I have smoked cannabis for 11 years.

[Cannabis Rehab Guest]

I have been smoking for about 11 years. I didnt start smoking everyday until I met my husband to be. He is 5 years older then me and has been smoking much longer. My Father's side of my family is who introduce me to it. I smoked for the first time when I was like 14. I was really good in track so I just tried it. I told myself that after I graduated I might consider being a full time smoker. I come fro a really strict house hold and have been through a lot of pain in this short lifetime. Ii want to stop now. It is sooooo hard because my husband is a smoker. My mother made me stop running because of religious purposes. I know those of you reading this are thinking what does religion have to do with it. I was the top sprinterin my school. I was on Varsity my Freshman year. I thought my dream future would be as an Olympic runner. I hadbeen running since I could walk. My parents said I skipped the walking and ran with my first steps. Well I got tired of fighting with my Mother about the issue. I track quit my junior year. My was scholorship gone. My self-esteem was crumbled, and my future was unknown. So insted of thinking about it I started to smoke weed. For those hours of being high I didnt think of anything in my life. It felt good to laugh. It was my way of rebelling against my family and the world. I tried to detox soon after, My Grandmother told me she smoked while being pregnant with all her kids, and to this day still smokes. Well years have passed and I just dontwant to do it anymore. The problem is I know if I stop I have to confront all of the pain I have been supressing. I am surrounded around people who smoke. This is not friends that I can just stop hanging with. This is family that likes to be able to laugh because I am the clon of the family. I am not saying they wont laugh without me. When I tried to detox my husband, sister, friends, and granny said I was crazy. I have a 2 year old now. I dontsmoke around him, but i hate the time I devote toward the drug instead of working on developing him. I try to be super Mom. How super can I be if the drug is controlling me. I want to stop. I need to stop. I have gained weight. I am already what you would call a lazy Libra. Well you add that in with smoking and I am not functionable. Meaning at the end of the day stuffthat I could have had done in no time takes all day or just doesnt get done. I think i need counseling or rehab. If my family knew I would get laughed out of town. Then it's like I see all the additional side-effects and I am scared. I dontwant to be a ***** to my son for a month, when it's not his fault Mommy started puffing in the first place. I wish i could just go check in somewhere. I have tried a number of tactics. Cold turkey, telling my husband to hide the weed.(in the end back fires because by the time he gets home if he is just one second late I am on the other side of that door like a beast in the night squaring up for her first meal. I feel like i am slipping into a depession. It was fine and dandy when I wanted to do it. Now that I want to detox I feel like a prisoner to my own addition. I just keep thinking,"Your stronger than this!"

[Cannabis Rehab Guest]

Wow I feel for you, it sounds like you have had allot to deal with, it must be difficult with your family on the one side thinking you are crazy if you don’t take drugs and on the other been so religiously extreme you can’t even do sport. I think forget what they think, you have to live your own life and be your own person, if you want to do sport do it, if you don’t want to smoke don’t, you don’t have to fall out with them over it, but they need to respect your decisions and let you live your life the way you want to.

[Cannabis Rehab Admin]

Cannabis Addiction

Hi welcome to the forum.

Without meaning any disrespect to your family I think those are some pretty good points, it does sound hard trying to be your own person amongst such extremes. Our families are as they are and we love and respect them regardless of their faults. But in turn they have to respect our right to be our own person and make our own choices, it sounds like it will be hard to detox when so many around you will still be doing it and the standard advice for quitting most drugs is to break the link with those circles of people, but in your case been as they are your family it’s not quite that simple. Who wants to have to make that choice?

It sounds like you have already decided you want to quit, so that much you do know. Now all you have got to decide is how you want to go about it and not worry about what those who continue to smoke will think. Personally I would try to detox by gradually reducing the amount I smoked over a period of about 6-8 weeks and then after that quit completely, that way you will hit the ground with far less of a thud and won’t be as much of a ***** to your kid or anyone else around you. This will be difficult unless you have a period of time where you don’t see so much of those around you, who are continuing to smoke, but and maybe this goes against all the standard advice, personally I would probably give it a dam good go, as I wouldn’t want to have to separate from my partner for any length of time, in order to detox unless I really had to. However if after giving it my very best I still failed, then I would probably check in to cannabis rehab and again give no thought what so ever to what those who continued to smoke thought. Remember and this goes with lots of drugs and none more so than marijuana, there is a crazy cult like mentality that often goes hand in hand with the people who use the drug and yes they will laugh at anybody who feels they have a problem with it, feel they want to quit, or feel they need help. This is a reflection of their ignorance and lack of understanding of anyone who wants to live their life differently to them, or thinks differently. I would not let that stop me and if they want to laugh, let them laugh. You cannot let that stop you from being the person you want to be.

You may have to deal with certain unresolved emotional issues, just like you do when you quit any drug and maybe you will need some sort of professional counselling for this.

All in all I would try not to worry about what other people think and do what I thought was right. You will be able to detox one way or the other, if you truly want to and have all the strength you will ever need.

Take care and please keep us posted on how it goes.

I wish you the very best of luck.

[Donna]

Yeah no disrespect to your family but you can’t let them influence you like that, if you listened to them you would spend the rest of your life smoking drugs and never doing any sport. Not a healthy combo. Live your life for you and I am sure you will find happiness.

[Cannabis Rehab Guest]

I can identify with the fear of having to deal with emotional pain once you quit the drugs, but you know taking drugs doesn’t heal the pain it just dulls it, I think it’s far healthier to confront it, the sooner you do the sooner you can start the healing process and relive the need to take the drugs in the first place.