How to stop smoking weed for 100 days

Jan 09, 2024, 09:52 PM

Today marks the one hundred and second day that I have not smoked weed in a row. This is quite an achievement, one that I never thought I would ever accomplish and I now definitely consider myself a non-smoker.

So how did I do it? Well the simple answer is I just stopped smoking but I think there are vital activities I did that assisted in getting me this far - but before I get into them I think it’s important to understand just how bad my weed addiction was.

The levels of my addiction

I started smoking weed when I was about 16, I first tried it at a friends house but then smoked a lot more at an internet cafe I spent a lot of time at playing Counterstrike. I then picked it back up again when I moved out with a friend of mine. It was just the two of us, living in an inner-city apartment, playing unhealthy amounts of computer games and smoking weed all day every day. This was where my love for it and the association with computer games + weed started developed.

Fast forward to recent years where I am now a grown adult living in his own house with enough money to buy weed whenever I want. My usage was no longer just at night times either, it was pretty much all day every day. I would drive to work and like clock work I would smoke a big pipe when I was turning in to the street just before I arrived, this would be enough ‘creative juice’ to last till 10:00am then I would go into the carpark under work and hit another one in the car. I was so sure that my creative work was only possible with the assistance of work that I had to operate like this.

Then there is the fiendish behavior in the odd occasions I was unable I had run out and unable to get my hands on any. I would be scouring through the dirt under my house like an archeologist picking up old joints I smoked and trying to get enough burnt remnants out of each one to make a pipe, or I would even get my dirty glass pipe with nothing it in burn the resin until it heated to an oil and would smoke that, hoping for some kind of hit.

This level of intense addiction meant that my early attempts to quit were always so dramatic. Many times I have flushed hundreds of dollars of weed down the toilet, telling myself that such a sacrifice meant this time was serious, or I would throw all my pipes away in a bin down the road rather than my own cause I know I would just retrieve it. One time I even put a bag of weed in the bin at a bus stop I walked past on my morning walk to work, later than afternoon still with the intention to quit, as I walked past the bin the little devil in my head told me to just check if it’s still there easy to reach and if so take it. Of course it was there, I reached into the bin in front of people sat at the bus stop and smoked it that night.

Why did it work this time?

If I had to guess I would say this time would be somewhere around the 50th attempt at trying to quit weed. So how come this time worked? What did I do differently?

I think it is a combination of a few things:

Stage in my life

I have a young child now and the repeated behavior that has been going on for more than a decade with no sign of changing just felt like it had to come to a close. How could I raise them into a strong will powered human being if myself am crippled by addiction and at the whim of this plant?

Stoicism

I have been reading a lot of Stoic philosophy or Stoic related books. The strong messages there on character building and living a life of virtue really resonates with me. I think there is nothing more powerful and fulfilling that being in total control of your life, which is something I am continuing to work on every day. Really coming to grips with the fact you have one short life makes you not want to be stoned for it.

I recommend reading: Meditations - Marcus Aurelius (must read, daily if possible) On the shortness of life - Seneca Letters from a Stoic - Seneca Discipline is Destiny - Ryan Holiday

Streaking

This is the most powerful technique that continues to compound as you get further in your journey. I have tried digital streak boards before but nothing compares to sticking a big white board right in front of your face every day. On Christmas day my brother-in-law came over with a joint, that was around day 88, so there was zero chance I was going to smoke with him. I even kept him company under the house while he smoked it. I had no issues what so ever.

Exercise and sleep

This has become my new addiction. I get up every day at 5am now, bed at about 9pm and run 5km. For the first month I was running every morning, now it’s about three times a week and walk the rest. I have also incorporated weight lifting 4-5 times a week and seeing results. My mental health as a result of this plus the clarity of mind is the most rewarding aspect of this journey. I am sharp as a tac and have such an appetite for life now.

Understand that weed is just a bad habit

Just like with smoking cigarettes, smoking weed is tied closely to activities or triggers you have in your daily life.

For me it was anytime I was about to do some work, it meant I had go light up. This was a hard connection to break and my work dipped for the first month or so, but once you push through that period and prove to yourself you can, the cloud part and there is hope.

I truly never thought I could be writing this post. Deep down I thought this blog was going to be a depressing cycle of sad faces next to every other post. But here I am and you can be too!