm expanding my vocabulary or if I'm forgetting at a faster rate than I'm learning. It scares the hell out of me. I know words aren't all that important, but I think I've noticed a change there.

Well today is pretty much a huge milestone for me.

Today is the day I quit smoking weed 1 year ago. It was Sunday February 23rd in the evening that I made the decision and held firm for longer than I ever really planned. At first, the goal was 4-6 weeks, then 3 months, then 6 months, then a year.

I feel like celebrating by getting high! LOL Sorta but not really.

I do think about it from time to time and I actually still have about a quarter stashed away that is a year old that I've never touched once.

Anyway, I thought I'd come back to this thread that gave me the motivation, where I started posting 1 year ago today. If anyone is out there wondering if you can do it....you can. I was a HUGE smoker....smoked a 1/4 lb a month. Spent a ton of $.

Things I don't miss: the hack, the feeling when you get to the end of your bag, hooking up with the dealer and sneaking around.

I don't know if this will be a forever thing with me or not, but for now I have no plans to smoke. I am pretty proud of myself though...not trying to brag or anything but this is a pretty huge accomplishment for me.

Y'all stay strong...

TH

That is an amazing accomplishment good job Texas Hound! I'm about a 1/3 of where youre at and I still want to quit being sober and get stoned! Weed is a powerful drug and it takes getting off of it to realize the true extent of the influence it can have on your life.

GOOD JOB!

You are right Chris...it did have a really strong hold on me and my life. I am glad I am in control now.

Great job on your 3-4 months too..you are past the really hard part and your 6 month mark is just around the corner!

Stay Strong!

TH

Texashound well done you - a year is amazing and you must feel really proud of yourself. I don't know if you remember me but I've been posting for about a year but I've had no success in quitting. I managed to quit for 6 weeks last Jan and few days here and there but I get drawn back in and then I'm suckered again.

Anyway, I'm attempting it again today. I'm in a terrible place emotionally with one of my sisters dying on Xmas Eve but apart from the main motivation which is to get on with life and not smoke it away, I feel I owe it to my sister to go through the grieving process properly. She was such a huge part of my life that I would feel terrible if I didn't give myself the time and space to really grieve properly and I can't do that stoned. I've used weed so much since she died and it has helped to come to terms with the initial shock and disbelief but continuing to repress emotions cannot be a good thing and I need to make a change for me, for my family, for my sister and my other surviving sister whom I hope to inspire to quit too.

Anyway, well done again Texas. Are CJ and Fatburger still around?

Take care

Hey Random, i definitely remember you. I hope you're doing well and having success.

Don't be so hard on yourself, 6 weeks is a great accomplishment! Try to stretch that out to 3 months next time.

Baby steps!

Day 3 for me, going throught all the hard withdrawals after about 13 years high with few breaks. Gotta keep going, thanks for the motivation and to know i am not alone in trying to do this

Day 6 still battling depressive spells where i start crying uncontrollably, usually around my old times to smoke again.