snitch

Caffeine and nicotine are not mind altering substances though.

snitch

I have read this and I feel resentment towards your friend too lol!

I had a friend in AA who picked up a 7 month sobriety chip even though she had told me she had drank. On many occasions!! I felt so much resentment towards her and I talked it through with my sponsor and you know, like others have shared I have ZERO control over other people. I cannot do anything about my friend, only me. So, I had to do some Inventory around why it was bothering me so much and It was pretty revealing. About me! I prayed for her and then I detached with love. I couldn't be around that.

To me, being sober is being free from all mind altering substances. Alcohol was my drug of choice but that doesnt mean i am going to pick up crack cocaine and then claim to be sober. I am grateful that I have that mindset and you should be grateful that you do too. Your friend sounds like she is in denial to me BUT That is not your problem so concentrate on you. As my sponsor often asks me "Do you want to be right or do you want to be free?".

nez

If I have a problem with the behavior of someone else...it means that I have a problem. It doesn't necessarily mean the other person has a problem. They might not be bothered by their behavior. I am the one that I know is bothered, so I am the one that I should work on. Working on the other person is not going to solve my problem, not only that, but when I do work on someone else...they usually become bothered with me. Go figure!

MantaLady

For me I used to drink in my teens till about 25. I wasn't at that point addicted but if I did drink I would always drink to oblivion and at the time thought I was just one of those people who couldn't handle my drink. So I started smoking weed daily and from that point very very rarely drank and most of the time if I did have a sip of wine I would not like it and give the glass away and roll myself a joint. I'd say for the next 10-15 years I got drunk a handful of times only. But I smoked 24/7. I thought I was ok. I was also a little smug and superior thinking I was better than people that got drunk, weed is fine right?

In my late 30's due to a relationship breakdown I lost all contact with my weed dealer and anyone else that I could buy it from. Slowley but surely I started drinking more and more often and ended up a full blown alchoholic.

Even when I went to rehab I fought the idea that I was self medicating with weed, I said my life was fine when I was just a smoker and there was nothing wrong with it and that my problems only started when I started drinking. Took me a long time to connect the dots and accept I was actually self medicating with weed and it was no different to drinking.

She won't see that unless she is ready to and nothing you can say will change that. Concentrate on your own sobriety, hers is none of your business but I absolutely agree with Bim that you need to set boundaries with her. If you're not comfortable with it either stop seeing her or tell her she cannot smoke in your home. Your home your choice. If she stops seeing you because she can't have a joint in your house then that's addiction. If you put a substance over a friendship or real life then it's a problem. But it's her problem x

tomsteve

dont cause me to do what alcohol. pot,crack,coke,etc caused me to do,too.

Kdon853

August252015

Advice? Yep - remember that it's my definition of sobriety that matters and I can't apply it to her.

I had a sponsor who started using CBD and it progressed to pot, and it is one reason that I don't have her as my sponsor anymore. Spiritually, it affected her based on her behaviors to me and my emotionally sobriety simply couldn't be guided by hers, now. She is still my friend- at a distance.

Just like it's no one else's business to judge my sobriety bc I take Ativan for anxiety, while I don't like the fact that people who do drugs like pot consider themselves sober...best I can do? Listen when it comes up in a small discussion meeting and share thoughts about intent, escapism, effect on life, etc, like I just had a chance to do with someone using pot but not alcohol. Up to him if he decides to stop smoking.

We are always supposed to protect our sobriety first. That can mean a lot of diff things and for me, one thing it has to mean is that I don't let this kind of stuff rent space in my head.

FreeOwl

Other people's lives are not your recovery.

Kevinmalone

Kevinmalone

Numblady

You guys! This is so helpful. I really am going to save this whole thread because I think a lot of the advice here would translate regardless of the resentment.

Also I always worry when I single out one person that I’m not thanking everybody but oh my gosh Snitch that line from the sponsor (be right or be free) is so perfect.

Thank you, thank you all.

Stayingsassy

Interesting...

My husband will sometimes smoke weed when he wants more time off from alcohol. Just a little at night before bed. His alcohol and his marijuana intake do not bother me. I don’t inhabit his body. I don’t have to deal with the weird weed feelings (which I dislike) or the hangovers, and his intake of either just doesn’t seem that extreme, he’s sober all day, so he’s sober when I see him, he uses at night for a couple hours and goes to bed at midnight. I’m sure he’s an addict in some sense of the word, but it just isn’t causing the catastrophic stuff my problems did, so I sort of don’t care much.

If he quit booze but still smoked weed and called himself sober, I’d say well, ok. Again. It’s not my body, not my brain. I don’t do it that way, but I don’t know how people are feeling in their own bodies, I don’t know what works for them. I only know what works for me.

I can deal in my personal life with others’ nonabusive use of stuff, but here on SR I don’t want to hear how people are managing their addictions with other addictions, because I know at SR, they are addicts like me and I might get ideas. I don’t need any other ideas than the ones I’ve got now.

Just ride in your own lane, let people do their own thing, and that’s that. Be clear about who you are on your side of the fence. That’s the only thing that matters.

SoberCAH

This person is in active relapse.

I feel badly for her.

I would try to emotionally let it go.

I would not lecture her, though, because I would want to leave the door open for her to call you for help one day.

SoberCAH

I encountered a situation like this in my first year or 2 of sobriety.

Someone, who had a history of slipping and sliding, so to speak, picked up a white chip.

A year or so later, he picked up a metal chip that was higher than my own.

He's long since been gone, but it was, nonetheless, rather astonishing to witness for me, as someone who was fairly new to the program and who was trying to learn and live a rather dogmatic AA program.

I really agree with what you and August 25 say about detaching from people who apparently don't want to get clean and sober.

If they want help, I'll certainly be there for them.

But if they don't, they are bad for my recovery and I am bad for their continued experimentation with alcohol and/or drugs.

They don't need me and I don't need them (until, at least, they truly want help).

WhoDeyPI

I might be the minority on this....but I smoke marijuana once a month-ish....and yet im 289 days sober. My addiction is alcohol, not marijuana.

That being said, if your friend has become addicted to marijuana, that's not good.

WeThinkNot

My sobriety covers abstinence from all mind altering substances but it's not because I'm worried about getting addicted to something else. When I'm sober I'm "here", when I'm under the influence I'm "over there".

During my active addiction I occasionally dabbled in other substances but alcohol was the only drug I was abusing. If I were to take a couple hits from a joint or do a few lines of coke in theory I should be fine because I never got hooked before.

But even so, then I would be over there. Then I would have to ask myself some questions: what is my motivation for going over there? Is going over there going to cause me to go backwards in my journey? Am I going to look for more justification to go back over there in the future?

I've been over there for nearly 20 years before my sobriety. I don't ever want to go over there again for the rest of my life. Happiness, sadness, anger, I want to experience every emotion in the human experience in the here and now.

FightOn

I have friends that have traded alcohol for weed. As strange as it sounds their lives are much better. As you stated, I have to feel life in order to live it. It works for them, it doesn't work for me.

MyLittleHorsie

I smoked weed daily for probably 15 years. Met Mr Horsie, he said, I don't want it around me, never smoked again. Had one joint in sin city for my 40th. Done, dusted, in the past. Once in a while I will get a hankering, but it is laughable, I'm in my 40s, most people think I am uptight, until they see me rolling around town in a jacked diesel pickup. Not my scene. I spend every waking minute avoiding carbs, when I smoked week, I ate nothing but carbs and over a decade ago, had the metabolism to do it.
I digress, was I addicted, heavy user, it doesn't matter. I do not burn anymore.
I drank and smoked cigarettes. Neither were a stop one day thing. Drinking was probably a 5 year struggle, am I a drunk, can I moderate, let's do dry January and August and November, lookie there you quit for a month you are fine. I wasn't fine. Now, I don't drink.
Cigs, we had a long breakup. I even bought myself a Chanel purse to celebrate quitting once, I could have had 5 more with money I didn't spend smoking, if I had stayed quit. Stupid purse mocking me.
I don't put a lot of stock in what others do. It may not be cross addiction, she might smoke for completely different reasons than she ever drank. Just as there is a difference between an alcoholic and a heavy drinker, there is a difference between an addict and recreational user, even if that user, uses daily. Thing is, it's up to your friend to decide which she is. You don't have to agree. My husband doesn't smoke or toke and rarely drinks. He refuses to be near anyone who smokes or tokes, his prerogative. I use him as an example because he has no addictions. Just a normal guy, who sets boundaries and others respect them.

FreedomCA

abgator

Yep.

To be honest, I've had a few encounters where I came across people in recovery who I found utterly intolerable. Their self righteous attitude that because they are incapable of consuming various substances, legal or otherwise, without falling into alcoholism and other addictions or harmful habits that no one else can either.

Nope. It's entirely capable of being an alcoholic and having no addiction issues or resulting harmful habits with other substances. We're all different.

I think the OP should either mind her own business or remove herself from the situation entirely.