Life is Hanging Over Me - Quitting pot

[TheDude]

Well, to give a short backstory, I quit getting high 1 year and 3 months ago. A great deal of that clean time has been difficult, especially when things seemed "ok". Those were the times when I would begin to try and rationalize smoking again. Fortunately, I didn't, and I am grateful for that today. And not using has become much easier, particularly in the last 6 months or so.

A 3 year relationship with my girlfriend ended last Friday. She initiated the breakup, but I accepted a lot of what she said. It has not been easy in the last 4 days. As a matter of fact, it has been quite painful, considering all that we have been through together. We have been through so much. The attachment and subsequent dramatic change in my life has left me feeling a little lost. But not as lost as when she broke up with me right before I got clean, over a year ago. That breakup was horrid. I had hit a mental and emotional bottom, and had no desire to live. I felt guilty, ashamed and regretful.

Before I put down the pot, I didn't know how to cope with life. At all. Looking back, that breakup over a year ago was the best thing that could have happened at the time. I needed to stop, not only because it played a large part in wrecking our relationship (I secretly smoked all the time in isolation), but it was wrecking my life. We reconciled 3 weeks later, and I was clean. I admitted to her that I chose getting high over being with her. I made efforts to change my life through meditation, trying to stay connected to others and trying to be a better person. And I have to keep practicing being a better person the rest of my life by living in each moment.

But even with this practice, I am predisposed to depression. When I was still using, the smoking exacerbated that. I am learning to deal with it.

Fast forward to today. We again broke up, and it was 4 days ago. But something is largely different than the last time this happened: I have a much clearer conscience. I didn't do everything mindful, but I didn't use, and I really have tried to be a better boyfriend, and person. Of course, it still hurts like hell, but I don't feel like I am hitting a bottom, and I feel like I will be okay. It's still tough when I have shared so many life changes with another person. But I tried, and she is still my best friend, although we can't be in contact for a while.

She's been through it with alcohol, and is 3 years sober. This time around I am realizing I could never live up to her expectations. I felt she was comparing our relationship to other relationships and "ideal" circumstances quite often. I did my best that I could do during the last year, and tried to be so mindful of just listening to her and being with her. And if she wasn't happy because of some compatibility issues, then I can do nothing about that. I am who I am right now, and was who I was during the last year: a year of transition.

While things are difficult, I know that getting high would make things much, much worse for me. I don't feel like the perpetual teenager anymore. I feel like I have emotionally matured, and am trying to accept my feelings more instead of masking them. Life is hanging right over my head today, and it's life. I don't have to get high anymore, rather experience life and emotions, pleasant or unpleasant.

To some degree, I am beginning to see that taking life too seriously ISN'T taking life seriously.

I hope this helps someone, and thanks for reading. Needed to get this out.

[Cannabis Rehab Admin]

It sounds like you have emotionally matured, going through what you have been through does tend to have that effect, but well done on staying clean, that’s all down to your hard work, it’s all growth that you have achieved. It can be tough but like you say you do grow from it. Hang in there and keep up the good work.

Take care and thanks for keeping us posted.

[TheDude]

It sounds like you have emotionally matured, going through what you have been through does tend to have that effect, but well done on staying clean, that’s all down to your hard work, it’s all growth that you have achieved. It can be tough but like you say you do grow from it. Hang in there and keep up the good work.

Take care and thanks for keeping us posted.

Thanks, BFB. It't amazing how much it stunted emotional maturation. When I was finally done with it, I realized I had the emotional maturity of a 16 year old. It's definitely a process.

Take care, and peace.

[ajh151h]

I think I understand at least part of what you are saying. I keep looking back a few months and saying, wow I really thought like a child back then (in certain respects). But the difficulty of my situation didn't go away and I eventually learned how to deal with it on a day to day basis. Once I understood that my depression is going to be a permanent part of my existence I was forced to start learning how to actually fight it, and I stopped trying to think it away, or self-deceive myself about it.

At first I wanted to take things very seriously, to the point where it was impossible to live, and then I would react to that idea, which I couldn't maintain, and say to myself I don't need to take anything seriously at all as long as I don't smoke. That always led to really awful bouts of depression, and I would have to think about what I had done wrong and I would adjust a little internally.

Lately I think I have been better able to understand what is important and what isn't and I am starting to learn how to be happy again. It all came down to finally being able to relax (after 11 months of being clean) and accept life for what it is, while at the same time doing what I now know I need to do to avoid letting depression take over my mind.

Right now I know I still have a ways to go before it is totally behind me, but hopefully I am on the right track. Despite the negative mental health consequences resulting from the addiction learning to cope with it has permanently changed my perspective in a mostly positive way. By gaining a greater understanding of myself I have gained a better understanding of others that I would not have reached were it not for the addiction.

I feel like I understand what you mean by no longer bottoming out. Despite the situation, it is in a respect a positive and profound feeling to realize that you have become able to cope with things that you may have otherwise been unable to cope with. Once I became better able to cope with the reality of life, and especially the futility of my own mind to comprehend things that are outside of my own understanding, I became much more willing to try to understand others and accept the nature of my situation. I have become much better at looking at things as they are and doing what is in my power to improve them.

Like you said about how a breakup caused you to detox smoking, I was only able to stop after a loved one in my family who had been a pot smoker for 20 years had a brain aneurysm. Recently (on saturday) my grandmother had a stroke and a few days later she died, which I was able to cope with and help my family cope with in a way that I couldn't have were it not for my experience. This was a very profound experience, and despite my grief I am proud of the progress that I have made.

I know that I would not have gained this insight if I had not become addicted at such a young age and for so long, but I will never know what things would have been like had I never started smoking. I am still obviously learning things that perhaps come naturally to other people my age, but as it is impossible to figure out what these things are I have been trying to get into the habit of letting development come by itself.

Basically I guess what I'm saying is that this whole thing taught me one hell of a lot about the nature of my depression, and even a lot about the nature of life, death and faith. Despite the fear that I won't reach a state of development that I would have otherwise naturally achieved, I think in the long run I will be able to control myself in a way that otherwise I would not have. My 41 year old uncle has a very similar personality to mine and he has never been able to understand the importance of work or empathy, and despite the fact that without an addiction at a young age he might have had more potential, it all went to waste with him. He ended up with slow addictions (alcohol, sex, weed) that he developed late enough to control (to some extent), but they still blocked him from having a meaningful existence.

For one thing I can reasonably be certain that if I hadn't learned what I did about addiction at this age I would have ended up having an addiction at some other point because of my depression. So maybe I am lucky that I didn't end up with a more debilitating addiction.

Take care

[Cannabis Rehab Guest]

'never been able to understand the importance of work or empathy.'

This is how i feel, have felt all my life. Work seems meaningless, a waste of time on earth, relationships are minimal to the point of hatred towards other humans. Have i been self medicating depression. Ive given up the drug for a while but i feel s**t and worse without it

[Cannabis Rehab Admin]

Hi and welcome Unregistered

Unfortunately feeling worse without it can all be part of the process, at least for a good while, some people it can take much longer than others, but most people will find that after a while it will lift and in the long term they usually feel a whole lot better than if they continued how they were. I too have done a heck of a lot of maturing emotionally since I quit, still am, I too was like a teenager inside the body of someone who was pushing thirty and a bit of spiritual and emotional maturity was long overdue. Like I say these things can all be part of the growth process and you will be better for it in the long term. Unfortunately modern society has conditioned us to fall into the habit of thinking extremely short term, I think we have all become a victim of that to some extent.

Hang in there people and try to think a bit further down the line, the future does come sooner than you think.

Take care

[ajh151h]

Work seems meaningless, a waste of time on earth, relationships are minimal to the point of hatred towards other humans.

This is a very difficult question to answer, as what I am writing can only serve to point you in the right direction. To overcome this state of mind you must realize these things yourself. This will not happen overnight, as I’m sure you are aware. The first part of this post details how I understood these things, and the second part details what I might do in your situation.
The first part might seem somewhat ridiculous, but it is the truth about what happened to me, so I think it might serve to help you. The first statement, “you need to overcome the limits of your own perception” is probably what I would have told you a month a half ago, so I am not going to omit it.
__
I can very easily relate to the condition that you describe by recalling my own life. I experienced a life like this for about 7 years. I did not know this at the time, but it is a condition that a great number of people have been experiencing since the beginning of civilization, and it is a part of human nature. It is in a sense very complicated but I think that in a sense it is also very simple.

I am going to be as honest as I possibly can. At the point when I overcame what you are describing, I understood what you are going through to the point that I would have been able to give you very, very truthful advice. It has been about a month and a half since I reached the state in which I understood this condition as well as I did. Since then my memory has been fogging up this understanding, which is impossible to accurately remember, because it involved surpassing my own perception.

What you really need to attempt to overcome is the limit of your own perception. It is virtually impossible to totally do this, but the more you are able to do this the closer you will get to reality, and the better off you will be.

What I basically did was accept the fact that I know nothing, and that it is impossible for me to truly understand anything. I did this only because I was forced to; I could choose between either committing suicide or accepting my own insignificance.

Over a period of about 7 months my mind was completely preoccupied with death, and the limits of my thoughts. The entire time I was in a living hell, and I had no choice but to think these thoughts. There was no escape. The result was a complete and total disillusionment. The following thoughts were crucial in that without them this disillusionment would not have taken place:

1. Death is real, and it is inevitable
2. My thoughts are not correspondent with reality and I am suffering because of this

These thoughts were constantly going through my head, but they are not as important as the two that are above:

3. I will continue to suffer because of my thoughts, and then I will die. This is reality.
4. There is truth, and I can achieve great things if I can understand truth. I must retrain myself to think in a way that I can understand truth; only by doing this will I be able to help myself and help others from suffering

These next thoughts were probably crucial stepping stones in the process. I think that they would have inevitably taken place, in some form, after the first two thoughts that I described:

5. People conceptualize things without understanding that the world is real. If they were better at discerning what is true, there would be no suffering
6. This is caused by greed; people want things to be a certain way, and so they distort their perception
7. The desire to be significant, and the refusal to accept the reality of death, is perhaps the source of this distortion
8. My desire to be significant and my inability to overcome death is the cause of my suffering

I realize it is very difficult to convey what I believe I understand about this in words. I went through this process conceptually, which I would guess very few people do. It is impossible for me to remember every bit of it, as it went on for so long, and I am confident that I am leaving out many important parts.

Like I said, I went through this process conceptually, and I was forced to do this. This happened because of a very abnormal circumstance. It would be difficult to achieve a conceptual transformation like the one that I went through unless it was forced upon you; I was in total hatred of the whole thing until the very end, and I was simply looking for a way to make it stop.

This is the second part:
I believe that what people have been doing for a very long time is achieving the same spiritual transformation through different religious or philosophical teachings. Some religions and philosophies are laid out better than others, so that it is more likely that one would achieve what I am describing through certain religions over others.

Unfortunately the word religion has a negative connotation in modern day society. People have rejected the idea of God because of scientific research, false religions have been spread to influence people, true religions have been distorted for the same reason, etc. etc. The important thing to understand is that good religions and philosophies are started by very wise men who understand things that are very difficult to comprehend without lots of experience combined with a certain type of mind.

From the very limited research that I've done I would suggest studying Buddhism, perhaps in combination with other religions. Although western religion can be used as a good guide it is difficult to suddenly understand, let alone follow, the teachings in the Bible. The format that the Bible is presented in is flawed in my opinion because it is difficult to understand all of the meaning that it possesses, especially if someone takes it literally.
For example, the story of Genesis is a very powerful allegory, but it goes over the heads of people who haven't already reached spiritual understanding of some kind. If one were able to follow the ten commandments perfectly, they would reach a very high state of being, but it is very difficult to train oneself to do this unless one understands why they must do this for their own good.

Leo Tolstoy is someone that achieved the transformation, it seems, through the Christian religion, although he was extremely educated and had studied massive amounts of oriental religious texts as well. He stated that he "reached a state of tranquility" for 5 to 6 years. He wrote a book in this time period called, "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You," that describes how he was able to put Christian teachings into practice, which you might want to read if you are interested in pursuing that kind of study.

If you want to read a tremendous novel I would suggest a book by him called “Anna Karenina,” which is about someone who undergoes this type of transformation. It is a very beautiful work of art, and it possesses an incredible amount of truth that would be very useful for someone in your situation.

Like I said before, though, I think that eastern religion is the most practical method. If you are feeling very hopeless and feel powerless to discipline yourself, there are places called Buddhist Ashrams in which you would spend as much time as you need meditating, studying and working. Some people live on Ashrams for their entire lives, while some people stay for less time. They teach discipline and simplicity, and they help people understand their own nature.

This might sound like an odd piece of information, but someone told me today that Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, was experiencing something similar to what you are going through when he was young, and he spent a year at an Ashram. He said later that he owed his entire achievement to that experience, and that if it weren’t for that experience he might have ended up committing suicide.

What I would really like you to try and understand is that the feelings that you are experiencing are not at all unnatural. The values of modern day society cause countless people to feel this way, and unfortunately the majority of people are never able to overcome this state of mind. It is a natural part of human existence, and the fact that you feel this way shows that you are an inherently good and intelligent person; where others around you are willing to accept the stupidity and immorality that you are faced with, you simply cannot. Even if you act immorally, you are painfully aware of this, and you want to revert back to a less perverse existence.

To answer your question about meaningful work and relearning to love others I would tell you that these are things that I understood after a lot of very deep thinking. If you undertake a religious study you will understand them both in your own way over time. However, in the short-term, work in general is very important. If you idle around all day and avoid work you will become very depressed no matter who you are. If you find some work that is mentally or physically stimulating you will feel much, much better afterwards. Meaningful work is work that truly benefits others, and I think that this is the best thing for someone's happiness.

The most important thing to realize, for everyone, is that you must always try to understand things yourself. The information that others gives you is virtually always distorted by their own selfish perception, and even if what they are saying is true the way they conceptualize things is different from the way you do. Actually understanding things goes way beyond studying books or conversing with people; you must really learn them yourself. See how ideas correspond with your own experience. If you don't think they do, reject them, and if you think they do and that they can help you, pursue that train of thought.

Good luck.

[Cannabis Rehab Guest]

You speak a lot of sense, a lot of people feel like that but dont know how to put it into words.

I think i got into weed, not to block things out, but to feel happier. I think more and think deeper when stoned. But i dont think it can be sustainable for too long and remain constant.

I believe i got into it because i couldnt yet accept that i am, like everyone, insignificant solely in the grand scheme of things. Human nature makes you fight on like your very important, insignificance needs to be accepted to feel content in the long run.

A good intelligent post.

[Cannabis Rehab Admin]

Wow what a post ajh151h, there is a heck of a lot of wisdom in it, I really appreciate how you take the time to advise people like you do. There’s some pretty deep stuff in all that, a mixture of the very complicated and the very simple all at the same time, definitely a master piece, ajh151h perhaps you should be writing your own book. There certainly is quite a lot to this sort of thing, but perhaps you can make it as simple or as complicated as you like, or feel you need to depending on your needs. To put a relatively simple take on it I would probably say the following, suffering is usually created by desire, usually the wrong type of desire, free yourself of these desires and you will free yourself of the suffering, to achieve this you need to reassess the way in which you see life, to question a lot of the ways modern day society has conditioned you into thinking, you need to re-examine your values and what it is that you value. Like ajh151h says a lot of people in modern day society are having these kind of problems and perhaps it is because they are valuing the wrong things, perhaps there is more to life than the way in which they are seeing it. Although this isn't an entirely new problem and is just a symptom of the human condition and has always been with us to some extent, these days I think it has got a lot worse. Try not to be too judgemental, life is tough for most of us, most of us are just doing the best we can, try not to expect too much from yourself or others or life in general, modern day society has been very good at conditioning us to think we all have the right to live like millionaires and be treated like celebrities, it’s how it motivates us to slave away at jobs many of us don’t even like to buy shit we don’t really need, so we can indulge our material desires and show off to everybody else just how much “status” we have achieved. Try to enjoy the simple pleasures in life and there are plenty of them, rediscover those things you used to enjoy that are not based on just consumerism and status, i.e. family, friends, sports, hobbies, ect, try enjoying the simple life for a while. At the end of the day it’s all about balance, a bit of consumerism, a bit of expectation, a bit of desire, these are all fine as long as they are in the right balance, as long as it doesn’t become your whole life, as long as you don’t become consumed by them and let them end up making you miserable, there is always going to be something you want that you can’t have, others that are doing “better” than you, other people with “more”, it’s a never ending treadmill, try not to get sucked in by it too much, people who do are never satisfied, much really does want more.

Reassess your identity and the way in which you see yourself, if it’s all based around ego, achievement and control, sooner or later you are in for a fall, the pursuit of hedonism rarely brings happiness, much always wants more. So like I say you need to reassess the way that you see things and practice what Buddhists call skilful thought, which involves a lot of what has become known these days as positive thinking, at the end of the day no religion or system of beliefs really has the monopoly on any of this including various forms of modern day “self help” or therapy, although as ajh151h says eastern religion especially Buddhism does deal with it extremely well, you can study it and learn an awful lot from it without having to call yourself a Buddhist or anything else for that matter, I know it has taught me an awful lot. So make it as simple or as complicated as you like, go as deep as you feel is right for you, be as mystical or as down to earth as you want, the best religions or philosophies that I have come across always encourage you to question and think for yourself instead of just blindly following, take what you want from their teachings and leave what you don’t, most of them have at least something you can learn from. It’s all about perspective, reality is just a perception we create.