So I'm 5 days smoke free due to a job; these are my thoughts

jonnynobody

Well-Known Member
I'm 32 and have happily toked daily since the age of 15. It just recently became apparent to me that the psych medications I've been on since the age of 19 may actually be harming my well being and state of mind. I successfully quit both medications over a period of 3 months, and brother let me tell ya, it was a motherfucker of an ugly ride that I would never put myself through again. I'm not sure if I could have done it without the help of pot. I then found myself experiencing feelings and thoughts (and a personality) I haven't experienced in nearly half a lifetime. It was intense, scary, thought provoking, and refreshing as if I woke up from a 13 year coma.

I found myself waking up from said coma in a high stress bullshit job that I never would have taken if I had been myself and not under the influence of those psych drugs. 2 weeks after ending my final psych med and long after withdrawals ended, I had a nervous breakdown and was written out for 1 week from work by my doctor and urgently referred to a psychologist.

Rather than return to my job, I turned in a letter of resignation and sacrificed a job that paid me $700/week. It had to be done and I don't regret it one single bit. In an effort to open up my job opportunities, I decided I had to quit smoking in order to pass a saliva / urine test in the interest of finding a good job after going jobless for a month and maxing out all of my credit cards. The first night wasn't so bad. The second night was pure fucking hell and I remembered all of the reasons I ever started smoking to begin with. I had to take a small portion of one of my old psych medications just to get to sleep and subsequently soaked my bed sheets 2 or 3 times during the night. On night 3 I slept a little better, but my mental state continued to be in disarray. I considered suicide as often as I had the urge to piss and let me tell ya, I drink a lot of coffee and I piss a lot. On night 4 I wasn't in despair as much as the previous nights, but the thoughts of suicide only intensified. I looked up how to tie a noose on youtube. I thought of buying a bottle of booze and heading out to the woods with a leather belt and making an ornament of myself on a tree limb. I knew I was experiencing some withdrawal from quitting smoking, but as I went into day 5 which is today, I realized that the suicidal thoughts had nothing to do with withdrawal, those thoughts were my own and within me for other reasons.

After abusing lots of coke, ecstacy, and acid in my teens, I permanently lost the ability to appropriately regulate my sleep pattern. I found out that when I had pot though, I slept well and I felt good. When I ran out for a day or two, I couldn't sleep and my mood was up and down like a whore on dollar day. I always just attributed it to psychological withdrawal from weed. I now know that to be untrue.

I'm now at a point where I remember why I began smoking pot and why I accepted that it would always be a part of me for as long as I lived; it silenced the dark thoughts in my head that I could not control on my own that stem from a childhood of domestic violence, abuse, and trauma. I tried all of the standard issue pharmaceuticals such as anti depressants, benzodiazepines, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics; none of it worked well and all of them caused dependence and horrible physical and psychological withdrawal.

I now ask myself the question; do I need pot to survive? The answer is complicated. Can I survive in this state of affairs? Yeah, sure. You could also put me in a 10x10 jail cell for the rest of my life and sure, I'd survive. Survival isn't necessarily living. I'm discovering that we as humans are imperfect and we spend our imperfect lives seeking the tools and methods to make life easier and more palatable so that we can live well and most importantly, live happy. Some people find balance with alcohol, some with prescription drugs, some with manipulating other people, etc. and so forth. I find balance with pot. I compare my discovery of pot with my discovery of my wife of 12 years; I just knew we would be together forever, because that's what brought balance and happiness to my life. Marijuana truly is medicine, and I will never let a job dictate my well being again. If I had decided to hang myself a couple nights ago, who gives a fuck what job I had or how well I was being paid?

Tomorrow after work, me and my old friend are getting reacquainted and we will never be separated again so long as I have life in my body. Jonny signing off...
 
Last edited:

chemphlegm

Well-Known Member
beautiful, just beautiful.

marijuana always let me know just the right type of people to be around, to work with, what types of jobs I would find
satisfaction in and what types of girls to avoid. It helped me realize everything that mattered was in my control.
I quit yearly for the chest beat, and that first few days of re acquaintance, but prolly gonna knock that shit off this year...tic toc

thanks for sharing.

why would the powers that be wish us to squish our very real thoughts and personalities, live in the inner surface of that clear rubber bubble during waking hours, only to eventually be ever focused on the moment that none of this is acceptable living conditions? why?
 

abe supercro

Well-Known Member
Incredible story jonny! Hope things get better for you, I've known folks to have significant difficulty getting off varied psychiatric drugs.

About 15+ years ago, I made it 9 days without cannabis. My girlfriend at the time was in a hospital alcohol rehabilitation clinic and I was attempting to show solidarity by taking a break from herb, my medicine of choice. The interruption made me recognize one of the main attributes of cannabis use in my life and it's to quell extremely uncomfortable dreams I have for whatever reasons. I'm sure I could of gotten past the 9 days but I didn't see the upside to suffering any longer without something that could help me so much. I've only ever gone a few days without herb ever since, however my use level has dropped plenty. I may have only a gram or two a day now compared to the quarter ounce/day I was using at the height of my use. Just seems like I appreciate it more now and don't have to go overboard. Helps that my tolerance is at an all time low and I prefer the vaporizer.
 

chemphlegm

Well-Known Member
I wanted to mention the ptsd dreams, but didnt want to argue with anyone about the negativity of dream cessation and cannabis.
Thank you abe for bringing this up.

I do still dream, and sometimes still very gory, but mostly only one or two in a week, and not always bad either.
 

jonnynobody

Well-Known Member
beautiful, just beautiful.

marijuana always let me know just the right type of people to be around, to work with, what types of jobs I would find
satisfaction in and what types of girls to avoid. It helped me realize everything that mattered was in my control.
I quit yearly for the chest beat, and that first few days of re acquaintance, but prolly gonna knock that shit off this year...tic toc

thanks for sharing.

why would the powers that be wish us to squish our very real thoughts and personalities, live in the inner surface of that clear rubber bubble during waking hours, only to eventually be ever focused on the moment that none of this is acceptable living conditions? why?
What I went through mentally in those 5 days was a very humbling experience and I definitely was forced to face some facts about my mental state of mind that I hadn't faced in a long time. Just after I posted the message that started this thread, and my wife heard me scavenging for scraps of weed in the other room hoping to find enough to form a small bowl that would relieve my anxiety and let me get some sleep, then out of nowhere she pulls out an ashtray that was hidden away with a big fat roach in it just waiting to be smoked. At that very moment, I remembered why I married my wife.

The moment I coughed that first hit, I instantly felt better. My eyes got heavier and the anxiety just sorta took a back seat to the chill that washed over me. And then I ate more food in 1 night than I had eaten in the previous 5 days combined. It was epic and I remembered that pot made food taste a hundred times more tasty. Just awesome.
 

jonnynobody

Well-Known Member
Incredible story jonny! Hope things get better for you, I've known folks to have significant difficulty getting off varied psychiatric drugs.

About 15+ years ago, I made it 9 days without cannabis. My girlfriend at the time was in a hospital alcohol rehabilitation clinic and I was attempting to show solidarity by taking a break from herb, my medicine of choice. The interruption made me recognize one of the main attributes of cannabis use in my life and it's to quell extremely uncomfortable dreams I have for whatever reasons. I'm sure I could of gotten past the 9 days but I didn't see the upside to suffering any longer without something that could help me so much. I've only ever gone a few days without herb ever since, however my use level has dropped plenty. I may have only a gram or two a day now compared to the quarter ounce/day I was using at the height of my use. Just seems like I appreciate it more now and don't have to go overboard. Helps that my tolerance is at an all time low and I prefer the vaporizer.
9 days is a long time man. I commend you. Bad dreams suck and if toking keeps those things away, toke on man. I think sleep is one of the most important things to functioning in a healthy capacity as a human being. If we don't achieve balanced sleep, we go hay-fucking-wire man. It's very frustrating that due to politics that our medicine has so much discrimination attached to it's use. Times are changing, just not fast enough.

Stow it's funny hearing what you have to say about your consumption. I use to smoke like a chimney in my teens and 20's, but these days I usually just puff on a one hitter or at the most a small chillum. It's more about the effect for minimal smoking. These lungs are getting older...
 

chemphlegm

Well-Known Member
What I went through mentally in those 5 days was a very humbling experience and I definitely was forced to face some facts about my mental state of mind that I hadn't faced in a long time. Just after I posted the message that started this thread, and my wife heard me scavenging for scraps of weed in the other room hoping to find enough to form a small bowl that would relieve my anxiety and let me get some sleep, then out of nowhere she pulls out an ashtray that was hidden away with a big fat roach in it just waiting to be smoked. At that very moment, I remembered why I married my wife.

The moment I coughed that first hit, I instantly felt better. My eyes got heavier and the anxiety just sorta took a back seat to the chill that washed over me. And then I ate more food in 1 night than I had eaten in the previous 5 days combined. It was epic and I remembered that pot made food taste a hundred times more tasty. Just awesome.

if your were near youd never be without again
 

Skylor

Well-Known Member
I look at it this way:

I rather live in say Flint Michigan and have the legal right to use MM, then say live in NYC in a fancy apt but never could use MM

what is this file stuff ????? whatever it is, never mind, don't know how it got there or how to remove it
 

Attachments

Norby Grown

Well-Known Member
I went thru similar thing recently going into SAD mode for the winter. I was doing great smoking a lot and doing lots of medibles for my stomach problems during the summer when I could still go out mushroom hunting but during this time of year I don't smoke now and cut back to 5mg thc in the am, 5mg in the afternoon and about 15-17 at night(along with about 50-60mg cbd over the day). Smoking when I'm in cabin fever and SAD mode is not very manageable with the ups and downs. Medibles in small doses get me happy instead of hi, which the hi can sometimes be confusing to me and exacerbate anxiety.
I just had an episode of flu which put me back on xanax for a few days. Seems gas was pressing on a nerve that handles emotions(vegus nerve) but it didn't cause any pain. Gas would press on this nerve and send me into a panic attack(which I'd never had before, just general to bad anxiety and depression). They were coming inn over 1 mg xanax and I hadnt had to take that much ever before. They were a bottle from 2014, when I quit them because I found CBD. I should say I forgot about them, I didn't need to ween myself off of them. CBD worked for my anxiety better than alprazolam ever did. And small doses of THC in medibles seem to be taking away any signs of depression. I also make overdecarbed CBN caps for sleep. So many meds in just one plant.
 

Norby Grown

Well-Known Member
Oooops, forgot the similar part. Ive smoked since age 12 for depression and anxiety and I'm 47. When I got here I got into medibles. I also have only made 1 friend since I got here that I mushroom hunt with. Back in NY I bred animals for 15 years. Smoking made it so I could do these jobs alone for over 20 years and stave off a lot of the depression and anxiety. But after this spell when I had to quit/cut down tremendously for stomach and SAD issues I realized I've been running the edge of a rut because I lost most of my social interaction. This made me weaker because I lost my support group. After reconnecting with family and friends I've steered out of the rut and could probably start smoking again but I'm only doing that for pain and special occasions from now on. Medibles seems more stable for me unless I'm out hunting mushrooms for the day or around friends, etc.
 

Skylor

Well-Known Member
I tend to stay away from medibles, its too easy to use too much, then your body gets used to having too much meds, IMO.

I know it be safer then puffing, so maybe one day but I've been saying that for ages
 

Norby Grown

Well-Known Member
I tend to stay away from medibles, its too easy to use too much, then your body gets used to having too much meds, IMO.

I know it be safer then puffing, so maybe one day but I've been saying that for ages
I just went from taking 80mg CBD and about 50MG THC plus smoking hi THC strains all day to using about 20mg THC in medibles a day and not smoking. You can make 2-3mg caps and it'd make you about 100 doses from 2 grams of bud. Right now I'm shooting for about 4mg THC caps and using one with each meal for my stomach. Usually try to have 2-5x as much CBD to THC this time of year when I'm cabin fevery. Summers a different story. I was smoking too much and not taking enough medibles. They tend to come on soft and last about 6-8 hours. It all depends on what you're using for and you're lifestyle.
I used to use too much by smoking, to stay in the house and work all day. Smoking was too much of an up and down for me. Each one has it's benefits and pitfalls.
 
Top