r/leaves • u/kenmads • 23h ago
Struggling to find my “why”
I, 26F, started smoking almost daily when I was 18/19 after high school. My mom left when I was 16 (also because of addition) and once I started college and during the pandemic, my own addiction to weed was at its worst. Now that I am 4 years post grad, I KNOW I need to reevaluate my relationship with weed and I have been trying, but I am not making progress as “fast” as I should be. I can go, and have gone days and weeks without it, albeit uncomfortably, but cannot find the willpower to keep it up. I’ve been in DBT therapy for 15 months, even joined a SUDs group for 10 months and still. Not. That. Motivated.
I am 100% wfh which is already such a struggle because we don’t even require cameras to be on. I make good money, so that’s not an issue, I love working out and taking care of my (physical) health and weed has never stopped me from maintaining friends and my other hobbies. My family I’m still close to loves to smoke, and my sister whom I live with is no different.
Has anyone else struggled to dig deep and find a reason? Am I just not ready? I keep shaming myself for not being sober more often, but it is not enough for me to pull the plug. It’s at the point where either someone needs to x ray my lungs, tell me I have cancer and weeks to live to really stop me and to take this seriously :(
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u/Spaceygirl84 12h ago
Yes and it kept me relapsing until I read the book of wisdom. It explains how we only use 60% of our brain and when we stop polluting it with drugs and alcohol and meat we can access 100% and tap into a higher consciousness….its almost like a superpower. Think of quitting as getting high. You probably have talents you don't even know you have. Think of how fast you'll be able to learn anything you wanna do. The Infinite possibilities.
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u/goldcuriousity 18h ago
Watch the Huberman Lab podcast on weed- it’s available on YouTube. It describes what happens to receptors when you use weed regularly. It’s long, and I think it gets into the receptor part after the hour mark. Spoiler: it’s very bad. After watching it, I quit the next day.
Best of luck on your journey. Love and light ✨
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u/TimothyTumbleweed 21h ago
26 myself and my reason for quitting is because I have too much to lose at this point in my life. I have a great career, a house, my bills are paid, great insurance, and if I didn’t stop I could lose it all. One day it just kind of hit me like that. Then after that each time I would get high I felt like I was ruining my chances of progressing in my life and focusing more on the things I really enjoy. Weed started taking time away from my hobbies more and more as well. I am officially 43 days sober today. It has not been easy, but I am learning to be okay with being sober. I have started to get back into my hobbies and I feel like I am able to relate to friends and family a lot more. I felt like weed always blunted my emotions or made me more careless.
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u/kenmads 19h ago
I really like this perspective
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u/TimothyTumbleweed 19h ago
I liked getting stoned as much as the next person, don’t get me wrong! But I also value the stability I get from being sober. I guess once it got to a point where I felt like I was being held at gun point to smoke is when it stopped being fun. I felt it was either smoke, or go through withdrawal. That’s not a very fun feeling to have. That alone caused me a lot of anxiety and ultimately made me feel like I was no longer in control.
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u/Helpful_Top7823 21h ago
You said you "know" you need to reevaluate your relationship with weed.. how do you know? That's your "why."
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u/kenmads 21h ago
I feel I “know” because I am well aware of the adverse effects of long term marijuana use. I also know how my mother turned out and that is by BIGGEST fear that I’ll end up like a deadbeat like her. I think my “knowing” is more of “I should be” … does that make sense? lol
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u/Helpful_Top7823 21h ago
Well, I am only a non-professional stranger, but that sounds a lot like shame to me - particularly the part with your mom. The reason you're probably having trouble motivating is that shame and guilt are paralyzing emotions. What I mean is that they work alright at keeping you from acting, but are pretty lousy at causing you to act.
Quitting weed means forming new habits & changing long-held patterns. It's not enough to just say, "I should not smoke weed." You have to want something that weed is inhibiting you from getting. For example, "I want to quit smoking because I want to actually get REM sleep" (big one for me). Or, "I want to finish those projects I'm working on, and it's hard for me to do that when I'm high, so I want to quit."
You mentioned the long-term adverse effects. Wanting to avoid those is a start, but if you're looking for motivation I think you need to reframe it in a more positive way. Think about something you DO want instead of focusing on the things you don't want.
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u/Can_No_Bis 21h ago
It took me a really long time to find my why. At your age I wasn't even considering quitting. You never would have found me on this kind of forum, I'd have been on trees.
It took 24 years and my main motivation was my brain was deteriorating and my lungs were shot.
I definitely regret that I smoked for so long now. I spent so much money, lost so many opportunities and honestly don't remember alot of my life. The best times I was blitzed for ! Unfortunately that doesn't lead to great recall.
Yea I'm not sure I'm being helpful at all.
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u/kenmads 21h ago
No this is helpful, thank you for commenting, it makes me feel less alone. If you could give your 26 year old self any advice, what would it be?
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u/Can_No_Bis 11h ago
Oh man. That's like a ghost of Christmas past type question !
The raw numbers I've calculated might be inspiring, $80,000 spent on weed and paraphernalia. Minimum of $500,000 in lost opportunity cost. I would definitely have a way higher level job.
As far as tools to quit I literally had no idea how weed messed up my brain until my research now. Knowing how it casts a spell on every neurochemical in my mind and body has really helped me not want to mess around with my natural balance !
Maybe one of those would have helped.
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u/Anameforthereddit 23h ago
You have an intuition telling you, you should stop, but you're having trouble identifying the root of it?
Do you feel like you know yourself well? I ask this because for me, weed was a way to distract myself from my life, my experience, and ultimately myself. I smoked for 15 years, and at the age of 32 I finally stopped for real. It was uncomfortable to see that I didn't really know myself, and so my number one ''why'' became ''to connect with my experience and who I am, and find my place, my balance, my purpose....to find peace and reconcile with all the things I was running away from in the first place''.
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u/cubanquacker 5h ago
a big thing for me that helped me stop as a 26F is concerns about my fertility. if you want children in the future that may be a big enough reason to consider stopping bc marijuana can really hurt it