Originally Posted by
Fluffer 
Brad,
I'm gonna second what Dee said. When I was your age, smoking weed made me paranoid, lazy and depressed and filled me with self-doubt. I would strongly encourage you to put it down. If you are currently between gigs, smoking pot is the last thing you need to be doing.
By the way, congrats on seven months. That is fabulous!!!!
This rang a bell. When I was your age, or a bit younger, I stopped drinking for a while as a result of court ordered rehab. Untreated alcoholism "made me paranoid, lazy and depressed and filled me with self-doubt"
I still had a job right until I picked up again, still had somewhere to live, still had a couple of friends, so those external factors were not what made me drink. On the face of it, life was good. I just didn't do life well without booze.
I have known others who find it easy to stay sober as long as life is going their way. When something bad happens, however, they eventually turn to their old solution. This is symptomatic of untreated alcoholism, the underlying causes were still there.
There was something wrong with my reaction to life.