You are all such a huge inspiration for me
I’ve been smoking daily since I was 18. I immediately fell in love with weed the first time I smoked it, but I loved it too much. I started smoking daily not even a few months after my first time. I lied to my parents, and even though they still found out, I would lie about how much I used. I just thought, “They wouldn’t understand,” and I kept coping and finding every reason to justify my addiction. I even kept denying that it was an addiction in the first place, telling myself I could quit anytime and that it wasn’t affecting my life.
I was lying.
Then I left for university. My parents weren’t there to scold me when they smelled weed in my room, and I no longer had to worry about sneaking around them to smoke. So I smoked every single day, from the second I got out of class until my head hit the pillow. And I loved it. I had friends to smoke with and video games we would play together.
But then I started choosing smoking over hanging out with my non-smoking friends. I would only hang out with stoners. I started skipping class and stopped going to the gym. Weed became my life, my only source of enjoyment. And I pushed away everybody I loved just because I would rather smoke and play video games. Eventually, it was just me, gaming all day. I wasn’t even really enjoying it. I would just do it to fill the time and because I had cornered myself into this routine.
Then came my junior year. I met a beautiful girl, and she was super into me, with an intense love that I hadn’t felt from anyone I’d been with in the past. I lost my virginity to her, and things were going great. She was a stoner, and I couldn’t have asked for more.
But of course, reality had to set in.
It turns out she has borderline personality disorder and decided she’s not ready for a relationship right now because the feelings are too intense. I was left devastated. I visited my family for spring break, but I wasn’t even really there. I was just a husk, smoking and gaming until the time passed. My sister told me that I never spend time with her anymore, and I didn’t even know what to say.
So I came back to university. The only things that made me happy were Instagram reels, porn, weed, and video games. And I guess I just had enough. I quit watching reels first, and I felt like I genuinely gained a piece of myself back. I felt a little happier. So I decided to quit weed too.
I’m on day 4 now. The first 2 days were easy because I had all this self-improvement motivation, and I was so ready to get my life back. I started exercising and eating healthy, and it felt pretty good. But day 3 hit like a truck: anhedonia, loneliness, the whole nine yards. And today I was feeling pretty terrible too, but then I found this sub.
And let me tell you, you guys are some of the most inspirational people I’ve ever seen. Hearing stories of people smoking daily for 20 years and still being able to quit despite the challenges, or being 3 months sober and still feeling down and depressed but finding the strength to push through anyway, you guys are incredible. You give me the hope and strength I need to believe that I can come out the other side of this as a better, healthier person. So I want to thank you all deeply.
And if you’re reading this and haven’t quit yet, it’s going to suck, but it’s not going to suck as much as it would if you tried quitting a year from now, or a decade from now, or never. You’ve tried to quit before, just imagine where you would be if you had stuck with it until now.
And if you have quit but you’re struggling, make a post about it. Even just writing all this out made me feel so much better, knowing that there are other people out there going through the same struggles.
We got this.