u/HunterAncient

I am 21 and have health anxiety, 2 months ago I was going through a lot of anxiety and my heart rate would spike up so I went to a cardiologist who ran tests and told me everything was fine, but I hadn’t started exercising and losing weight like now. 2 months later I’m jogging almost everyday and have lost almost 10kg, I don’t jog nearly as much distance as some people here. 3.5km average sometimes max 5. I have noticed since my resting heart rate in the 50s.

There’s one thing I think all of us go through when we quit smoking weed.

I miss how enjoyable it was and how it could instantly become “the plan” for the day. I could stay home, smoke, have a good time, and never get bored. I definitely miss that, and I can’t pretend I don’t.

But at the same time, quitting has given me this strong hunger to become a better version of myself. It’s like sobriety creates this drive to improve your life and move forward.

The thing about smoking is that it makes you feel satisfied no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you’re out of shape, if your life is a mess, if your body isn’t where you want it to be, or if you hate your job. None of it seems to matter. As long as you’re high, you feel comfortable and content, and you don’t really feel the need to change anything.

When you’re sober, though, you do want to change things. You actually want to improve your situation.

Since you no longer have that temporary satisfaction and sense of contentment that weed gave you, you have to find it somewhere else. For me, that “somewhere else” has been making progress and achieving things.

I’ve replaced the satisfaction I used to get from weed with improving my physique, making more money, and becoming a better person overall.

So yes, I absolutely miss the fun that came with smoking, and the temptation is still very real sometimes. But the progress I’ve made since quitting is undeniable. I’m in a much better place now than I was when I was smoking every day.

And I’m simply not willing to trade the results I’m getting now for a little temporary fun and satisfaction.

Good evening, everyone. I hope you’re all doing well.

Today marks 95 days without smoking weed. A lot has improved since I quit. I’m working on getting in shape, I’m starting a new business, my anxiety has gone down, and most of the physical symptoms I had during the first weeks of withdrawal have faded. Overall, this has been the hardest withdrawal I’ve ever gone through. In the past, the biggest challenge was simply resisting the urge to smoke. This time, the hardest part was dealing with the anxiety and all the physical symptoms.

I wanted to share something that happened this weekend.

Lately I’ve been taking my fitness journey seriously, and I’ve been going out for regular runs. Usually running clears my mind, and I just enjoy the routine. But yesterday, out of nowhere, I got the strongest craving I’ve had in all 95 days.

I started telling myself all the things we tell ourselves when we’re trying to justify a relapse. You’ve lost weight. You’ve made it 95 days. Your cardio has improved. Your anxiety is better. You’ve been working hard. You deserve it.

The thoughts became so intense that I couldn’t even run as far as I normally do because I felt mentally drained. On my way home, I had already started planning it all—taking some weed from my brother, smoking, and convincing myself it would be okay.

Then, thankfully, reality hit me.

I remembered why I quit in the first place. I remembered the panic attacks, the anxiety, the racing heart, the feeling of being overstimulated and overwhelmed after smoking. I remembered the bad experiences that made me realize I had to stop. At that point, I knew I wasn’t going to relapse.

But I also realized something else: this is still hard.

Part of me is still grieving. Before weed became something harmful, it also gave me moments of relaxation, fun, and escape. I think a small part of me still misses that version of it and struggles to accept that it’s no longer an option for me.

What I struggle with the most isn’t even not smoking. It’s living with the fear that if I ever do smoke again, something bad will happen—that my heart will race, my anxiety will spiral, and I’ll lose control. During my addiction I developed severe health anxiety, and even today I still carry it with me. Weed changed the way I think about my body and my health.

More than anything, I miss being the carefree person I used to be—the person who didn’t constantly worry about every heartbeat or every sensation, who wasn’t always thinking about their health.

I don’t miss being addicted. I miss the simplicity of who I was before anxiety took over.

Thanks for reading, and I wish everyone here strength in their own recovery. We really can keep moving forward, one day at a time.

It hasn’t been easy but it sure has been worth it. Already 90 days and this time the difficult part was not resisting the temptation of giving in, it was the physical and mental symptoms including heavy anxiety.

I have done changes in this past 90 days that I couldn’t have done if I was still smoking, I am opening up a business, I’m exercising everyday and eating healthy to achieve a physical transformation, overall I feel more productive and proud of myself as ever.

I still have struggles with anxiety or sometimes I feel my body and mind are still off, which I thinks is normal, but it’s definitely better than the first month. Sometimes I miss the fun aspect of it, cause it sure was entertaining, but I know the heavy anxiety and panic attacks that come with it too, and I am not willing to take the risk.

I was unable to feel proud of myself while smoking, I was always getting high and fantasizing of doing better than I was, now I’m living that reality, I am willing to live a more quiet and sometimes boring life if it means feeling proud, growing as a person and getting better.

I achieved a conclusion after quitting weed for months multiple times and relapsing, I strongly believe I should aim at a year to see the full benefits of this, I can’t fix a problem of years only in a few weeks or months. You definitely see progress but it still takes time to be 100%

I have this recurring dream where I smoke weed and get a bad trip and palpitations, which is exactly the reason I stopped. Every week or something like that it happens, it feels so crazy cause it’s exactly the same discomfort and smoking in real life. I believe it’s only the substance leaving your body and it manifests itself that way, idk. I ain’t going back tho, never again.

Good evening, everyone. How are you all doing? I hope you’re doing well.

Today marks day 70, and it’s 3:00 a.m. I’m trying to fall asleep, but I can’t. Not because of anything in particular, and not because of withdrawal—I’m just thinking.

Tonight was one of those nights where, out of nowhere, you start scrolling through your old photos and camera roll, looking back at all your past experiences and memories. It almost feels like you’re reliving the past.

I started looking at pictures from the first time I ever smoked, back when I was a teenager. I remembered how I wasn’t afraid of anything, how free I felt. Life wasn’t perfect, but it was so much more interesting. I wasn’t anxious the way I am today. I wasn’t constantly worried or stressed about my health like I am now.

It filled me with this deep sense of melancholy.

I was looking at those first times I smoked with some friends—how excited I felt, how much fun I was having, how everything felt new. Those were much simpler times. My mindset was much simpler, and I felt so much freer as a person.

And then I started thinking about how everything went wrong so quickly. How I gradually developed an addiction.

At first, like most of us here, it was just a new experience—something fun, something casual. Then I bought my first vape pen. The moment I bought that first pen, it became an everyday habit. I smoked every day, every night, just to have fun.

Then one day I suddenly realized I had an addiction.

It wasn’t something I noticed little by little. One day I simply realized I’d been smoking every single day for weeks without stopping. That’s when it hit me that I had a problem.

Honestly, it makes me sad to think about how I built this addiction and this dependence. I became a lonely person. I isolated myself from everyone. I lost friends.

My entire life started revolving around this substance.

My fun, my escape, my celebrations, my way of relaxing—everything revolved around it.

Little by little, my mental health deteriorated. More than a little, if I’m being honest.

After one really bad high—the first truly bad experience I ever had—I became a hypochondriac. I started constantly worrying about my health.

After that night, nothing was ever the same.

I never stopped worrying about my health. Weed was never the same again. Even though I kept using it every day, I used it with fear and anxiety. And life itself became something I constantly worried about.

I stopped being happy.

I stopped feeling excited about life. I stopped feeling calm. I stopped feeling free.

Everything became a challenge. Everything became difficult.

I’ve quit several times. I’ve managed to stay sober for months at a time, but I always end up relapsing, whether the experience is good or bad.

Because that’s how I’ve tried to fill the empty spaces inside me. I’ve used it to escape boredom, to cover up the monotony of everyday life.

The truth is, my life isn’t even a third as exciting as it was when I was a teenager in school.

And I’m not old. I’m only 21 and a half.

But it’s been four years since I graduated, and life has become repetitive and exhausting.

I’ve tried to quit many times, but it’s never lasted forever, even when I’ve managed to stay away from it for months.

The reality is that today marks 70 days in this attempt, and for some reason, this time feels different.

I’m trying to build my own business. I’m trying to improve my physique. And I’m trying to find satisfaction in healthier, more natural, and more meaningful ways.

I’m simply trying to improve my life and become someone who feels better about living it.

But the emptiness that weed left behind is something I still haven’t completely filled.

That said, it’s definitely much easier than it was during the first week.

Good evening everyone, I hope you’re all doing well.

I wanted to share how I’m feeling as I’m about to break my most recent longest streak without smoking weed, which is 62 days. I’m about one hour away from reaching 61 days right now. I’ve quit for longer periods before, but not recently. So reaching 62 days again and breaking this streak is a huge accomplishment for me.

When I was 16 years old, I traded my connections with other people, friendships, and activities outside of my home for weed. I replaced all of those important and necessary things with smoking. I spent most of my time alone, smoking, eating, and chasing as much stimulation as possible. All it gave me in return were mental health problems, self-esteem issues, physical problems, and countless other things that I can’t even begin to describe.

Starting to smoke changed me as a person, and not for the better.

The truth is that when I started, I was at a point in my life where I felt extremely bored and empty. COVID had caused me to lose touch with my friends, and I felt very lonely. When I started smoking, those intense bursts of stimulation, euphoria, dopamine, serotonin, and everything else it seemed to provide created a false illusion that I was okay. It made me think I was happier, that I was enough on my own, that I felt complete, when deep down I knew none of that was true.

And I repeated that cycle every single day. Day after day after day, alone, until I reached a point where I didn’t even realize I had a problem.

I wish I could say I understood what it was doing to me, but I didn’t. My friends had convinced me of the common lie that weed is harmless and that nothing bad can happen from it. I believed it.

From age 16 to 21, it was always a problem. I’m 21 now. During the first two years, I would smoke heavily and then take breaks of a month or so, but I always went back. Then, in 2022, everything changed.

One night I experienced intense anxiety. I had already been developing a lot of health anxiety and becoming increasingly worried about my health because of what I was doing to myself every day. I kept thinking, “There’s no way someone can smoke this much and be completely fine.”

My mind started playing tricks on me. I became hyper-aware of every physical sensation in my body. Every symptom scared me. I became extremely conscious of my body, and that changed my life for the worse.

I started noticing that my heart rate would increase whenever I smoked, until one day I experienced severe anxiety and ended up in the emergency room.

After that night, things were never the same.

I could still go back to smoking afterward for periods of time—whether it was a day, a week, a few months, or even a year—but eventually it would always start affecting me badly again, and I would have to quit because the physical symptoms and anxiety became unbearable.

And so I repeated the same cycle over and over:

I smoke. I feel terrible. I tell myself I’ll never do it again. I go back. I smoke. I feel terrible. I tell myself I’ll never do it again. Then I go back.

I repeated that cycle for a very long time.

Honestly, I no longer knew what it felt like to be happy, satisfied, or content. The only thing I knew was smoking. It was the only way I knew how to feel good. Even today, part of me may still believe it’s the only way, but I’ve improved a lot.

I’ve made a lot of progress during these 61 days.

I’ve started improving my physical health. I’m working on starting my own business. I’m trying to change as a person. I’m trying to be better than I was yesterday. I’m teaching myself that smoking is not the solution, that it will never fill a void, because after years of trying, it never did.

My life is not going to improve by smoking. The only thing it does is hurt me.

Sometimes we feel so empty, so sad, or so dissatisfied that we want to smoke just to numb ourselves and create that temporary feeling of satisfaction that disappears as soon as the high wears off. But I’ve realized it’s better to create real change and earn satisfaction through effort and through living a healthier life, because the road of addiction is a very lonely and depressing one.

To be honest, this last withdrawal period has been the hardest one I’ve ever gone through.

The worst part started about a week after I quit. The physical anxiety was unbearable. The mental anxiety was unbearable. Everything was.

I don’t know why this time was so much worse, especially because it wasn’t even the longest period of continuous smoking I’ve had. But it was definitely the worst withdrawal experience.

I’m still not perfect. I still have bad days. But I’ve definitely made it through the hardest part.

Every day I have to remind myself that I cannot go back to smoking because it is not an option. Doing that to myself is simply not an option.

I know everything that comes with it. I know the anxiety. The physical discomfort. The mental suffering. The disappointment in myself. The disappointment from others.

No, I don’t want to go through that again.

What excites me now is thinking about how I’ll feel after another two months, or after one full year without smoking—something I haven’t been able to achieve since I first started smoking at 16.

That’s my goal.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I plan to reach one year before drawing any major conclusions about how I feel. Personally, I don’t think less than a year is enough time for the body and mind to fully adjust.

I’ve gone 11 months, 4 months, and 3 months without smoking before. And I can honestly tell you that when I reached 11 months, smoking was no longer a part of who I was. The habit was gone.

But one bad night pulled me right back into that hole.

This time, though, I don’t plan on going back.

I just wanted to share that in one day I’ll be reaching two months without smoking, and there is no turning back.

Because if I go back to smoking, I have to be willing to give up all the progress I’ve made.

And I’m not willing to do that.

Good evening, everyone.

Today marks 52 days sober, and I wanted to share something that happened today.

A friend I hadn’t seen in a while picked me up. During the drive, he started talking about a dealer I had introduced him to a long time ago. Then he pulled out a brand-new weed pen and showed it to me.

Honestly, I froze for a moment. It felt like a shock went through my body. If you’ve been sober for a while, you probably know the feeling of suddenly seeing weed again and being caught off guard by it.

For a few minutes, all I could think about was smoking. But then I reminded myself why I quit. I know exactly where smoking leads me: anxiety, isolation, overeating, panic attacks, and becoming the version of myself I no longer want to be.

So I told myself no.

And honestly, I’m proud of that.

The last time I made it to around two months sober, I relapsed after seeing weed right in front of me. This time, I was strong enough to make a different choice.

My goals have become bigger than my temptations. The cravings are still there, but I feel like I’m making progress. I wanted to share this because discipline and mental strength are built little by little. Every time we choose what’s best for us instead of giving in to a craving, we get stronger.

Today, I chose my future over a momentary temptation, and that’s a win.

Good evening everyone, how are you doing?

I hope you’re all doing well and making progress in your recovery journey.

Today marks 45 days since I quit smoking weed again. I’ve quit many times before, sometimes for months at a time, but never permanently. Before this streak, I managed to stay sober for two months, then relapsed for about a week and a half. Since then, I’ve reached 45 days.

I’ve quit after long periods of daily smoking before, and you would think those times would have been harder. Surprisingly, this has been the toughest quit of my life.

Over these 45 days, I’ve dealt with overwhelming anxiety, constant nervousness, and sleep difficulties. Falling asleep isn’t the main issue. The problem is the intense physical and mental anxiety that hits before bed. To be honest, I’ve started to fear nighttime.

What makes this especially frustrating is that the same symptoms that made me quit smoking in the first place are the same symptoms I’ve experienced during withdrawal. Physical anxiety, shortness of breath, and heart palpitations used to happen when I smoked. In previous quits, those symptoms disappeared when I stopped. This time, they didn’t.

The worst period was about 20 to 25 days ago. My anxiety was much higher than it is now. I had strong palpitations, debilitating anxiety, and felt nervous doing almost anything. It got bad enough that I needed medication for anxiety.

Things have improved since then. I still struggle with anxiety and sleep, and I still sometimes feel short of breath, especially when trying to fall asleep, but overall I’m doing better than I was a few weeks ago.

I’m curious if anyone else can relate to experiencing severe anxiety and heart palpitations during withdrawal.

As difficult as this experience has been, it has taught me a valuable lesson. If I truly want a better life, going back to weed is one of the worst choices I could make.

I still miss it sometimes. That’s because I spent years using weed as my way to relax, celebrate, have fun, and cope with life. I taught myself that pleasure and satisfaction came from smoking, and now I’m having to relearn what those things actually mean.

Looking back, I wish I had never relapsed the last time. I was bored back then, but I wasn’t anxious. I felt normal. I didn’t constantly feel like something bad was about to happen.

Now I’m trying to rediscover who I am without weed. I’m only 21 years old, but I started smoking when I was around 16, and I’ve spent so much time going back and forth that I feel like I’ve never truly gotten to know myself sober.

For the first time, though, I’m genuinely excited about staying sober. Every day without smoking makes me more curious about the person I’ll become after six months or a year. I want to know how I’ll think, how I’ll feel, and who I’ll be. I believe I’ll be a better person emotionally, professionally, and mentally.

If weed and the constant cycle of quitting, relapsing, and withdrawing are what have been hurting me all these years, then I believe staying sober is the only way forward.

Out of nowhere, one day I became paranoid. I thought I was having a heart attack, even though nothing remotely close to that was actually happening. After that day, weed was never the same for me, but that wasn’t the day I quit.

After that, I would smoke for a few months, quit, say I’d never smoke again, then start again, quit again, relapse again. And I always quit because of panic attacks. I’d have a panic attack, feel horrible, swear I’d never touch it again, and then repeat the whole cycle. That’s basically been my life from 16 to 21

Unfortunately, I got used to associating pleasure and feeling good with smoking. I completely forgot what it actually felt like to feel good naturally, to have fun, to feel pleasure, because the only way I knew how to experience those things was by smoking. I didn’t know what it felt like anymore to be happy, entertained, satisfied, or okay unless I was high.

And I smoked all the time. Before work, after work, sometimes during work. My whole day revolved around smoking, around finishing my responsibilities as fast as possible so I could go home and smoke.

Obviously, at first it was fun, really fun. But little by little it turned into an emptiness I couldn’t fill.

I think sometimes we forget this feeling and start romanticizing weed after quitting, but I want to remind you guys of something that I think many of you have probably felt too.

You know that feeling when you’ve been smoking all day and you already feel exhausted and mentally drained from smoking, but you keep smoking anyway hoping you’ll feel more high, happier, or feel something inside, and instead you feel absolutely nothing? You don’t feel more high, you don’t feel happier, you just feel emptier the more you smoke.

That was my daily life.

And now that I’m sober, I start forgetting that. I forget how bad it made me feel sometimes, how ugly smoking actually felt at certain moments. When I quit, my mind only wants to remember the fun parts, the relaxing parts, all of that. But that’s far from the truth. Reality was very different. The mind just loves to romanticize the past, even when the past was hurting you.

This time I decided to quit because the anxiety attacks came back, the heart palpitations while smoking came back, and all the terrible physical sensations returned. But this has also been the worst withdrawal I’ve ever gone through. The anxiety has been debilitating. The emotional crash has been debilitating too.

But after repeating this cycle so many times, I’ve finally realized that for me, smoking is not an option anymore.

Yeah, quitting is hard. Not relapsing during weak moments is hard. But I think I’ve finally reached a point where I’m aware enough to understand that smoking will only delay my progress and make my life worse in every possible way.

So I’m trying to quit forever and learn how to feel pleasure and satisfaction in other ways. I’m trying to heal. Heal from the past, heal from only wanting to smoke, from only feeling pleasure while high. I want to become a new person.

But obviously it’s not easy.

It’s hard not to think about smoking. It’s hard not to remember it. It’s hard being around people who smoke. I almost freeze.

For example, today I was hanging out with some friends and everything was fine. I was having a good time, and suddenly one of them pulled out his pen and started smoking. The second I saw it, I just froze. Completely hypnotized, paralyzed. And I felt this emotional crash because I remembered that I can’t do it anymore, that I’m trying to quit, and all those feelings came rushing back. It’s hard.

But I think this time I truly know that going back is not an option. If I go back, I delay my healing process. I delay healing my body, moving forward, changing my life.

Because honestly, I’ve already been dealing with depression and debilitating anxiety for a long time, and I know a big part of it comes from smoking. Another big part comes from feeling stuck in life and not progressing. And I know smoking will only hold me back even more and turn me into a lazier person who focuses more on problems than goals.

And I don’t want to be that person anymore.

I really hope I can quit forever. I hope I can start feeling emotionally better. And in general… learn how to be happy, because that’s something I struggle with a lot.

Good evening everyone, I hope you’re all doing well. Today marks exactly two weeks since the last time I smoked. I’ve quit many times throughout my life, many times. Before relapsing, I had gone two months without smoking. After those two months, I relapsed for 11 straight days. And now I assume I’m dealing with withdrawal symptoms, even though the relapse only lasted 11 days.

What’s strange is that this time, even though my use was for a shorter period, I’ve had the worst withdrawal symptoms of my entire life. The anxiety has been debilitating. I’ve had heart palpitations, I’ve felt extremely sensitive, very scared, and smoking a while ago already turned me into a hypochondriac. So all my symptoms feed into each other and only get worse because I worry so much.

I feel like I’m a little better now, even though I’m still not okay yet, but I do feel a little better. At least I think I do. And this time I’m convinced that I’m never going back to smoking again.

And you might ask why I’m so sure this time if I’ve told myself the same thing so many times before. Because this time I’m tired. I’m tired of dealing with the same thing. I’m tired of the anxiety, the palpitations, the constant worrying, disappointing myself, constantly going in and out of withdrawal, and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of it and I will never smoke again in my life.

The truth is that it hasn’t been easy for me, especially because lately I’ve been very anxious. Even while I was smoking, I was already depressed and feeling empty and anxious. Smoking was my way of numbing that, but it got to a point where it didn’t even cover up the emptiness anymore, it only made it worse. And I don’t want to smoke ever again.

I don’t crave smoking anymore. I don’t want to be high, and I no longer spend my time thinking about the good nostalgic memories from the first times I smoked, because I know that version of things is dead and it’s never coming back. I’ll never be the same person I was back then, and I no longer have the peace of mind I had at that time.

When I first started smoking, I didn’t worry about my health. I didn’t get panic attacks while high. It didn’t affect me badly. I wasn’t nervous all the time. I feel like smoking completely transformed me as a person, and not in a good way. Smoking made me anxious, made me lazy, took away my confidence, isolated me from people, made me addicted to stimulation, and brought out the worst in me in every possible way.

And I realized that a long time ago. I knew that was the case for a very long time, but even then I preferred staying numb instead of facing withdrawal symptoms and facing the emptiness and boredom that come with quitting. But this time will be different.

There have been many times when I quit for months and then screwed it all up, but this time it’s not going to happen like that. This time I’m committed to making it last because I don’t have another option. I feel like my body is begging me, and I don’t want something bad to happen to me.

The reality is that I regret ever trying this substance, which wasn’t the case before. Before, I didn’t regret it because I thought it made me who I am and all that kind of stuff, but nowadays I completely regret ever trying it. I regret isolating myself from people. I regret focusing only on smoking and getting high or trying to enjoy myself as much as possible.

I made a huge mistake and let myself be influenced by the wrong people. Unfortunately, my friends, who are still my friends even though I don’t take them as seriously anymore, influenced me in the worst possible way. They made me normalize a substance that I never saw as normal and never should have seen as normal. And now that I’m the one struggling with a problem, they see me as someone who’s exaggerating.

I also don’t talk much about this with my family, even though they know. I try not to talk about it too much with them because I don’t want to worry them or burden them. And overall, I never want to go through these withdrawal symptoms again. I hope this is the last time I ever go through this, and I’m going to work on it every single day because I’m sick of it, I’m tired, and I’m disappointed in the person I’ve become.

A person who only prioritizes stimulation, instant gratification, and temporary pleasure. A person who prioritizes being alone and avoids discomfort. All I wanted to do was get home, eat something, get comfortable, smoke, and repeat it every single day. I’ve been trapped in that cycle and mentality since I was 16 years old, and now I’m almost 22.

There were periods where I quit, but I threw it all away over stupid decisions or temptations that took over me. The longest I lasted was 11 months, and like an idiot I threw it all away. This time won’t be the same.

I’ve made the same mistake thousands of times. I’ve found myself having anxiety attacks while high hundreds of times, asking myself why I keep putting myself in this situation, why I keep doing this to myself. And I came to the conclusion that I felt so empty that I preferred having a panic attack while high over being sober and feeling empty. But that’s not the case anymore.

I’m going to work on myself. I’m going to work on becoming a happier person, a healthier person, and a more capable person. Being depressed and anxious and dissatisfied with my day to day life only made my addiction go deeper and deeper.

The fact that I don’t know what I’m doing with my professional life, the fact that I feel like a failure, the fact that I wake up every day without motivation to even be awake only pushed my addiction further. And I can’t blame weed for absolutely everything, for the depression, the sadness, or the lack of motivation, because a lot of those feelings come from the life I keep living every day. Those are things I feel with or without weed, but I’ve been dealing with them in the worst possible way all these years.

For the people who are starting to experience anxiety while smoking, physical symptoms, who can’t take the step to quit, or who are just cutting down, please, I advise you to just stop. Make the effort. Have the mindset that no matter what happens, you won’t stop moving forward, because otherwise the hole only gets deeper and the withdrawal becomes more horrible every time.

I’ve quit many times but this time has defiantly been the hardest, my anxiety has been through the roof and I get these anxiety attacks with palpitations, it is the reason i have stopped so many times but this time it happening even in withdrawal.

Good evening everyone, I hope you’re all doing well. I want to share my story and where I’m at right now.

I first quit smoking in 2022 after a really scary panic episode that sent me to the ER. After that, things were never the same. I kept smoking on and off, sometimes stopping for months and then going back for a few weeks, but almost every time I smoked, the anxiety and panic would come back. My heart would race and I’d feel like something was wrong. In 2025, I managed to go about 11 months without those symptoms while smoking, which made me think I had moved past it, but once my tolerance dropped, everything came back again. I’ve been stuck in that cycle ever since.

Eight days ago, I stopped again, and this time I really want it to be the last. I’m tired of the constant anxiety, the panic attacks, and the physical discomfort. What’s been hardest is that now I’m even feeling these symptoms while sober, which never used to happen. It makes me feel like my body and nervous system are completely exhausted.

The truth is, sadly, this is how I taught myself to deal with everything, with sadness, disappointment, anxiety, and loneliness. The only thing I really learned was to smoke. I’m 21 now, and since I was about 16 during COVID, I got used to isolating myself, smoking, and constantly stimulating myself instead of actually living. Now that I have to stop again, I’m left with a huge emptiness because I don’t really know how to live without it.

I also normalized it a lot because of the people around me. Some friends introduced me to it and made it seem like it was no big deal. I don’t blame them because the responsibility is mine, but they definitely influenced how I saw it. What frustrates me now is that those same people minimize what I’m going through. When I open up, they say I’m exaggerating, that it’s not a big deal, and that if I want to smoke I should just do it. That bothers me a lot because they don’t understand.

That’s why spaces like this matter to me, because people here actually get it. And one thing I’ve learned is that even if it takes months to feel okay again, I have to keep going and not go back. Every time I go back, I end up hitting a lower point than before. I once made it 11 months clean and relapsed after one bad night, and that led to a whole year of smoking again. That showed me that you can’t fix years of habits in just a few weeks or months. I need to give my body real time to recover, at least a year, because going back isn’t an option anymore.

This has affected my life more than I want to admit. It’s held me back from growing, affected my mental health, caused anxiety, and even impacted my relationships. Even when it felt harmless, it was isolating me and taking away opportunities to connect with others and actually live.

What bothers me the most now isn’t just not smoking, it’s feeling like I can’t and dealing with constant anxiety and fear. I miss the version of myself who felt free, simple, and didn’t overthink everything. Before all of this, I didn’t struggle this much with anxiety or fear.

But I’m not that person anymore, and I have to accept that and move forward. Even though I feel anxious, tired, and sometimes down, I know that every day I stay sober is a step closer to the life I actually want. I’m done repeating the same cycle. I need to learn how to deal with life in a healthier way, because I can’t keep living like this anymore.