coming_clean

Heya i´m Julien and i´m a mariuana addict. I´m 26 years old now, and I started smoking weed when I was 13. Pretty soon I was smoking everyday. I´ve gone through puberty and early maturehood stoned. I´ve been in relationships stoned, and often it contributed to the endings of them.
Somehow I finished college, and I started working full-time about three years ago. A year ago i´ve been trying university during a sober phase but I failed cause I started smoking again.

I live near two coffeeshops within a 200 meters walk, we´re I can buy weed and hasj from 10:00 am till 23:00 PM. Strong good dutch weed. My girlfriend says she likes me better when I´m high, cause i´m grumpy and woozy most of the times when i´m sober. Don´t really know what it is to be sober.

Since i´ve been coming here to SR a few years back i´ve been able to get more sober periods then ever before, so there are some steps in the right direction, furthermore i´ve been able to maintain my job, I work out about three times a week and I meditate pretty often. My spiritual path is becoming more and more buddhism, I know for sure this will help me with my struggles.

I´m starting to get tired of myself. I wake up almost each and every morning (it´s 10:19 AM here now) with the intentions to be sober just this and only day. Most of the times the anxiety starts around 5 or 6 pm so I go out to buy some weed.
Even now (didn´t even have breakfast yet), my mind is whispering it´s ok to go right now and just smoke all day and play videogames (it´s saturday, it can´t harm you).

I really don´t know what to do, I never the caracter to break my addiction.

this sucks....

I need to make it today...

betterlate

Can you get away for a while, like travel and stay with relatives for a few weeks? The more distant the better. Don't take along or procure any weed while you're there...one thing about weed is that the early abstinance is not physically painful, but you will be, as you say, "grumpy" for a few days.

Dee74

Hi Julien

Good to see you back. I think it clear if we find we can't do it ourselves we need to call in reinforcements.

Did you ever follow up the AA/NA idea? Sorry but I've forgotten.

Have you spoken to a doctor about it? I'm not sure how it works there but I assume it's a fairly common problem there as it is here...they may have some ideas on what to do...they may refer you to a counsellor for example?

and keep posting here - regularly - it really helped me to keep myself 'honest'
D

NEOMARXIST

Alright mate. I think the first thing is to ask yourself do you truly accept that you're an addict? If so then it's obviously a case of not taking that first toke. That's the one that is doing the damage not the 4th spilff or whatever.

I think the next thing it's going to take is a total change of people, places and things. I know that I had to do that inorder to stay sober. Easier said than done I know but it's what it takes to stay sober/clean.

Because weed is only psychologically addictive rather than physical dependency then the suggestion from betterlate might not be too bad an idea. Get off it for a couple of weeks and then make sure you do everything to stay away from that first hit. Obviously if you're an addict then all drugs and booze has to be off-limits imo. One will just lead back to another or subtitute addictions and vice versa.

Also you're going to have to accept that recovery and staying clean is hard work. It's the easy option to just buy some herb and get stoned and play videogames. That's the easy option which most people go down. But most people aren't addicts so it ain't a problem for them just recreational fun.

You already say you have the spiritual side of things so use that to your advantage too. Whils't I grew tired of weed and replaced it with BZP, Cocaine, E's and LSD (which lead to much heavier disruptive/antisocial binges) I did used to love it back when I was 17/18/19. It boils down to just having to want to stay clean more than getting stoned and then doing everything possible and using all the help available for you to maintain the daily committment of just for today I will not use. Working some form of recovery programme is also essential to maintain happy, grateful sobriety imo.

All The Best

coming_clean

than you so much guys...

i´ve been around here all the time, to read and to gather inspiration and courage...

i´m a bit ashamed of my continious relapses so that´s why I don´t post so much..

feel like a failure (addiction wise, luckely not all together)

Dee74

I've never seen SR as a place where people who are struggling should feel ashamed to post, CC.

I'd like to think it's a place where people can post if they need help or support, ya know?
It's what we're here for I reckon.
D

coming_clean

ur absolutely right Dee,

i come from a family were the showing of emotions is seen as a sign of weakness or completely irrelevant..

You all are a different kind of family

NEOMARXIST

How did you get on today mate? You still clean/sober? Have you thought about a plan of action that you're going to take?

Increase The Peace