Years and years of daily use...

[Graduisic]

and he finally has the nerve to quit.

He started daily use at around age 13-14, both parents were daily users; making access extremely easy. at age 20, after losing his job, SWIM is going to go clean. the longest period of time since age 13 without access to it was a week and a half when he went overseas.

SWIM has dealt with withdrawal from nicotine, benzodiazepines, opiates, SSRI's, and a few other drugs with strong physical addictions. it seems that the power of psychological addiction is much stronger in most cases (maybe it is because he is young) than physical addictions.

Day 1: After not getting stoned before bed, he had a really shitty night of sleep. Tossing/turning/general discomfort. He was unable to eat a full bowl of cereal this morning, and has not eaten a thing for the past 8 hours nor has the appetite to do so. the appetite isn't suppressed like it would be from taking amphetamines, it seems like SWIM's body will sooner interpret hunger as nausea at the moment. the psychological desire (need) to "catch a buzz" is hanging over his head pretty heavily. he brewed up a batch of kratom tea to ease this desire instead of scraping his bowl for resin. this pulled him out of a sad "slump" in the day. swim will avoid daily use to avoid kratom addiction, but for day one, this functioned as a good substitute for totally losing it

To ease off the psychological desire for smoke, he is lighting up what is sold at a local tobacco shop as "Ecstacy Cigarettes", the ingredients of which are leaf of lotus, corn silk, and licorice root. not any profound effect, but the idea is having something to smoke which is nicotine-free. clove cigarettes would be a good alternative as well.

Multivitamins (particularly vitamin Bs) and plenty of water daily

SWIM also figured he would benefit from taking piracetam daily, 1600-3200mg per day to get out of the brain fog

For sleep purposes, diphenhydramine (tylenol PM, essentially) in combination with melatonin should offer as a strong substitute to hitting off the bowl until pass-out time.

The goal is to stay strong and abstain until swim has clean piss (and of course, a job). The ultimate goal would be to eliminate the association of cannabis with addiction; if it can't be done then he will stay away from it altogether.

Any advice? he will continue to journal the experience as it seems that it helps to explain and to write it out. Thanks for your time

Reputation Comments on this post:

good for you, you've put a lot of thought into this :)

[augentier]

swiy seems to be in a similar situation as my cat Toonces..she's trying to quit to get a job, is an everyday smoker with parents (and sister) who have bud all. the. time. THAT is the biggest temptation, and what makes it hardest to quit is having it readily available at all times. Toonces agrees that psychological addiction is harder to break than physical. Physical symptoms go away after a couple days/weeks.. that psychological NEED to get high, the mental dependency, the idea that "it's just weed it doesn't matter how much/often i smoke", is so hard to break. Toonces has been trying for a long time, with a big losing streak.

Not much advice here just wanted to comment. Swiy's ideas for getting over it are really good, Toonces may have to utilize a few

[Graduisic]

thanks for the support, and thanks for moving the thread to the proper location

Day 2: Another "shitty" night of sleep. swim's body must be very used to smoking a lot and sleeping for like 10 hours on end. he slept for about 8 hours, but the quality of sleep seems to be depreciating greatly. not a deep sleep at all, and his mind is just absolutely racing through all the bad stuff thats happening in his life right now. all this introspective thinking seems to happen the most when he tries to go to sleep. he figured out a pretty good system to force the mind to change its focus.

his mind was in an extremely wandering state. this was proven during meditation, metering his breath and concentrating only on breathing wasn't enough! he could still hear many chattering voices in the back of his head which seemed to overpower his intended "focus of thought". Clearly, this wasn't enough. swim then started to concentrate on visualizing the word "JUMP" in big purple letters, he continued to force this thought, since he could kind of "shout" the word in his mind to force his focus back to what he wanted to. he noticed that it was very difficult (and frustrating!) to keep his focus on that, so he envisioned he was holding a camera in his head, following someone as they went up and down on a pogo-stick, thinking the word "JUMP" and spelling the word with his finger on his bed as though he were writing it in the sand repeatedly. although this proved to be the most effective, it still wasn't enough on top of adding melatonin and diphenhydramine. the sedative effects had kicked in, but clearly were not enough to "tip the scale" over to the sleep side. approx. 1 hour after taking 50mg diphenhydramine and melatonin (all the effects had kicked in) he took one more 25mg pill of diphenhydramine to compound the initial dose. he hopes that in the coming weeks that he will be able to fall asleep due to psychological factors instead of using sleep aids and other pills.

still experiencing a massively decreased appetite, he is also experiencing some gastrointestinal difficulties. strong stomach cramps accompanied with constipation has made eating even more difficult.

Follow-up: By the grace of god swim found 3 .5mg alprazolam pills. swim used to gobble xanax like he would a bag of skittles, but now understands the importance of using benzos sparingly. for those particularly rough nights (would've loved to have one of these last night). appetite is still fucked up, but in the coming days, this should pass. eating a cup of yogurt everyday with the bacteria to aid digestion should help his body adjust to this new, unfamiliar way of living.

As another note, it appears that piracetam has some kind of mild relaxing effect on swim (placebo?) or perhaps he is feeling increased effectiveness from this particular nootropic because he isn't stoned all the time anymore.

swim is thinking about cheating tonight and taking a bonghit before bed... i'd be interested in discussing whether or not a gradual "tapering off" the ganja would be a more effective means of cessation than quitting cold-turkey (or if this sort of mentality is only effective with drugs that are known to be physically addictive

[cyndi]

Swim learns something new daily. She never knew weed was that addictive. Her son is having the same issue and she didn't realize it was that big a struggle. Swim's son who is also kicking the herb was also very restless last night, keeping swim up. Swim doesn't know if he will make it although he will go back to jail if not so that is a huge motivator in his case. But addiction, eh.

Has swiy tried benedryl? It seems to help with sleep better than tylenol pm in her case. Also maybe a support group for when those cravings kick in, swim could take that advice herself. Good luck!

Reputation Comments on this post:

thanks for adding information to the post

[Graduisic]

thanks for the reply, one small note though, diphenhydramine HCl is the main ingredient in both benadryl and tylenol PM. only difference is Tylenol PM contains acetamenophen (pain reliever/fever reducer)

just as a quick update, everything is going fine! swim is making himself busy and has less desire to spark up the bowl. the other part of swim's drug problem was his addiction to benzos and a very strange addiction to DXM. he didn't realize how much this changed his personality. swim is writing a story about how he feels now and the recovery of someone addicted to so many drugs. moods are shitty, desire to start nicotine is coming back, but the hardest things in life are the ones worth working for so swim is being strong

[cyndi]

Good deal. Swim is glad swiy is getting it together. Keeping busy is a good thing. It seems when swim has too much free time, she tends to get into trouble.

Yeah swiy has to watch anything that could potentially be addictive as it is not uncommon to switch addictions. Swim here could abuse vitamins, stretching the truth of course, but swiy gets the idea?

[sweetsugar]

Swim takes her hat off to swiy! Well done, seriously! These shitty withdrawels wont be lasting forever. Cravings, swiy appears to be strong enough to deal with. As Trose stated above and many know how easy it really is to replace an addiction with another -of whatever kind. Good luck!

[Metomni]

My penguin tells me that one's environment is the biggest factor in how difficult it will be to stop. He finds that when put in an environment without use or access, it makes it easier to stop. Sort of the old "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" saying coming into play.

Good luck with SWIY's attempt.