u/Amazing-Flatworm6646

recovery is giving up one thing for everything

hope everyone has a good day today

So I have been playing for like 10 years on and off. Know a couple songs, don't play them particularly well. I got clean from drugs about 9 months ago and was gettting myself my first classical guitar (I have always played on a breedlove passport steel string since I started playing). I had my eyes on the cordoba c5, played it in shop and fell in love with the c12 and how nice it is.

Long story short, I now have a c12 and I feel like I am a bit of a fraud for purchasing it. Like an old person who buys new golf clubs despite having a shit swing lol. I am purchasing some guitar lessons from one of highest recommended classical guitar teachers in my area for my birthday. But I feel like this is maybe one of those buy once cry once moments because I will cherish this guitar for life and pass it to my future children one.

My intention is to get as good as I possibly can on guitar. I am not sure what this looks like, and I am going to make a goal with my teacher when I start going. Just hoping to get some thoughts from yall on this one.

Getting clean gave me my life back to fix. Nine months ago I decided to get clean after spending the last 7 years high from sun up to sun down.

I started at 21, and by 24 or 25 it was part of every day. For a long time I told myself I was functional. I had a job, I worked out, I kept up my relationships, I paid my bills. Nothing looked broken from the outside.

Which made it stupidly easy to convince myself weed wasn't costing me anything.

It was costing me something, though. Just something harder to point at: my willingness to sit in discomfort at all.

Bored? Smoke. Bad day? Smoke. Something hard staring me down? Smoke first, deal with it later, maybe. A dead Saturday with nothing on the calendar? Turn getting high into the plan.

It's not like weed torched my life in one dramatic night. It just slowly made me really, really okay with never facing anything.

Withdrawal wasn't the hard part. Losing the escape hatch was. All of a sudden boredom, anxiety, a bad workday, an empty evening, getting into it with someone I love. I had to just sit there and feel it. No changing the channel in my head anymore.

Nine months in, I'm not going to sit here and say it's all figured out. I've had some ugly cravings, a few of them recently. I've caught myself romanticizing it. Telling myself maybe after all this time I could handle it, control it, just have one. I have to keep reminding myself the fantasy ends the second I take that first hit. The consequences don't.

What's actually changed is that I trust myself again.

When I say I'm going to do something hard, I actually do it now. I've moved forward at work. I'm working toward a big certification. I'm lifting, coaching, picking guitar back up, getting back into stuff I used to care about. I'm finally building a life that doesn't need me to check out of it every single night.

None of that happened because quitting weed handed me discipline out of nowhere. It happened because sobriety kept giving me thousands of tiny moments to choose something other than the easy relief, over and over, until it started to become who I am.

I used to think weed relaxed me. Turns out what I wanted was peace.
I used to think it made ordinary moments feel like something. Turns out I wanted to actually be engaged in my life.
I used to think it gave me something to look forward to. Turns out I just needed a life worth looking forward to, sober.

I'm still building that life. Some days it's genuinely exciting. Some days it's boring as fuck. And some days the only win I get is deciding, again, that today's not the day I smoke.

But nine months in, I'd rather live my actual life than keep disappearing into the same numb evening on repeat.

If you're early in this and wondering when sobriety starts paying you back, it might already be happening. Every craving you get through is proof that discomfort doesn't get to run your life anymore.

Doing the hard thing. However it is called, it is a real phenomenon.

I found that the hard days really do add up over time. Each day compounds on the next. Every time I chose the hard thing, it became easier to choose my long terms goals over short term relief and fun in the future

There is an area in the brain called the anterior mid cingulate cortex. It is a pathway that can be engaged and practiced to become more familiar and more used over time. Each time the brain engages in conflict between the hard decision and letting itself off the hook with an immediate reward (such as weed), it is training that pathway. Choosing the hard thing strengthens the pathway, and choosing the easy thing weakens the pathway.

So each time my brain is screaming at me to give up on my goals and light up and I choose not to, my brain is getting stronger in a way. Kind of fascinating shit right there. Each moment of craving is an opportunity to be strong and train a response that serve me long term.

And it carries to all walks of life too. So when I don't feel like studying or training or doing my dang dishes, and I do it anyways, my brain gets stronger in all areas. It is not just for the one area that I am working in.

I’m over eight months sober and fully committed to staying stopped. Consciously, I understand exactly why cannabis is bad for me and why I can’t go back. But somewhere deeper, my brain still romanticizes how getting high felt.

The clearest example is mornings. Even after all this time, part of my mind can still make waking up and taking a hit sound comforting. Even though I know where that path leads for me. It feels like my conscious mind has accepted the truth while my subconscious is still holding onto the highlight reel and deleting all the consequences.

For those who are further along, did weed eventually lose that special glow? Was there a point when you stopped feeling like you were missing something and started seeing it more clearly? Or did the pedestal gradually fade as you built a life you no longer wanted to escape from?

Maybe I really am a pickle and can’t go back to being a cucumber, haha.

Either way, I know staying quit is the right decision for me. I’m just wondering when the deeper part of my brain might finally catch up.

I wish there was some sort of cure all that could be given to yall just starting out, within your first few weeks, or even first month. Unfortunately there isn't. I will promise you though:

If you stick with it, it will 110% be worth it.

What worked for me was building a life worth living sober. I give a lot of my time back to the people around me. My work involves coaching others financially for work, and after work I coach wrestling to high school kids. I find that helping the people around me gives me this feeling that weed never could.

When I couldn't find a reason to stay sober in myself, I found that reason in others. My clients deserve the best version of me, the young men and women I coach deserve that same best version.

So I did it for others at first, because I couldn't find a reason to do it for myself.

Something happened over time, probably around month 3 or so where I realized that all the folks who have taken my advice and coaching are so grateful for my help. They look up to me as a role model. All of this helps me stay sober now. These people need me to show up as my best self.

The sad part is that before I got clean, I told myself this story that I didn't need my best self to show up sober. I told myself it was alright being high and getting by.

Now I realize that was my addict brain bargaining with me to keep using. I feel so much better 8 months clean and my life has truly changed for the better.

If youre reading this, please keep going, it will be worth it one day. It really does get better

day 238 here. one aspect of my life that has changed a lot in the last 8 months is my tolerance for being uncomfortable. Whether it is in the micro, like staying focused on studying, or in the macro, like sustaining effort over multiple weeks. I feel like my drive is back. I thought that weed was what allowed me to do the hard things and not think to much about it, but being sober has allowed me to improve my processes and just feel a lot better about it all even if the things im doing are hard. It allows me to show up better for those around me too which is nice

The road to getting clean from cannabis is not easy, but it is simple. Just don't smoke. You have to believe in yourself that it is worth it to get clean, you have to believe that you have the power to not go and get high. You have to believe that a life of sobriety is better than a letting life slip by high.

For context I'm 218 days clean now, still have pretty bad cravings despite turning my life around, accomplishing great things, and developing healthy habits.

I keep thinking about how my life could have been different had I never started doing this shit. Maybe I would have got a better job out of college, maybe I would have performed better in my sport in college, maybe I would have met different people and be in a different city, maybe I would be in a better place today than I am now. Who knows.

I'm just sad I went down the path I did. I was a good high school student, college athlete, smart, driven. I feel like weed robbed me of that. Alcohol did the same to my dad when he was played sports in college. He drank too much and told me about how it affected him negatively. I thought weed was different, but it is really the same monster in different clothing. I smoked too much in college and beyond and I now feel the same way. Just iterating on generational substance abuse haha. I digress.

One thing I know is that I don't have to run from this feeling anymore. In the past I would have lit up and said fuck it we ball and probably make no effort to change my situation. Now I still say fuck it we ball, but I also act on the feeling and try and do something about how I feel as opposed to numbing myself into oblivion. Here is to undoing 7 years of weed abuse, I deserve to live a sober life and become the person I want to be. The people around me deserve a sober version of me.

Much love to yall

200 days clean checking in. Keep going yall, life does get better. The cravings don't go away, but they do get easier to deal with. To be honest, I feel more high now than I ever was stoned. Life is sharper. I feel more emotionally resilient. My girlfriend tells me that my presence in sobriety calms her.

We are responsible for our own peace, it can't be outsourced to someone other than ourselves, not even a plant.

200 days on wednesday this week. In the last 200 days I have been promoted from a job I truly hated to a job I somewhat enjoy making better money, coached my first state champion in wrestling, made progress towards completing certifications I started last year, put on about 6 pounds of muscle and gained 10 pounds, did 5 rounds of interviews with a company that recruited me.

I'm not exactly where I want to be yet. But I feel like I have finally rebuilt my trust with myself. I take myself seriously, I follow through on my word, and I trust that I can achieve what I want to achieve. Weed took those things from me since my sophomore year of college. But I am slowly building them back.

If you are thinking about smoking today, think about how great your life can be if you truly trusted yourself, your word, and the work you put in.

love yall

190 days clean today, 2500+ day (7 year) heavy user.

It is strange being this "far" removed from it and still having to fight my brain to not go light up everyday, multiple times a day. I was high for pretty much 2500+ days straight, with a couple forced breaks sprinkled in. I guess that it makes sense to still have cravings when I am less the 7.6% days clean of days that I was high.

Every day I spend clean I get to add .04% to it so I look forward to getting to 10% by sometime in summer this year. Its not really about getting to that 10% though, its about what I do along the way; the habits I build, the effort I put forth, and the attitude I have doing it all. Hopefully this brought another, semi mathematical, way to look at your sobriety.

6 months clean tomorrow. Wanted to share some thoughts I had on sobriety

• we don't need weed to survive stress. we don't need to escape what we feel. The hard feelings are what give us direction on what we need to work on in life
• discomfort is not an emergency, get comfortable being uncomfortable. Its where growth happens
• motivation is not stable, thats ok. discipline is what keeps one sober
• emotions are sharper. the good ones and the bad ones
• staying sober is not easy, but it is simple
• we can't outsource our peace, not even to a plant
• we are stronger than we give ourselves credit

Sobriety isn’t quitting something, sobriety is about becoming person you must be. 

156 days clean. 7 year, all day every day. dabs, edibles, bud, all of it. sold it to the homies on the low so I could for free. I know ball lol.

I can't help but think of the good times I had stoned. My life has completely turned around and I feel like I have a new lease on life. But my brain keeps trying to trick me back into smoking! Its so frustrating!

Sometimes I look at it like I was stoned for over 2555 days pretty much in a row (minus a couple sober weeks sprinkled in). 156 days is barely 6% of that time, yet I have accomplished more in these days than I have in the last 1000 days and its not even close.

I am frustrated with my brain continuously telling me I can handle it, its different now, etc. I know its a lie because one is too many and a thousand is never enough.

Any suggestions on how to break yourself of this romanticizing shit im doing. love yall.