u/RickBorealis

Now that you've quit, you are likely dealing with an almost unbearable feeling of emptiness. Hang in there. It will go away eventually. And, as bad as you feel, it is well worth the wait. Your brain is busy rebuilding the emotional infrastructure weed obliterated. Blame the weed for how you are feeling not the sobriety.

Whatever weed gave you artificially it stole from you 10x over. Each puff digs a little pothole your brain must fill. After years of use, that pothole becomes a canyon that weed only temporarily fills up while simultaneously digging that canyon deeper. This is why many of us got to the point where we had to use more and more just to get back to feeling normal.

After a long period of sobriety, there is a tendency to associate the weed with the sheer pleasure it gave you. This tendency often leads to relapse, since it fails to account for the price this pleasure exacted from you. The price is the long-lasting symptoms of physical and psychological withdrawal - the sense of emptiness - you must endure before you can get a true sense of what sobriety truly feels like. Only once you've gotten past the withdrawal - once your brain finally repairs itself from the massive emotional deficit weed carved into you - can you truly experience what sobriety feels like. For someone like me who used 30 plus years (day 12), I fully expect the emptiness to linger for a year or more. And I've relapsed on many occasions in the past out of sheer impatience. I mistakenly blamed my sobriety for my feeling of emptiness. I now blame the weed.

That person is inside of you and has been made a prisoner of both your intoxication and of your withdrawal. That person had no thought of weed whatsoever. That person completely functioned fine without it.

Merely quitting does not set that person free. That person only becomes free once you've quit AND only once you've gotten past all the stages of withdrawal, both physical and psychological.

Think about how long that poor soul has languished in prison. Think about all the false hope he/she has had to deal with when you attempted to quit only to relapse, adding months or years to his/her sentence.

That person deserves a chance to live free before you die. And the keys to their freedom are in your
hands. Will let them down or will you finally rescue them?

While there are people who can take or leave weed, ie, use it occasionally, just at parties, or here and there with minimal issues, for those of us who love it, moderation means dealing with withdrawal symptoms immediately after it wears off.

This why attempts to moderate even after a long period of abstinence, rarely work. There is simply too much discomfort between periods of use.

Let's say you plan to use only on weekends. As soon as you wake up Monday morning, you are immediately dealing with withdrawal symptoms that you must simply fight through each day until Friday comes along. They'll usually peak around Wednesday and then discomfort kind of subsides late Thursday only to be rekindled after a weekend of using again. The discomfort usually leads to breaking into pockets of use during the week.

Or maybe you start rationalizing using only in the evenings. Then you are dealing with withdrawal symptoms all day long! Pretty soon you are waking and baking again!

While there are people who can take or leave weed, ie, use it occasionally, just at parties, or here and there with minimal issues, for those of us who love it, moderation means dealing with withdrawal symptoms immediately after it wears off.

This why attempts to moderate, even after a long period of abstinence, rarely work. There is simply too much discomfort between periods of use.

Let's say you plan to use only on weekends. As soon as you wake up Monday morning, you are immediately dealing with withdrawal symptoms that you must simply fight through each day until Friday comes along. They'll usually peak around Wednesday and then discomfort kind of subsides late Thursday only to be rekindled after a weekend of using again. The discomfort usually leads to breaking into pockets of use during the week.

Or maybe you start rationalizing using only in the evenings. Then you are dealing with withdrawal symptoms all day long! Pretty soon you are waking and baking again!

I was a highly functional stoner. I actually get way more motivated and inspired on it than I ever did sober, even before I started using.

For me it always functioned like a temporary blast of focus.

In college, I studied on it and graduated 3.8 Summa cum Laude whereas, previously in my sober high school days, I was a pretty mediocre student. Also got quite adept and accomplished at music (bass guitar, hip hip) on it. I have a decent well-paying job, though I am still a wage slave without much savings to my name. Many of my career dreams and aspirations have not been fulfilled.

Also, I never liked the fact that whenever I ran out of it or tried to quit, I would feel quite miserable and lost. I did not like the fact that I basically needed it to function and just to feel normal. Over the course of 30 plus years, I tried to quit countless times, only to relapse because I just couldn't take the dullness. I even went a year without it and saw many improvements. Yet, the dullness never really went away. So I'd inevitably dip back into it, with some grand plan to moderate, "only on weekends," "only in the evening", "only with friends" "inserting regular weekly 3-day t-breaks" etc. which would inevitably devolve back into 24/7 use since ultimately any intervening period of sobriety no matter how long or short was just too uncomfortable for me. I would become irritable and unpleasant, bored and kind of boring. So kind of just resigned myself for a time to the idea that my brain just needed it. And since I am a highly functional addict, and basically a grouchy. uninspired zombie off of it, it was just better for me (all things being equal) to keep using.

It wasn't until very recently, that the fact that I just feel like total shit and hollowed out without it finally became my main reason and motivation to walk away from it, once and for all.

I began to see that, especially now with its fog lifted, that any substance whose mere absence has such a profoundly negative effect on me can't be a good thing. I mean, we're not talking about some essential nutrient here. We're talking about a drug that I placed myself in bondage to by simply abusing it over time.

I am now simply motivated by the desire to find out who I am without it, not just for a few months or years but, say, for a decade or more. I've never really given it a chance and I figure I owe it to myself at 54 years old, no matter how uncomfortable it becomes, to find out in my second 50 years of life who that unencumbered person is.

Perhaps others can relate. Good luck and congrats on everyone trying to quit. You are definitely onto something. Peace.

I was a highly functional stoner. I actually get way more motivated and inspired on it than I ever did sober, even before I started using. I used it pretty constantly for over 30 years.

For me it always functioned like a temporary blast of focus.

In college, I studied on it and graduated 3.8 Summa cum Laude whereas, previously in my sober high school days, I was a pretty mediocre student. Also got quite adept and accomplished at music (bass guitar, hip hip) on it. I have a decent well-paying job, though I am still a wage slave without much savings to my name. Many of my career dreams and aspirations have not been fulfilled.

Also, I never liked the fact that whenever I ran out of it or tried to quit, I would feel quite miserable and lost. I did not like the fact that I basically needed it to function and just to feel normal. Over the course of 30 plus years, I tried to quit countless times, only to relapse because I just couldn't take the dullness. I even went a year without it and saw many improvement. Yet, the dullness never really went away. So I'd inevitably dip back into it, with some grand plan to moderate, "only on weekends," "only in the evening", "only with friends" "inserting regular weekly 3-day t-breaks" etc. which would inevitably devolve back into 24/7 use since ultimately any intervening period of sobriety no matter how long or short was just too uncomfortable for me. I would become irritable and unpleasant, bored and kind of boring. So kind of just resigned myself for a time to the idea that my brain just needed it. And since I am a highly functional addict, and basically a grouchy. uninspired zombie off of it, it was just better for me (all things being equal) to keep using.

It wasn't until very recently, that the fact that I just feel like total shit and hollowed out without it finally became my main reason and motivation to walk away from it, once and for all.

I began to see that, especially now with its fog lifted, that any substance whose mere absence has such a profoundly negative effect on me can't be a good thing. I mean, we're not talking about some essential nutrient here. We're talking about a drug that I placed myself in bondage to by simply abusing it over time.

I am now simply motivated by the desire to find out who I am without it, not just for a few months or years but, say, for a decade or more. I've never really given it a chance and I figure I owe it to myself at 54 years old, no matter how uncomfortable it becomes, to find out in my second 50 years of life who that unencumbered person is.

Perhaps others can relate. Good luck and congrats on everyone trying to quit. You are definitely onto something. Peace.

Started using 34 years ago as a shy 18-year old. Really helped me come out of my shell. Smoked all through college, graduated with 3.8, so I told myself it was good for me, not realizing that it was holding me back from long term planning or even thinking about a career. I just got odd jobs after college, since I just wanted to be high all the time. Got by but never really amounted to much career-wise. I feel like I just fast forwarded to age 54, and I have no idea who the hell I am. My emotional maturity is still at the level of the shy 18-year old who picked up a weed habit. I guess it's never too late to finally grow up, so here I go!

Day 3 after 34 years of pretty much uninterrupted use. Several quit attempts in the past had me white knuckling the dullness until I just couldn't take it anymore. Even went almost a year once (that was over 20 years ago). About 15 years ago, I went about 6 months before rationalizing a hit that had me right back in.

This drug has really stolen my natural enthusiasm. I know it would eventually return if I could just wait out the intense boredom.

Even with the boredom, I like myself much more off the drug. My fitness levels up. My flabbiness disappears. My concentration and memory improves. I keep my living space cleaner. My follow thru on goals improves dramatically. But all with a crippling dullness that I have yet been able to shake.

This time I am simply embracing it and focussing on what I am grateful for. This forum, for one. Onto day 4!

34-year user here. Many many many attempts to quit in those years only to find myself completely back in. Countless unsuccessful and deluded attempts to reintroduce moderation. Countless breaking of pledges to myself.

While I want to say unequivocally that I've finally realized today that I must stay away from this drug for the remainder of my life, I've had these realizations before. I guess the difference today is I can no longer rationalize going back for any reason whereas before there was always, in the back of my mind, the idea that it is almost impossible for me to find a creative flow state as an artist without the drug.

I know intellectually that is nonsense and that it will merely take a good amount of time in sobriety to find an even better creative flow than I've ever had in the past 34 years. Even looking at my artistic works over the years (I am mainly a musician) as a sober person, I find them lacking in focus and true excellence. I think this acute realization is what is different today, for what it is worth. I really want more than I ever to see what I can do artistically and in life generally once I achieve true escape velocity from this drug.

After 34 years, I look back at a life of so many unfinished and/or unrealized ambitions. So many moments of realizing just how little I can even remember of my life since I became an addict.

With this drug weighing me down, I am today just barely keeping my head above water financially. My maturity level feels to have been frozen to what it was when I first began inundating my body with THC. Indeed, it truly feels like I have time-travelled from 1991 into a body today (in 2026) that has been in lived in and under the control of a lost, forgetful soul. That is what this drug does. Just fills you temporarily with fake, fleeting satisfaction which must be constantly re-inflated like some leaky balloon.

I have a tremendous amount of shame and regret to deal with for throwing away YEARS chasing the high. And I suspect that it was always my inability to cope with these emotions that has led me to relapse after my many attempts to quit.

I have finally entered therapy at this time to help untangle these emotions as best I can to avoid those moments of weakness that have in the past gotten the best of me. Grateful for this community since it shows me that I am not alone in my struggle. Thanks for reading.