16YearsDrunk

I know most people talk about alcohol and I'm still alcohol free, but I tried to quit cigarettes and cannabis today.

I made it 12 hours. Every single second for 10 hours was hell. Much worse than when I quit alcohol.

I had to cave in tonight because there was no way I was sleeping. I will repeating tomorrow and then try to make it through the night. Cold turkey isn't going to work. It's not the cigarettes, it's the weed.

I smoked a cigarette and it didn't cut it. My head was a mess until I smoked cannabis.

I've argued with my mom, because my uncle owes me money for a web design job. In anger I deleted his servers, and sent him a nasty email demanding my 2 months pay. I ended up snapping my simcard so my brother and mom couldn't contact me.

All of this because I didn't smoke cannabis.

I'm shocked. Disgusted. Guilty.

But hey, I'm still alcohol free.

MantaLady

Hey 16, it’s late here in the U.K. so will post proper in the am. I hear you and when I stopped smoking cannabis I was like a raging bull! x

WaterOx

I can't speak for weed but I used to smoke over a pack a day of cigarettes. In my experience it was extremely hard to quit. Took me about a year before I felt normal. BUT! Smoking is so anti-social these days that IMO it is easier to stay quit, once you get there.

Meanwhile, alcohol is celebrated- now more than ever....so, well done keeping sober. It's a big achievement so pat yourself on the back!

Dee74

when I quit weed it took me a few days to find a normal sleeping pattern again - not the ten days it took with alcohol... but a few days.

I think the longer you keep self medicating the sleep the harder it's going to be to stop?

D

jryan19982

The first week was the hardest when I quit weed, and the first month was hardest when I quit cigs. It's not easy and anyone who says it is can go kick rocks! I found that tapering off weed helped, it not tapering off cigs ur alcohol those are all or nothing.

MantaLady

Hi 16, hope your feeling better today.

My story with weed goes like this. When I was a teenager you were either a "Townie" which were those that used to go out to pubs and bars and drink for fun, or you were a "Shaggy" those that smoked weed and took LSD/Magic Mushrooms and Speed and rarely if ever drank. I was the latter, and never went to pubs or bars often, rarely drank however it was apparant early on that I turned into a total jerk and indulged in risky behaviour when I did drink so I knocked it on the head and stuck with weed. I did this daily for 25 years, had a great job, achieved a lot in my life and believed I was doing great.

When I ran out of weed however the insomnia was immense, I could not sleep for weeks, I was constantly on edge and almost acted like I was on speed. I would be so grumpy and intolerant and pissed off to the max. As soon as the shipment came in I reverted back to my usual calm and collected self.

About 10 years ago I split up with my ex and no longer had any contacts, so I started drinking and the rest is history till I ended up in rehab.

I couldn't cope without the weed, I needed something, anything! Looking back now I can see my smoking as the addiction it was, I just replaced one addiction that was less harmfull in terms of I could make decisions/work and be somewhat in control for one that took that last little bit of me away.

I absolutely get how you must have felt, been there many times myself and anyone who crossed my path when I had ran out was a brave person. My temper would flare at the drop of a hat. I think the weed just sedated me to life and at the time I really thought I was happy and in control.

Not sure if any of this makes sense but I hear you, I get it and hope you are feeling better today 16!!

DriGuy

I smoked pot regularly, but started freaking out on occasion. I just quit one day. There was no withdrawal and no cravings. I just quit. Alcohol wasn't like that. It was a bear. Quitting smoking was way worse. I was going nuts from craving nicotine. It was much worse than alcohol cravings.

I read one time (can't remember where) that more alcoholics die of smoking related issues than from alcohol. I mentioned this at an AA meeting one time, but it was not well received. While there was no debate that followed, I did hear a few grunts. I actually wasn't sure how to read those grunts, and I don't want to automatically assume anything from them. I just know mentioning it was not a conversation starter that night.

MindfulMan

Funny, I was a stoner too. Had a few drinking to blackouts though, but didn't really like it or do it that frequently, at least not until my 30s. My 20s were largely sober, in fact. Had a drink or two when out with friends, that was about it. Pot became unpleasant to the point where I have a full-blown allergic reaction to it, I somewhat gradually stopped as a result in my early 20s. Lifelong nicotine addict though, from the time I was 13 or so. Finally quit using Chantix in my mid-40s, quit for 9 years, then started smoking during inpatient rehab, full stop. About 4 months sober I stopped smoking again, and this time it was pretty easy. That may have been due to being on Wellbutrin though. I ran out of cigs one day and put off buying the next pack until "later." "Later" never came.

Why not try to quit nicotine OR weed? Since it sounds like weed is the tougher of the two, drop cigs for a few weeks first. What you are attributing solely to THC withdrawal sounds far more like nicotine withdrawal to me. THC leaves the body fairly slowly so any acute withdrawal is mild, at least theoretically.

Dee74

Depends on your definition of mild

Irritability disproportional anger, insomnia , sweats, paranoia, depression - all bought to me courtesy of pot withdrawal.

True it wasn't as bad as alcohol withdrawal - but that's kinda like comparing knife wounds with bullet woulds.

I always mixed tobacco and pot so it made sense to me to stop them both.

How are you going 16?

D

Atlast9999

WaterOx

Quit Smoking The Easy Way by Allen Carr is also a good quit resource

WeThinkNot

Wow my experience has been completely different. I started smoking well after I was already a full blown alcoholic. People were always smoking at parties and outside nightclubs so I started doing it for the social aspect. Although I became a regular smoker (one pack would last me two days) I never considered myself a smoker, if that makes any sense.

When I quit drinking I continued smoking since I didn't want too much on my plate at the same time. One week before my first birthday I decided I didn't want to celebrate sobriety by still smoking. Threw the rest of my cigarettes in the trash and never looked back. For me it was easy since I had already curbed one addiction. Which brings me to this point...

It always amazed me how many people in AA smoke like chimneys. My assumption was that once you get a handle on one addiction it becomes easier to rein others in. It would seem like my experience is the exception though.

racingthoughts

Oh boy do I know how you feel.

I did the same thing as you. Quit alcohol (never my drug of choice) and was a wreck for a few days, but then felt better, kept smoking, and finally had the fight of my life when I tried quitting the weed. Pure willpower, no support, and no help with some underlying mental health problems that I had been self-medicating away with weed for years. It was a miserable experience that caused me to resent what I thought was recovery, but what was really just a white knuckle dry out. I didn't smoke for six months, but tried to drink socially, and even did some other stuff towards the end. Long story short, I relapsed on everything, and four months later I stopped looking both ways when crossing the street because I was living in a mental hell and didn't wish to live any longer. Thank God I went to rehab instead, and now I'm sitting with 3 and a half years clean from everything.

First of all, from my experience as both a drug and nicotine addict, quitting weed should probably be your primary focus for now. You're getting weed withdrawal now, and I can't imagine experiencing that and nicotine withdrawal simultaneously. The reasoning behind what I've said here boils down to the fact that I'm worried that getting the a case of the **** its and slipping up on a cigarette would quickly lead you back to smoking weed. Also, I've never seen any addict quit nicotine while continuing to use their drug of choice. If you can do both, that's great. If you can't however, I think you should choose to get sober before choosing to quit nicotine.

Back to the topic of weed withdrawal, yes it is real, and yes it can last longer than one might expect. Not trying to scare you off by saying that, but I think wrapping your head around that idea is better than expecting to feel fine by a certain day. My worst days were the first and fifth days of my first quit, and first and eighth of my second. With that being said, I also hit some pink clouds before I was detoxed, and those helped keep me grounded. However, all of them occurred after the worst was over.

When you quit drinking, you weren't getting completely sober. Now you are, and this is where the challenge lies. I know the feeling of feeling completely screwed up at hour 12. When you're really fiending though, I'd sit down and start taking things no longer than an hour at a time. Most significant cravings generally last 20 minutes to 3 hours. Breathe deeply, try listening to relaxing sounds (waterfalls were my favorite), and feel free to get in a warm shower and just sit there for a while. I have some more specific things that helped me, which I won't detail here, but would be happy to share with you via private message. Let me know if you're interested.

I hope you can move forward with this. Please don't hesitate to seek professional help with this and/or support from the 12 step community. SR is great, but face to face support was crucial for me, and certainly wouldn't hurt at the very least.

DriGuy

I can't imagine quitting both at once. I'm sure it can be done, but for me it would have been an insane ride.

I quit smoking years before I quit drinking. I attended a no smoking workshop during college that met daily at noon. It was chaired by a physician who gave each of us three Valium tablets to help us through the worst of the cravings. Others in the workshop (about 6 of us) quit right away, but I kept smoking while I attended meetings. The doctor asked if I was really going to quit, and I said I would after I got one other thing out of the way.

A week after I started the meetings, my fiancee and I drove to her parents home, where we announced that we were going to get married. On the way back to the campus, we stopped at a roadside trash bin, and I threw half of what was left of my pack of cigarettes away.

That was the last time I smoked, but then the cravings started. What a wild ride that was. I would walk around our apartment with the jitters, while my mind was overwhelmed with one word repeating itself over and over: "Cigarette, cigarette, cigarette!" It wouldn't stop and consumed my entire attention. Finally, I took a Valium and had the strangest reaction. My mind kept going "Cigarette, cigarette, cigarette," but with the Valium, I didn't care. I don't know how long that continued, probably a couple of days. I took all the Valium, and then just hung on for a couple of weeks.

The cravings began to diminish, and I could see myself making progress every day. But after a couple of weeks, while I was expecting the cravings to keep lessening, I was suddenly hit by the mother of all cravings, which was startling and depressing, like all that I had gained I had suddenly lost. I made it through that and started progressing again, but during he next 6 months, I would occasionally be hit by one of those demoralizing spikes that would take me by surprise.

Eventually, like with alcohol, I would still get random cravings, but after a while they became minor events that I could just shake off with an amused laugh.

One night a week, we had a smoking meeting, which was our most well attended meeting (maybe 25 members). It met in a motel right next to the exercise room. We closed the door so as not to offend the health minded exercisers that had to walk by our smoking room to get to the health spa. From a nearby room, someone brought in a huge fan, which did nothing but circulate the smoke. What that accomplished I could never fathom. It was like meeting in a fog. Eventually, the motel kicked us out because quests were constantly complaining, and we had to find another place to meet.

ramius

I smoked weed for the first time in probably 10 months a couple Fridays ago. Just alot of paranoia about work testing me and it sorta reminded me of being drunk. Not fun and not worth it to me.

Picked up smoking cigarettes after a 10 year quit maybe a month after I stopped drinking. Gotta knock that habit off soon.