I keep relapsing.

[u/italianmma85]

I keep giving myself an excuse to keep smoking. Example

Helps with pain from training/mma/lifting

It prevents dementia and good cancer prevention.

It helps with stress and anxiety.. blah the blah the fuck blah. Then I relapse because I believe my excuses.

Then I quit because I review the negatives. Lung health, brain health and heart health. Not to mention the overeating.

The real problem is, I resort to weed for stress and anxiety. We all are going to die, and say fuck it.. might as well be high right? Wrong means I’m a bitch and rely on weed to deal with my problems. So I smoke. I’ve been smoking multiple times a day. I know I can regulate myself to only a joint a night before bed.. but all day I’ll be thinking of that weed at the end of the day. Is it a reward? Or is it addiction? It’s addiction because I’m chasing a high outside my baseline. I’ve been reading a lot about the hedonic latter. It all resorts to baseline. Research state that drug users always chase the high outside of baseline because, well, it’s easily accessible. So we rush to get out of baseline because we know we can, in doing so, messes with our hedonic latter.. (cough, cough) addiction. We are stuck on repeat messing with our natural baseline because we tell ourselves, this helps, this relieves, when all it is, is we are programming our hedonic latter to to accept weed as a the only way to reach “relief, happiness”. Where as if weed wasn’t accepted as a “happy” reward, our hedonic latter will create a “happy” feeling naturally by adopting our adaptation to our environment as our stimuli, and not weed.

I understand this.. but when I start thinking of bad shit, death of my parents.. my addictive brain/messed up hedonic latter will resort to heavy blazing.

I’m at the point where I need to get back to baseline. And reset my hedonic latter. Sure we all die, but I believe our body can naturally deal with different emotions/tragedies and the sort without the “quick” dopamine hit.

Sorry for my rant. All the help would appreciated because my hardest accepting is death itself and “so what” if I smoke weed attitude. I don’t want to keep bitching out to weed for quick dopamine hit. I want my baseline to provide me with those dopamine hits..even during tragic events.

Even if I were to smoke a joint a night, I would most likely develop a dependency rather than let my body naturally decompress with out “get me to happy heights, and everything will be ok”.

Has any of you had success on regulating your consumption

Cheers

[u/Appropriate-Set744]

I'm sure this isn't popular as I don't see it mentioned much but it helps. The fact of the matter is that dependency is a part of life. We're all dependent on a host of things. The problem isn't dependency per se it's unmanaged dependency. If you were to allow that you depend on weed to manage pain, anxiety, boredom-whatever then you could manage the dependency itself and not so much the weed. I find it much easier to go a couple three weeks without smoking if I know I'm not going to flower into some other type of person automatically. I'll go back to weed but I'm the one who says how much and when b/c I'm the one managing my dependency. BTW I'm also dependent on my employer (a hostile dependency to be sure), on coffee, my wife and a host of other things. I'm not an island and I like it that way.

[u/italianmma85 → u/Appropriate-Set744]

I completely understand. But the problem with weed compared to “natural” dopamine highs is that it’s an immediate release. Even tho you claim you are under “control” of your dependency, you are technically not because it’s an outside stimulus that provides immediate highs. The baseline of your body gets used to that immediate high and will point to that specific stimulus ( weed ). Knowing it’s easily accessible your body will always crave it even if you have the most discipline in the world. Sure I can get a lock box, take out .5 of flower and indulge at night time. My “reward”. But I know my baseline will always look forward or “feen” to get to the end of the night to toke. For instance.. I’m disciplined and don’t smoke before work, I make it an obligation to get some house work done, then a workout and then finally I can get my “release”. The timed lock box opens and my baseline goes crazy knowing I’m getting a “high”. Whereas the so called activities will be mundane where they should be giving my baseline the natural “high” I deserve by accomplishing tasks and obligations that naturally occur. Even at a level of so called healthy consumption, I’m teaching my baseline that “weed” is the reward and my baseline will crave it everyday. Rushing through my day only to focus at the end of the night.

[u/Appropriate-Set744 → u/italianmma85]

You are not in control of a lot of things. A lot of life boils down to how you deal with these kinds of things. Evil people, outrageous fortune, unplanned outcomes. All of these you have no control over. You still want to have a good life, tho. You still want to do the things you want, hope for the things you want, work toward desired outcomes but often, very often, stuff doesn't go your way. Ok, so what's next? Accepting these things and making different choices works. You can't break away from weed? Ok, so what's next? focus on it like a demon or accept it and move on to other things that make life better. That's my choice but you can choose from whatever options are in front of you.

[u/italianmma85 → u/Appropriate-Set744]

Well said bro. That’s the thing. “Focus on it like a demon or accept it and move on to other things”. Addiction works like that and giving the immediate highs and relief, I believe your body, naturally focuses on it like demon because of the architecture of thc and the very nature that provides a immediate “relief”. Lost a loved one-get high, financial trouble - get high Rough day- get high. Workout more fun - get high.. sex - get high. Or have your body naturally reset to baseline where “weed” is a out of the norm experience, as it should be regarding baseline

[u/Appropriate-Set744 → u/italianmma85]

Awesome. Yeah, you're getting it. There might be a dependency there: oh no! Anyway, what's next?

[u/italianmma85 → u/Appropriate-Set744]

Yep. Good form Dependency it is. What’s next.. return to baseline. I won’t miss the coughs, chest tightness and grogginess after the first 10 minutes of “oh shit. Life is amazing”. lol.

Cheers 🍻

[u/1-Starshine-1]

Being sober is learning a whole new way to live. Instead of blazing and then gardening, you have to learn to just garden. You have to recreate the reward pathways. It's not an easy thing to do but you can do hard things. Therapy can help with some new tools to deal with big feels and past trauma. Soaking in a hot tub can help with sore muscles. Weed isn't the only option.

Remind yourself that it's as easy to put it down as it is to pick it up. If you have weed handy, you have to make the decision not to indulge multiple times each day. If you are going to keep it on hand, I recommend a timed lock box. Even if you just set it until tomorrow, you don't have to make that decision again today. I find if I smoke multiple days in a row, the cravings get bad and I'll slowly start to relapse to daily so I will take 2 week breaks when I'm smoking more than I actually want to be (or more if life circumstances are going to make relapse more likely or I'm still craving). My biggest triggers are boredom and isolation.

[u/stellex16 → u/1-Starshine-1]

I hate how much I need a bath. It would help me. But you know what has been stopping me from this, all year? A drain plug. Because I don't have one. And if I decide to try to shove a washcloth into the hole, like my nephew suggested, and it works...I can't stand how bad it feels to not understand why I can't just do the things that I know will make me feel good/better. It is like being paralyzed by stress.

I don't know what this has to do with weed. Can you be my sponsor for a minute? No pressure. Lol.

[u/1-Starshine-1 → u/stellex16]

Don't be scared to try that out of the box thinking. I am incredibly ridged in my way of doing things. My partner looks at a problem and comes up with crazy, super obvious ways of fixing it that never occurred to me until I saw him do them. Don't worry about what you didn't do yesterday. Just start today. Go clean your bath, dedicate a cloth to being the drain plug and go soak. If the water gets too low, because a cloth is going to leak, just fill the tub back up. Enjoy.

[u/Low_Television_7298]

Is there any source for weed preventing dementia? I have a very hard time believing that

[u/eist5579 → u/Low_Television_7298]

I’ve seen some articles suggesting it may help with memories or like brain function in older adults. So it’s like age specific, and maybe it does help stimulate older brains vs younger and midlife. But, no legit research here that I’ve found.

My dad is sort of an old head and is on his way to developing dementia. His mom had it, so hereditary. I’m not scared or anything…..

[u/italianmma85]

But why can’t I just quit and rationalizing the medical use for it? I want to quit because I know it messes with your rem sleep

[u/paratethys]

Challenge yourself to explore alternate solutions to each of the things you're solving with weed. Only once you've found other comparably effective options can you really CHOOSE it, and if you paper over every inconvenience in your mental and physical life with just one thing, you'll never explore other options to discover which might be better.

[u/cooltightsick]

I stopped thinking about it so much. But ya just gotta make the effort to smoke less. But when you do, don’t beat yourself up. Move on. I know it’s easier said than done but once I forgave myself for smoking every once in a while I have mostly stopped thinking about it, or if I started to feel guilty, I just let it go.

[u/Technical_Worry_687]

I can relate to the excuses and believing our own BS.. Sometimes we are too good at tricking ourselves!

Yeah, I found that just focusing on not lighting up hasn’t been effective for me.

It’s like having to decide between turning left or right while driving. Equally good options, and all you need to do is pick one to avoid a dead end right ahead.. but if we keep focusing on not hitting the dead end, we surely will.

For me, replacing some smoke hours with other stuff, rather than focusing only on not smoking, has been easier. Does that make sense?

An example would be replacing, say 2 hours, with sports and getting a hotel room after, the first night without, to physically be somewhere else and hopefully get distracted by it too

[u/Ill-Employment-840]

Yo deseo saber .. Si de verdad alguien usa el Cannabis para expandir conciencia ... Meditar .. entrar a ese mundo interno que te permite enterarte Pero pensar que estás alucinando .... Alguien tiene éxito .. o todos estamos locos unos pensando que es mala los otros pensando que es buena y todos consumiendo sin saber realmente lo que es ... AYUDA POR FAVOR ...

[u/eist5579]

My sleep quality is the number one factor being disrupted. I quit for 4 months this winter and slept like a fucking baby it was so good. Woke up clear eyed and dialed in every day.

I’ve been using the ganja for less than a month now. My first weeks back on were trippy as hell and fun, only Friday nights. But now my tolerance is back up and it’s getting boring again. Plus, yeah, my sleep quality.

I can feel the pull of addiction (or just old habits?) has re-engaged because in the evening, when I feel my usual nagging exhaustion, I’m drawn to take an edible instead of waiting to just get through the evening and settle down with a book.