my struggle with bud, quitting

hi to everybody here at steady health!

i have been lurking this forum for a couple days now and decided, since i have recently turned my back on the beloved mary jane, i'd join up in the great conversation. id like to offer my story and continuing struggle in hopes of motivating other users of the board as they battle their "addiction."

you could say i was a late bloomer, if you will, in terms of smoking bud. i abstained from it in high school because i was busy with sports and girls. a lot of my friends, both athletes and not, smoked pot but it was elusive and hard to come by for us high schoolers. it wasn't until my senior year i started lighting up.

my career started slow and it was more of a thing to fit in. in the back of cars watching my friends roll blunts in a ritualistic manner. my first time smoking was when about five of my close friends and i were drinking on the porch and my friend-turned-dealer secretly packed the three foot bong with some prime sh*t. of course i needed to be taught how to smoke the damn thing but that hit blew right through me. perhaps this is where many addicts feel the first high. a high they will compare all others to. i felt spacey, couldn't burp after five minutes of coughing, and relaxed. needless to say i don't remember much of the night afterwards.

smoking was only done with friends and i felt embarrassed i was such an amateur. the next time i smoked was on a golf course in the middle of the night. it was a bowl this time and again i needed to be taught. my friends were patient as they initiated me.

at this point i liked bud. it brought me and my buds together. i certainly felt i needed to bring something to the table so we went out and bought my first bowl. being "hip" on the trends, i named her "lightbowlb" upon christening (she was a color changing glass that turned yellow.)

having my gear, i needed some ammo, time to learn to hunt the green. eighths and quarters, halfs and qp's, my friend/dealer taught me the rules. in my town eighths were 40-50, depending on quality. i started buying grams and eighths, then graduated to quarters. my largest buy was a couple ounces years later.

this marks the jump off to my five year ride with marijuana. i have moved three times and have made many friends along the way. while college was important i still kept pot center of my attention. i couldn't get past the way it made me feel, the ritual of packing my bowl, the ritual of hotboxing, jamaican showers, duct taping my dorm room door and bagging the fire alarm. i loved smoking at my parents house then eating pretty much everything in the house. long car trips to and from school i would bake out the car and roll around with tunes. i became addicted to not just smoking but the trends, the hunt, the rituals.

about two years ago i became a daily pot smoker. i was in college and would blow off morning classes to bake myself golden brown while my straight-edge roomate was gone. i would skip out on the gym and blow friends off just for the chance to smoke in my car in the school parking lot, rain or shine (but usually in the dark lol.) my future was starting to become affected as i withdrew from my chemistry class, taking me out of the premed "fast track." i didn't give a sh*t, i skipped school to smoke headies alone whereever i could. it was pathetic. soon i met my gf of two years, a fellow smoker.

we are still dating but i think we fueled each other. both of us have decent GPA's, above 3.0. but the problem was we both LOVE pot. i think we're both in a time in our lives we CAN smoke so we do. i think we both are hiding from things we don't want to confront, too. she knew a lot more dealers and it was easier for me to get high. i found a partner, a girl, to get high with and truthfully that's all i ever wanted since i became a heavy user. imagine having a gf that would have a bowl packed in wait for your return from class. it was a great time in life, i thought.

she and i have been smoking every day (pretty much) for two years. pot for me was a gateway drug as i dabbled in coke on two separate occasions. we were functional pot heads, too, making sure few friends knew how much we blew through.

my addiction started to grow as i moved in with her. she would leave our stash on the coffee table and come home to find some of it gone. "i was bored while you were gone," i'd tell her. more and more she lost trust in me as i not only stole bud, i stole adderall and completely lost my way.

i haven't had a job in two years, i don't know any of my classmates or teachers, and i would go months without talking to anyone in my family. i was holed up in my apartment, smoking (usually without my gf knowing) alone when she was gone. she lost a lot of trust and faith in me and i did too. to me there was nothing better than ripping bongs in the apartment, watching tv, playing video games, looking at porn, whatever. on average we'd smoke a quarter of mids in about five days and an eighth of headies in three. 1/4 mids = $45, 1/8 heads = $60.

in march i decided it would be ok for a tolerance break. my gf kept on smoking. she has a great job, good grades, close with her family. she could handle smoking and responsibility, i couldn't. i lasted about a week before caving at a party. the rest is history repeated.

for me there really is no middle ground, as someone here has said. i'm either stone-cold sober or ripping ten bongs of headies a night. i'm ashamed that i am this way. pot is supposed to be enjoyed casually and responsibily. i feel i let down the whole community being such a fiend. it wasn't until, honestly, i came here to hear some great stories of people with similar stories that i became to recognize the need to quit.

i spent a couple days reading a large portion of the posts here. my favorie being the "motivation to quit" post. i also visited websites and blogs about quitting pot. i prepared myself for the quitting so that i knew how to do it right.

so now here i am, "sober" since august 15th. i had told myself i'd quit that saturday night before 12:00 am (sunday). it was a special time for me, seven years to the day since my dad passed away. so i told my gf tonight is the night, say goodbye to the old me. we tore through bongs until my last hit at 11:59. with that motivating power on that date, i have a lot riding on this!

my gf continues to smoke because she can. i don't mind much. last night we had a fight and i called her a loser. i'm not sure where that came from as i'm the loser. i feel that since i quit i can put her down, but that's not right. i understand it's going to be harder to stay clean while she "uses." i'm ready to test my nerve.

i will certainly update this post with a log of my quitting. i have gone through a lot in the past couple days of sobriety and i will keep everybody posted with tips, struggles, thoughts, scribbles...

to anyone thinking that this sounds similar to your story, my advice is to step back and evaluate your life. are you still responsible while smoking? are you happy with your life? maybe i'm unique and my story is crazy, i don't know. all i know is i want to quit and i will quit. are you with me??