I think the most nefarious thing about cannabis is that it doesn’t ruin your life — it just dims your light over time. It’s a gradual turning of the dial. It lulls you to sleep like a lullaby.
Weed kills your sense of urgency. It shows you what you could be doing with your life or who you could become if you were more focused, then it says:
“Fuck it. It’s all good. You can get back to it tomorrow.”
This in and of itself isn’t a death blow. But over a period of years, you are gradually forced to look at the chasm that’s forming between where you are and where you want to be. The longer you let this discrepancy remain, the wider the chasm grows.
Let’s get real: this plant isn’t something that ruins communities like crack cocaine or meth. Nobody is killing people or committing armed robbery to score a joint. If anything, weed is a plant that brings people together. That’s a beautiful thing.
I fully support legalization because it keeps people out of jail. Locking up people for using marijuana is ridiculous and counterproductive to society. And yes, I’d rather have a nation hooked on marijuana than alcohol. There’d be far fewer deaths and a lot more laughs. But that doesn’t mean it’s completely harmless.
In my opinion, the growing overconsumption of marijuana is leaving many people warped and lost in a generation that is already facing a loneliness epidemic. The pandemic only added fuel to the fire.
I wanted to get free for many years before I made the decision to do something about it — but when I told friends and family I was struggling, they almost looked at me like a leper.
I was looking for somebody to intervene on my behalf and tell me to do better. I was looking for acknowledgement and support. Instead, they just said things like:
“Oh, it’s not that bad.”
“Alcohol and tobacco are so much worse than weed.”
“Just tone it down or take a break. It’s easy.”
This kind of feedback just trivialized my struggle with a force that I felt had control over me. Marijuana is so culturally normalized now that even my doctor didn’t see a problem.
I was alarmed when I told him that I was smoking 10-15 joints per week (which I was secretly ashamed of) and he said “that’s not a big deal.”
Not a big deal? Then why did I feel so shitty about it?
The prospect of quitting weed scared me. It felt like I was losing a friend who was constantly talking shit behind my back, but whom I still loved regardless.
Yet, it had to be done. So I found my own way back to a healthy, balanced relationship with the plant — starting with an extended period of abstinence.
Acknowledgement is the most important part of the process and often the hardest because of the cultural normalization of weed. This is no different than alcohol, which is so culturally normalized that people who regularly have 3-5 drinks a day after work do not consider themselves alcoholics.
Looks like a dependency to me, buddy.
In order to be successful in clearing the addiction, you have to face the facts that you are addicted.
Many people do not like to think of themselves as addicts because we associate addiction with those who don’t have control over their lives.
Addicts are associated with failure — and if their lives are otherwise going well, many are hesitant to lump themselves in the same category as society’s “rejects.”
The key here is to realize that addiction is the result of a long term habit loop and nothing more. The longer we repeat the same habit, the more that habit becomes a part of our identity. We are addicted to all things which reify and reaffirm our identity to ourselves — even if that identity has flaws we dislike. In this way, we become addicted to even the negative habits which form us.
If you’ve been using and abusing marijuana for many years, as I had, that usage has become part of your identity. The repeated behavior has created an addiction which has formed a psychological dependence.
The same type of psychological dependence can be formed with other destructive habits, even if they aren’t conventional drugs.
For example: many Americans are addicted to and dependent on eating unhealthy food.
This dependence is partially because of the cultural normalization around these types of foods. It’s totally acceptable to feed your family a steady diet of Domino’s and McDonalds in many communities. The dependance is also formed because these foods are cheap and temporarily satiating, which allows many people to use them as coping mechanisms for the stresses of life.
Over 70% of the United States population is now overweight or obese – which means the psychological dependence on unhealthy food is widespread. Yet very few people who struggle with eating this type of food speak about it from the perspective of someone who has an addiction.
People who are addicted to fast food are still good people. Their learned behavior for eating junk says nothing about the quality of people they are. Their addiction is not a character flaw.
And neither is yours.
Being addicted to something doesn’t say anything about how “strong” or “weak” you are. It doesn’t have anything to do with your moral fiber. It’s simply a function of whether you are psychologically or physically dependent on a substance to feel good on a consistent basis — and whether that dependence is causing an imbalance in your life.
So, let go of your judgment around the word “addiction” — because it’s just a word. If you cannot accept where you are, how do you expect to get anywhere new?
Learning to identify and acknowledge that you are addicted to marijuana is the first step in getting control over that dependence.
*******
Marijuana is one of the crutches that many people use to cope instead of dealing with what’s coming up.
If you need support killing the habit, I’m putting together a free presentation on Wednesday, July 5th at 5pm PST / 8pm EST to help you break the addictive marijuana loop and come back to center.
It’s called:
Here’s what we’ll be covering at the webinar:
- How to know whether now is the right time for you to take a break from weed
- How to navigate the 3 phases of healing your relationship with marijuana
- How to take a break from weed and be able to continue using later it without getting trapped in the addiction cycle again
- Probably a lot more
If quitting or reducing your MJ usage is something that’s been on your mind for a long time, but you’ve been having trouble doing it alone — this presentation will give you some solid strategies to get you started.
BTW — I am PRO CANNABIS. I still use it, but I’ve changed my relationship to it completely over the last year after struggling for a long time.
I’m not advocating you quit forever unless YOU want to. I’m going to be sharing strategies that have allowed me to take long breaks without cravings, end the addictive loop and use marijuana as a healthy supplement, not a crutch.
If that’s interesting to you, I highly recommend you sign up.
ALSO — if you cannot make it at 5pm PST / 8pm EST on Weds, July 5th, that’s fine. Add your name anyway. I’ll send you the recording on a private YouTube link.
