u/HunterAncient

Out of nowhere, one day I became paranoid. I thought I was having a heart attack, even though nothing remotely close to that was actually happening. After that day, weed was never the same for me, but that wasn’t the day I quit.

After that, I would smoke for a few months, quit, say I’d never smoke again, then start again, quit again, relapse again. And I always quit because of panic attacks. I’d have a panic attack, feel horrible, swear I’d never touch it again, and then repeat the whole cycle. That’s basically been my life from 16 to 21

Unfortunately, I got used to associating pleasure and feeling good with smoking. I completely forgot what it actually felt like to feel good naturally, to have fun, to feel pleasure, because the only way I knew how to experience those things was by smoking. I didn’t know what it felt like anymore to be happy, entertained, satisfied, or okay unless I was high.

And I smoked all the time. Before work, after work, sometimes during work. My whole day revolved around smoking, around finishing my responsibilities as fast as possible so I could go home and smoke.

Obviously, at first it was fun, really fun. But little by little it turned into an emptiness I couldn’t fill.

I think sometimes we forget this feeling and start romanticizing weed after quitting, but I want to remind you guys of something that I think many of you have probably felt too.

You know that feeling when you’ve been smoking all day and you already feel exhausted and mentally drained from smoking, but you keep smoking anyway hoping you’ll feel more high, happier, or feel something inside, and instead you feel absolutely nothing? You don’t feel more high, you don’t feel happier, you just feel emptier the more you smoke.

That was my daily life.

And now that I’m sober, I start forgetting that. I forget how bad it made me feel sometimes, how ugly smoking actually felt at certain moments. When I quit, my mind only wants to remember the fun parts, the relaxing parts, all of that. But that’s far from the truth. Reality was very different. The mind just loves to romanticize the past, even when the past was hurting you.

This time I decided to quit because the anxiety attacks came back, the heart palpitations while smoking came back, and all the terrible physical sensations returned. But this has also been the worst withdrawal I’ve ever gone through. The anxiety has been debilitating. The emotional crash has been debilitating too.

But after repeating this cycle so many times, I’ve finally realized that for me, smoking is not an option anymore.

Yeah, quitting is hard. Not relapsing during weak moments is hard. But I think I’ve finally reached a point where I’m aware enough to understand that smoking will only delay my progress and make my life worse in every possible way.

So I’m trying to quit forever and learn how to feel pleasure and satisfaction in other ways. I’m trying to heal. Heal from the past, heal from only wanting to smoke, from only feeling pleasure while high. I want to become a new person.

But obviously it’s not easy.

It’s hard not to think about smoking. It’s hard not to remember it. It’s hard being around people who smoke. I almost freeze.

For example, today I was hanging out with some friends and everything was fine. I was having a good time, and suddenly one of them pulled out his pen and started smoking. The second I saw it, I just froze. Completely hypnotized, paralyzed. And I felt this emotional crash because I remembered that I can’t do it anymore, that I’m trying to quit, and all those feelings came rushing back. It’s hard.

But I think this time I truly know that going back is not an option. If I go back, I delay my healing process. I delay healing my body, moving forward, changing my life.

Because honestly, I’ve already been dealing with depression and debilitating anxiety for a long time, and I know a big part of it comes from smoking. Another big part comes from feeling stuck in life and not progressing. And I know smoking will only hold me back even more and turn me into a lazier person who focuses more on problems than goals.

And I don’t want to be that person anymore.

I really hope I can quit forever. I hope I can start feeling emotionally better. And in general… learn how to be happy, because that’s something I struggle with a lot.

Good evening everyone, I hope you’re all doing well. Today marks exactly two weeks since the last time I smoked. I’ve quit many times throughout my life, many times. Before relapsing, I had gone two months without smoking. After those two months, I relapsed for 11 straight days. And now I assume I’m dealing with withdrawal symptoms, even though the relapse only lasted 11 days.

What’s strange is that this time, even though my use was for a shorter period, I’ve had the worst withdrawal symptoms of my entire life. The anxiety has been debilitating. I’ve had heart palpitations, I’ve felt extremely sensitive, very scared, and smoking a while ago already turned me into a hypochondriac. So all my symptoms feed into each other and only get worse because I worry so much.

I feel like I’m a little better now, even though I’m still not okay yet, but I do feel a little better. At least I think I do. And this time I’m convinced that I’m never going back to smoking again.

And you might ask why I’m so sure this time if I’ve told myself the same thing so many times before. Because this time I’m tired. I’m tired of dealing with the same thing. I’m tired of the anxiety, the palpitations, the constant worrying, disappointing myself, constantly going in and out of withdrawal, and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of it and I will never smoke again in my life.

The truth is that it hasn’t been easy for me, especially because lately I’ve been very anxious. Even while I was smoking, I was already depressed and feeling empty and anxious. Smoking was my way of numbing that, but it got to a point where it didn’t even cover up the emptiness anymore, it only made it worse. And I don’t want to smoke ever again.

I don’t crave smoking anymore. I don’t want to be high, and I no longer spend my time thinking about the good nostalgic memories from the first times I smoked, because I know that version of things is dead and it’s never coming back. I’ll never be the same person I was back then, and I no longer have the peace of mind I had at that time.

When I first started smoking, I didn’t worry about my health. I didn’t get panic attacks while high. It didn’t affect me badly. I wasn’t nervous all the time. I feel like smoking completely transformed me as a person, and not in a good way. Smoking made me anxious, made me lazy, took away my confidence, isolated me from people, made me addicted to stimulation, and brought out the worst in me in every possible way.

And I realized that a long time ago. I knew that was the case for a very long time, but even then I preferred staying numb instead of facing withdrawal symptoms and facing the emptiness and boredom that come with quitting. But this time will be different.

There have been many times when I quit for months and then screwed it all up, but this time it’s not going to happen like that. This time I’m committed to making it last because I don’t have another option. I feel like my body is begging me, and I don’t want something bad to happen to me.

The reality is that I regret ever trying this substance, which wasn’t the case before. Before, I didn’t regret it because I thought it made me who I am and all that kind of stuff, but nowadays I completely regret ever trying it. I regret isolating myself from people. I regret focusing only on smoking and getting high or trying to enjoy myself as much as possible.

I made a huge mistake and let myself be influenced by the wrong people. Unfortunately, my friends, who are still my friends even though I don’t take them as seriously anymore, influenced me in the worst possible way. They made me normalize a substance that I never saw as normal and never should have seen as normal. And now that I’m the one struggling with a problem, they see me as someone who’s exaggerating.

I also don’t talk much about this with my family, even though they know. I try not to talk about it too much with them because I don’t want to worry them or burden them. And overall, I never want to go through these withdrawal symptoms again. I hope this is the last time I ever go through this, and I’m going to work on it every single day because I’m sick of it, I’m tired, and I’m disappointed in the person I’ve become.

A person who only prioritizes stimulation, instant gratification, and temporary pleasure. A person who prioritizes being alone and avoids discomfort. All I wanted to do was get home, eat something, get comfortable, smoke, and repeat it every single day. I’ve been trapped in that cycle and mentality since I was 16 years old, and now I’m almost 22.

There were periods where I quit, but I threw it all away over stupid decisions or temptations that took over me. The longest I lasted was 11 months, and like an idiot I threw it all away. This time won’t be the same.

I’ve made the same mistake thousands of times. I’ve found myself having anxiety attacks while high hundreds of times, asking myself why I keep putting myself in this situation, why I keep doing this to myself. And I came to the conclusion that I felt so empty that I preferred having a panic attack while high over being sober and feeling empty. But that’s not the case anymore.

I’m going to work on myself. I’m going to work on becoming a happier person, a healthier person, and a more capable person. Being depressed and anxious and dissatisfied with my day to day life only made my addiction go deeper and deeper.

The fact that I don’t know what I’m doing with my professional life, the fact that I feel like a failure, the fact that I wake up every day without motivation to even be awake only pushed my addiction further. And I can’t blame weed for absolutely everything, for the depression, the sadness, or the lack of motivation, because a lot of those feelings come from the life I keep living every day. Those are things I feel with or without weed, but I’ve been dealing with them in the worst possible way all these years.

For the people who are starting to experience anxiety while smoking, physical symptoms, who can’t take the step to quit, or who are just cutting down, please, I advise you to just stop. Make the effort. Have the mindset that no matter what happens, you won’t stop moving forward, because otherwise the hole only gets deeper and the withdrawal becomes more horrible every time.

I’ve quit many times but this time has defiantly been the hardest, my anxiety has been through the roof and I get these anxiety attacks with palpitations, it is the reason i have stopped so many times but this time it happening even in withdrawal.

Good evening everyone, I hope you’re all doing well. I want to share my story and where I’m at right now.

I first quit smoking in 2022 after a really scary panic episode that sent me to the ER. After that, things were never the same. I kept smoking on and off, sometimes stopping for months and then going back for a few weeks, but almost every time I smoked, the anxiety and panic would come back. My heart would race and I’d feel like something was wrong. In 2025, I managed to go about 11 months without those symptoms while smoking, which made me think I had moved past it, but once my tolerance dropped, everything came back again. I’ve been stuck in that cycle ever since.

Eight days ago, I stopped again, and this time I really want it to be the last. I’m tired of the constant anxiety, the panic attacks, and the physical discomfort. What’s been hardest is that now I’m even feeling these symptoms while sober, which never used to happen. It makes me feel like my body and nervous system are completely exhausted.

The truth is, sadly, this is how I taught myself to deal with everything, with sadness, disappointment, anxiety, and loneliness. The only thing I really learned was to smoke. I’m 21 now, and since I was about 16 during COVID, I got used to isolating myself, smoking, and constantly stimulating myself instead of actually living. Now that I have to stop again, I’m left with a huge emptiness because I don’t really know how to live without it.

I also normalized it a lot because of the people around me. Some friends introduced me to it and made it seem like it was no big deal. I don’t blame them because the responsibility is mine, but they definitely influenced how I saw it. What frustrates me now is that those same people minimize what I’m going through. When I open up, they say I’m exaggerating, that it’s not a big deal, and that if I want to smoke I should just do it. That bothers me a lot because they don’t understand.

That’s why spaces like this matter to me, because people here actually get it. And one thing I’ve learned is that even if it takes months to feel okay again, I have to keep going and not go back. Every time I go back, I end up hitting a lower point than before. I once made it 11 months clean and relapsed after one bad night, and that led to a whole year of smoking again. That showed me that you can’t fix years of habits in just a few weeks or months. I need to give my body real time to recover, at least a year, because going back isn’t an option anymore.

This has affected my life more than I want to admit. It’s held me back from growing, affected my mental health, caused anxiety, and even impacted my relationships. Even when it felt harmless, it was isolating me and taking away opportunities to connect with others and actually live.

What bothers me the most now isn’t just not smoking, it’s feeling like I can’t and dealing with constant anxiety and fear. I miss the version of myself who felt free, simple, and didn’t overthink everything. Before all of this, I didn’t struggle this much with anxiety or fear.

But I’m not that person anymore, and I have to accept that and move forward. Even though I feel anxious, tired, and sometimes down, I know that every day I stay sober is a step closer to the life I actually want. I’m done repeating the same cycle. I need to learn how to deal with life in a healthier way, because I can’t keep living like this anymore.