Hello everyone,


I started smoking cannabis about 8 years ago. the last 4 years i would say i was consuming way too much - for me this was about 5 to 10g per month (i know this is not that much compared to other people). I have been smoking at least a little weed every day with maybe a few days without smoking in between.
It became a habit for me to smoke hookah with weed when watching TV or hanging out with friends.

Now i decided to reduce smoking drastically. I do not want to stop smoking cannabis completely but at least for the next few months i plan to reduce it to almost nothing.

The main reason i want to do this is to take better care of myself and as i am changing other things in my life right now i thought it might be a good thing to just get this done as well.
I was feeling like at least a tolerance break was required for over a year now and could not get it done. Cannabis seems to have lost it's magic for me and only occasionally it reminded me of how it used to feel - but only a slight gimps, the full effect was not there anymore.
(a good indication of that was when i was smoking with a friend, he was totally baked, when he left i was still sober enough to read a book, which before i could never do when even slightly intoxicated)
recently my mind felt increasingly clouded and i think i could feel some of the effects of long term usage like a decrease in attention span and forgetting things.

I tried smoking less before, but it seems to be a habit that is difficult to break.
The first thing i did this time was tell my SO (she does not smoke at all) what i am planning to do and gave all of my stash to her so she could store it somewhere - i have no intention of looking for it.


how are you dealing with addiction and habits?
any advice for me?

thank you for your time
jiva

When the weeds grow into a swamp they bog you down.

After 25 years of daily usage I grew bored with it. A mushroom trip during a period of abstinence showed it all the more clearly to me. At that point in my life, cannabis had nothing more to teach me and the mist I had let it become was obscuring my enjoyment of life as it is.

I don't resent my time spent with cannabis, it even was good medicine for a while, but as I changed and circumstances changed, I became fed up with it. That made it very easy to quit.

Enjoy your life, whatever way it comes.

As a regular cannabis user for the past 12 years, I typically consume about an oz of bud 7g hash oil per month. While this is much more than the OP described using, I know people who could easily smoke through all of that in a week or less. I don’t mind tolerance much, in fact I enjoy being able to smoke and then read a book and go be productive. I feel that this is probably more compensation to being stoned rather than tolerance, however. It is rare that I do any lab work (chemical or mycological) without smoking a little hash first. I do realize that everyone experiences cannabis differently. The OP is not a heavy smoker by most standards but is likely dealing with minor psychological dependence. This doesn’t sound like a huge deal but IME if you feel like you need to quit then you probably should.

Hey Mate,

Everybody has a different journey. It was my daily ritual for 18 years & personally I found quitting never worked. It was too much pressure. If life was dealing me a particularly shitty hand that week & I did have a smoke, I'd beat myself up about it & feel disheartened when the "days without a smoke" tally started back at 1.

Instead, I convinced myself that it would be exciting to start something new. Check out what life was like witbout it. I hadn't truelly been clear headed in such a long time. So rather than quit, I took up a new habit "base reality". 😉 I actually found that I had a lot of things that I'd pushed to the side, that really needed some attention.

It's been over 2 years now & it wasn't easy to begin with, but well & truelly worth it. My relationship only got stronger & I started a company that is growing constantly. Life is great. I'll have a smoke again at some point, I love it & always will. It just doesn't make the list of exciting things in my day anymore. 😊

I always keep some somewhere. It helped to know that it was there if I ever wanted it & made me feel stronger when I could pick it up, smell it & think "No, not today". Also, I wouldn't advise leaving it with your partner, It's a low feeling to have to ask for it, particularly if you're feeling weak & like you need it.

Anyway, hope this helps. Best of luck & happy travels.

not sure i am quite there but i think this is the path i am on




i also know people who smoke in a week what i do in a month.
but for me this is too much so i think i need to stop this.




Glad to read this worked out well for you also it is motivating as i am not sure who life will continue for me and starting my own small company (on the side) is something that seems to be a viable option right now

It's best not to smoke the stuff, but to eat it instead. The quality of the experience is better, and it definately less addictive that way.
It's also good to realise that by taking it too often, you're ruining the cannabis experience.

Taking another psychedelic can help in finding motivation to, at least temporarily, quit the stuff.
I've had a cannabis habit for a while, and quitting for a few months realy was a good thing for me. If i take cannabis now, i realy enjoy it a lot every single time.

Oskars advice is the best. Do something new. Something you would love to do that realy requires focus.

I agree with dragonrider. I had stopped enjoying smoking and so I switched to edibles. The high is so much better. I could no longer smoke as it had lost its appeal for me. I think a lot of cannabis has fertilizer residues and so tastes bad. You don't even sound dependent on it because you only use cannabis every few days. Also, I think the quality of your cannabis may be contributing to burnout. When I consumed high quality cannabis edibles with an even ratio of THC to CBD I had much less clouded experiences. CBD is an antipsychotic so it reduces anxiety amongst other things. Maybe consider growing your own organic cannabis with a high CBD strain. That why you can have a large enough supply that it wont matter how often you consume. I hear grow tents are really effective. I also experienced an afterglow when I consumed CBD.

I quit smoking weed about four months ago. I had been thinking about quitting for some time before that as I had received messages from DMT and mushrooms. It was getting in the way. It had become something of a crutch. It was also blocking my dreaming, my psychedelic journeys and my motivation.

I was a daily pothead for many years. I enjoyed it for a very long time and had no interest in not smoking. It was odd to me to even begin to wonder about quitting. It was not an easy decision and I mulled over it for quite some time before quitting.

Being a pot smoker is a lifestyle in so many ways. You got your weed, pipes, pokers and lighters, dab rigs, papers, trays and all the other things you may acquire when you smoke pot regularly. It is hard to put away this lifestyle. This life style becomes part of your identity in some form. I would make the correlation to a cigarette smoker as well. Both tobacco and weed can ground you and calm you. It can be hard to place this down.

When I did quit smoking weed it was much harder than I would have anticipated. I had terrible vivid nightmares, cold sweats and irritability. It felt like it would never end and at times I wanted to just light up a joint. I stuck with it and am glad I did. I dream moar now. My psychedelic journeys are not blocked now. I see more and experience moar in all my visions. I also have moar time to read and spend time with my kiddo. I am moar present.

I see myself as an old man toking it up. I look forwards to getting old and smoking some weed again. For right now, in this moment, I have things to do and the weed was just in the way. Take your time and think about your reasons for quitting weed. Place it down when you are ready, otherwise it will rise up as a habit and you will return to it quickly. You have to make a strong choice. It can be just as hard quitting weed as it is cigarettes and I have quit both.

Good luck and remember you may need to try quitting a couple times. If you really want this, it will become moar and moar uncomfortable when you smoke. It will feel like a push. Listen to this push and thank your friend marijuana for all the good times when you part ways!

Thank you marijuana!! You are a wonderful and magical teacher and I appreciate everything you have helped me with over the years! I hope to see you again when I am old and can relax with you once again!

I was that guy.

Cannabis use never really interfered with my life. I was a straight A student, top attendance and performance at work, got all my responsibilities taken care of. I never had any issues with memory, attention, or functioning like I've seen others report. I was however, fairly stagnant, rather than pursuing new interests, making friends, participating in life, I preferred to spend my time sitting on the couch taking bong rips.

It was a struggle to reorient my abusive relationship with cannabis. I'd take a break then promise myself I'd use it moar responsibly when I came back to it only to find myself blowing through oz's again within a couple weeks. I felt like it was all or nothing and no in-between. I'm haapi to report now that I have managed to right my relationship with the herb and at this time I take roughly 1-2 puffs per week, if that. Being high is interesting and special again rather than just my baseline state.

It was a variety of factors including a new living situation where I was not able to smoke all day every day anymoar that ultimately changed my usage patterns, but I expect anyone could follow the same basic progression. Start by not smoking in the daytime, only at night after all your responsibilities for the day are complete. Then only smoke once, limit it to one session a day, burn that nightly bowl/joint/blunt/dab/wuthaveyou in one sitting and put it away for the night, enjoy the high, enjoy the comedown, have a nice nights sleep. Once you get a good habit of one session a day, then start skipping a day here and there. Then a couple or few days at a time. Before you know it you'll be down to once a week or less, no longer a servant of the herb but choosing to let it serve you.

thank you all for your responses, this helps a great deal




lucky for me i always put responsibility first and never smoked or during work. the only time i did smoke during daytime is on days off and even then only when i knew i for sure did not have to drive a car that day.
So i think i have a good starting point

do you smoke it with tobacco? If so, not cannabis is the problem, but the addiction to nicotine.

try "the easy way to stop smoking" by allen carr