Lyoness

mstrust, I had to laugh at this. My longest quit time when I smoked was a month--well, actually 28 days. My brother-in-law and I quit together and chose February to do so--shortest month of the year!

And try not to worry about some "hardcore" users laughing at you. If they do then they don't understand the first thing about addiction. I think most folks will applaud you for this. I know I do!

mstrust

Thank you, Lyoness! I have to have a sense of humor about this so I appreciate that I could make you laugh. It was a ridiculous rule to try and keep...among the others that I had. I got so I could be stoned and do just about anything at any time and no one would know the difference. I sometimes wonder if people who have known me for a long time but didn't know I smoked think I'm on something NOW because I'm so much more energized than I was before.

Rob...I love the "To Catch a Pot Smoker" thing. I know it was a real worry and I'm not trying to belittle it, it just made me chuckle. And I totally understand switching from one thing to another when trying not to smoke. I've been through cycles of drinking as well...and I used to be afraid to smoke pot if I had been drinking because of the spins and the possibility I'd get sick--which I've had a serious lifelong phobia of. BUT, I eventually got good at smoking and drinking so I did both at the same time. This may sound pathetic, but I lost my Golden Retriever three years ago and I also basically lost my mind. I was driving around, smoking pot AND drinking...just crazy, totally irresponsible and nuts, a-hole behavior...and I was hungover every single day of my life for a while.

One day I just said, no more...I HATED what I had become. So I guess I doubled up on the weed because I thought, well at least I can function this way. Then I had another little alcohol binge near the middle of 2011. Did a couple more things that I'm not proud of...so I stopped before I got more out of hand. Haven't had a drink since July 2011 and don't miss it in the least. I just could not shake the pot. I'm pretty lucky I'm a big coward in general because the only thing that stopped me from doing other drugs was fear sometimes...of getting sick. If I had tried anything else, I may have ended up an even bigger mess. Who knows? And I guess, why even speculate?

On my way to sanity now, so let the past be past, I suppose?? It helps me to talk it out. Sorry if it's all coming out as babble.

RobC420

Yeah, at the time I was dead serious and really scared, but I was also a really sick addict. It was the insanity of addiction. Now that my sanity has been restored I can look back and laugh at all that crazy stuff I did and thought. I think of stuff like that today and I'm like "lol! I can't believe I actually thought that" and it makes me sooooo greatful to be where I'm at today.

Retread59

I haven't read all the posts in this thread, but wanted to add an experience here. Many people seem to feel (as I did) that marijuana is a harmless drug. However, I'm here to tell you that there is real physical harm possible.

My husband is just now recovering from injuries sustained when he fell in our garage, face first, onto the concrete floor. He broke several bones in his face and needed to be rushed to the ER and had to have emergency surgery. He just got the wires removed from his mouth this last week and has been on a liquid diet since the fall.

When he came to, he made it to the bedroom where I checked his blood pressure before deciding to call 911. It was 75/45. That's what caused him to fall. What caused the blood pressure drop? He was in the garage to smoke pot, hiding from me.

He's lucky, and the oral surgeon told him this, that he didn't do more damage than was done. Had he fallen another way, he might have cracked his skull rather than his face. Who knows how much damage he might have done?

You'd think, after all this, that he'd swear off the pot. But he hasn't. Despite me showing him research linking pot with lowered BP, and despite our doctor telling him this was undoubtedly the reason his BP dropped, he's in denial. And he still feels like he wants to hide it from me, so he still goes out to the garage with the concrete floor to smoke.

Just thought I'd share.

mstrust

Thank you for that. I've experienced blood pressure drops myself but luckily wasn't doing anything at the time that could cause me harm. One of friends I used to smoke with a lot did faint a couple times from the same thing. We didn't really understand what was happening back then. Scary stuff.

Dee74

I'm really glad to see these experiences being gathered here



D

Retread59

BTW, I like your avatar

Retread59

Thanks, Dee. I think we tend to minimize pot, seeing it as not a very serious drug. I know that's how I've always felt about it. Needless to say, I'm changing my thinking on that.

kindness2012

hi all, great to read this thread. i have just been in a realtionship with an ex a who smokes a LOT of weed all the time. over time he revealed to me he lived in a kind of terrible hellish, isolated, paranoid state of mind. i didnt get it at first, but gradually connected it to the pot use. i could not understand why he sleep all the time at odd hours, watched tv for hours on end, didnt want to go anywrhere or do ANYTHING, constantly complained about everything, yet refused help, had low BP, didnt want to work, yet complained about the lack of, and just let everything fall by the wayside in every en i asked friends whether pot could cause all this they absolutely said it could. i have since realised i know a LOT of people who display similar effects. we also had a young female friend who used heavily for a brief period and became psychotic who ended up suiciding. pot is dangerous...it seems M use/ addiction is VERY real and very damaging. dr also said it is HIGHLY carcinogenic. i think people underestimate the dangers of weed. i would like to read the experience of frequent users- it would help me a lot in working out what was happening to my ex bf. he was seriously suffering depression, isolation, paranoia. terrible. :-( thanks .

MycoolFitz

Man I quit almost 30 years ago. A session with Arlo Guthrie was enough. I could not function for a week. But the booze got out of control. I,m off everything but blood pressure med which is hard to abuse.

mstrust

kindness2012...

I'd be happy to share my experience with you if it will help you understand better. However, I have to say, as a person who was also in a relationship with an opiate addict and tried to understand EVERYTHING about abuse, addiction, use, withdrawal, etc. and so on, I think I should have focused more on me. (Woulda Coulda Shoulda...whatever.) It was stark, raving evidence of my codependency and I wasn't aware of it at the time. I thought I was being a very understanding and supportive girlfriend. I also thought I would be better able to protect myself if I was better informed. That wasn't true either. Enough of that...I just felt that as someone who has codependency issues and knows what it's like to battle someone else's addiction, it would be irresponsible of me not to say that.

I smoked on and off for the past 20+ years. I probably said this in another post, but oh well. I quit a few times, but I started again in 2005 and never stopped. Before I quit a little over a month ago, I was high constantly, pretty much, if I was awake. I smoked before work. I started taking the long, back way into work to smoke on the way, I was smoking during my work day, on my way home, when I got home. I basically smoked before, during, and after everything.

Aside from allowing me to put some distance between me and life and masking/numbing whatever emotions I didn't want to feel or at least not too strongly, pot had some seriously negative effects on me. I isolated. I would get high and refuse to make plans with people. If I did make plans, it would more than likely involve being able to smoke. Sometimes I could spend an entire day doing absolutely nothing but taking up space and getting high to the point that I was pretty much just wasting pot. I was tired all the time. I felt my blood pressure was low. I had no motivation to do anything. I felt ashamed of what I was doing yet I justified and rationalized it at the same time--the way a lot of potheads do, I think. We tell ourselves it's no big deal, it's just pot, it's not as bad as this or that, it's not like you get ADDICTED to it or anything, blah blah blah. I also went through periods of depression where I felt like I wanted to drive my car into a tree and I could see no point at all in life and nothing anyone said or did would make me feel better, so I'd isolate some more to keep myself away from other people so they wouldn't have to deal with me. I got somewhat paranoid, but that wasn't much of a problem for me. I just hated myself. To no end. And I figured everyone else probably disliked me on some level as well.

Then I'd get in a good mood again eventually and I would think the most serene, (I thought) interesting, and introspective thoughts. I would over-analyze everything and I actually thought pot was helping me process through some traumatic experiences by calming my mind down. Maybe it was? I doubt it. I also felt very creative at times and I would be compelled to take photos or write, but didn't follow through on much.
I was also very confident in my ability to stop smoking while high, which is an interesting irony to me. But take away my pot, or leave me with too little in my jar and I would be thinking about it obsessively. Having a fresh bag turned into a comfort because I wouldn't have to worry about that again for a bit.

Right before I quit, I was scraping resin out of pipes and saving it to smoke it, which is really disgusting--smell, taste, everything. I went over my friend's house more than a few times and took weed from him because I didn't want to ask for it because he'd know I smoked as much as I did. I was terrified of stopping...especially not being able to sleep and the possibility of nightmares. But I got to a point where it was more than obvious that I wasn't living my life AT ALL or what life I had revolved around pot and not much else--besides my boyfriend's aforementioned opiate addiction, of course--and the best way I can possibly put it is I really wanted to see what life was like clean. I had forgotten and I had no idea anymore what kind of person I might be if I wasn't constantly smoking. It had become so ingrained in who I was that it was almost as though I was removing an appendage.

I don't know if any of this is helpful. I know that when I was ready to stop, I was honest with my friends and with my therapist and with my doctor about just how much I was smoking. My friends knew I had an issue, of course, but they didn't know the extent of it. Prior to that, I was also honest about having no interest in quitting. But when I decided to stop, I decided. I drew a line in the sand and I said enough. Period. Just...enough. I wouldn't trust myself around it now and I don't think I've got it all solved. I just know I would rather be present in my life fully than not or as one of my friends put it, the 'purest form' of myself. (Still working on the nicotine and caffeine though.)

Lyoness

Wow, mstrust, except for a few details I could almost have written your post. Scary! It really does show that pot is an intense drug even though it's "just" a plant.

Reading your post makes me so glad I quit! And I did it like you, line in the sand, this is it. Now I'm trying to muster that same courage and determination to quit my way, way worse opiate addiction.

Peace!

RobC420

Yip. I did this too. In some instances, my family (mom, dad, brother) would plan vacations and I would refuse to go because I couldn't fathom being in a situation where I couldn't smoke and was stuck with my family for days. Going on vacation with my family was just impossible when I was smoking.

I experienced shame a lot and rationalized it as best I could. Those times my family was on vacation and I would stay home to smoke, I felt horrible the whole time. There was this voice in the back of my head saying "look at what you are doing. You are ditching your family to do drugs." Then I'd block that voice out as much as I could and try to replace it with some rationalization for why I was making the right decision by not being with them. Something like "well, I would have gone if my brother wasn't such a jerk" or "well I've got that test coming up so I needed to stay home and study". Needless to say I never got around to studying.


yeah I did this too. Eventually, I got to where it made me so uncomfortable having to call my dealer and buy weed that I would buy a bag and a new glass pipe at the same time. I'd smoke the whole bag out of the pipe. Then I spend 2 days taking resin hits out of the pipe. Then I'd scrape as much as I could out of the pipe and smoke it. Then when that was smoked up, I would break the pipe and scrape the resin out that I couldn't reach before. Then I would smoke that resin in a pepsi can. Then I'd 'quit' and white knuckle it a few days till I broke down and got more. Then the cycle would start over again. I did this countless times.

liv1ce

For some reason and maybe because I was a young college age fool surrounded by others just like me that I remember my pot days as a lot of fun. I also think in part because I was basically forced to quit for environmental reasons (no dealers in my ecosystem) I had not yet realized what was happening to me or maybe would not admit it to myself. I recall all the giggling and foolishness. Driving around stoned out of my mind to go golfing. The long drawn out philosophical discussions at this seemingly high intellectual level.

Pot was my first foray into the world of being high, loaded, goofy whatever. I had never drank in my teen years and was basically "a good boy." After pot I couldn't stop. I had to get high one way or the other - any way that I could. Somehow I knew to not do cocaine or anything harder. Somehow I knew I would never be back if I went there and I truly believe that to be fact.

RobC420

Yeah I loved smoking pot in the beginning. It was fun and exciting. It was associated with a lot of good times, etc. When it become a problem I started thinking that I should quit, but I was under the delusion that I could smoke and it would be like it was when I first started and it was fun. I chased this delusion for years. I was in complete denial that the early fun days were over and I now had a serious problem.

liv1ce

mstrust

I did not see your last post before writing mine. It brought back more memories. I had quit so many years ago that I forgot some of it. Or I was so high that I just forgot most of it. I too could have written the same story now that you have refreshed my memory. The fear of running out and I smoked so much and so fast that I was in danger of running out always. In the end no one wanted to be around me I think and that may be why I couldn't find anything.

My drinking and opiate addiction was much more desperate and sad.

I guess it was really no fun at all.

But my life now is really fun and I am so glad to be free of this shiit.

liv1ce

Great thread by the way!

liv1ce

Rob

Each post seems to be bringing back more and more. I also could have written your last post.

while involved I know that ther was no better high than the first one of the day and chased that feeling the rest of the day. I think I wrote this in an earlier post here.

I also think I was chasing that first simple minded seemingly innocent goofiness that I experienced in the beginning but really all I was doing was slowly stumbling down the road to hell.

How I manged to escape total destruction and complete loss of self is a miracle.

kindness2012

Thank you all SO MUCH for sharing. It helps me make sense of what i saw. he could not sleep, had panic artacks, nightmares, isolated- increasingly so- etc etc etc- so many things that made no sense at all. he was frequently, well, just plain doo-lally. paranoid, etc etc. angry. made no sense. my heart went out to him, but i didnt know what was wrong, as i also thought inoocently that pot was seemingly innocuous compared to other drugs. he begged me to walk beside him, toild me he was lost, lived a nightmarfe, needed help etc. i TRIED. but it was like being in some sort or mirror maze- what seemed simple to me met with no action from him. and his life was actually really quite good! he had so many cool things etc, but made nothing of them, criticised everyone and everything it has left me in a bewildered place. after asking me to not leave, he began pushing me away, telling me he was no good for me, would drag me down etc, at the same time being really needy and helpless. it was just so hard to know what to do. and it broke my heart, frankly, as i saw so much good in him. he was ashamed of himself and i didnt understand it. so so so sad. i loved who he was, and saw him a very wothrwhile, issues or no issues. nevertheless, he pushed me away. im terribly heartbroken about it. and had no clue as to what was really going on for him. the craziness seemed to increase as we went along. he had been suicidal before, so i worried about him A LOT. i would get wolf creis, and then when i responded, he would seem just fine. i knew so much was amiss, but could not identify the cause. so i feel some sorrow, had i known, my respnses would have been different, for myself and for him. i wonder what i meant to him, what i represented. to be honest, i really don't know. very sad, still, and bewildered still. thanks for being so generous in sharing. and please continue to post, it really helps, as no one i know has much isight into the insidious ways of the weed. many thank guys n gals.

liv1ce

Not having been there I certainly cannot know for sure but having been an addict there are certain things that sound very familiar. They will sound very familiar to many here as well.

Some of what you describe sounds very much like the typical manipulations of an addict. One thing to realize is that an addict will do ANYTHING to protect his addiction. He, and let's not be sexist she, will give up seemingly impossible things to continue the ability to get high. When challenged the addict will try to manipulate reality and change your perception of the same. He will try to change the focus and redirect any criticism by seeming contrite. He will try to change your anger and frustration to sympathy. he may be able to make the problem seem to be yours rather than his.

I certainly fit this mold but on the inside there truly was a person who was hating what he was doing and wanted desperately to quit and come back to normal but couldn't manage to do it.

Quite a confusing complex and difficult miasma for an "outsider" to understand.