Cold turkey vs gradual reduction
I am a 45yo man who smoked almost daily, varying amounts, since I was 17. Been off it for 7 days and feeling great. During covid my usage went up to close to 2-3 grams a day. Mostly joints, sometimes vapes, sometimes edibles. Over the past 5 years I tried cold turkey a few times. I would always go back because it was just so habitual and linked to so many activities, and it was so unpleasant as so many folks have described here. It sucked. It never has really messed up my life. I’m very successful and have a healthy family life,etc., so it was easy to slip back into old habits.
About a 1.5 years ago I tried gradual reduction. I basically just started to limit my supply by a small amount each month. Sometimes I’d tick back up, and some periods lasted like a couple months. I still smoked every day, but over time I got down to 3.5 grams per week. That lasted awhile. I basically would take 1-2 hits from a pipe a few times a day. Once I felt comfortable at this stage, I went from 5 times a day, to 4, then to 3. Each phase I would stay in until I felt comfortable. At the end, I just had to quit smoking once per day (the morning sesh made it to the end) I was able to just stop. It’s been a week, and I haven’t had the symptoms like when I went cold turkey. The activities gradually became unlinked, and the habitual patterns gradually faded away. It’s been a week, and I feel great. I’m actually very interested in what this new state feels like.
The way I see it, is that I smoked so much for so long, I needed to fight the habitual patterns I built up over 30 years. That doesn’t work with cold turkey.
I see in this group a lot of people are against, or don’t recommend gradual reduction. My question is why? A planned approach allowed me to incrementally and slowly dismantle habitual patterns around weed. Those patterns grew and solidified over 30 years so it makes sense that cold turkey would be traumatic and cause issues related to that trauma. Would love to understand peoples positions on this. I don’t want to recommend this path if it’s got problems I’m not seeing. It requires long term commitment, but so does cold turkey.
I’m proud of everyone on here!
Thanks.