Facing and overcoming an addiction, whether to cannabis or any substance, requires profound self-control and discipline. Here’s what has proven effective for me:
Stop Smoking Marijuana Self-control and Discipline Points.
- Make a decision to stop. It sounds simple, but it is powerful. One thing in life that you have control over is your power to choose. Exercise this power. Make it important.
- Enroll other people in your decision. Tell your friends and family what you have decided. It’s often harder to break a promise to someone else than it is to break one you’ve made to yourself privately.
- Do not use the word “try.” When you say you are going to try to do something it gives you an excuse not to do it when things get difficult. You get to preserve your integrity because, after all, you were only trying. Be decisive. See number 1.
- Make the integrity of your word more important to you than the comfort that cannabis gives you and take pride in that integrity. In other words, sacrifice comfort for integrity and align your decision with your integrity. Talk about this with someone important to you. What you are doing is setting up a situation where the pain, guilt and humiliation that will be caused by failing to follow through with your decision is greater than the pain and discomfort you will experience while adjusting to life without cannabis.
- Find a healthy way to deal with anxiety. Exercise is the best way to deal with anxiety. Meditation also helps. Yoga was very helpful for me. I recommend Bikram yoga, another great practice in self-discipline that will also give you balance, flexibility, strength, detoxification and relief from anxiety.
- Change your diet. Focus on health. It’s easier to change many things at once–like ripping a bandaid off–and a complete lifestyle change strengthens your resolve.
- Find social connections that don’t rely on cannabis as a bonding ritual. One of the hardest things to give up are your friends. And you don’t have to as long as you have the self-control to be around them while they are using without using yourself. With some people, the relationship is so centered around using cannabis together that without it there is not much left to do or talk about. Others will stay in your life because you have more in common.
If you put this into practice, with enough time, you can achieve almost anything. Cannabis is a very powerful and useful medication when used appropriately, and it can be very addictive. Most people who are addicted to anything are using it to medicate or mask some underlying problem. When you stop using cannabis, all the things you’ve been using it to dismiss come crashing in on you at once and you have no defense. You’ve been putting-off dealing with things, maybe for years, and now suddenly they are important again because you’re not medicated.
I remember the first time I stopped using cannabis after about ten years of heavy daily use. For the first few months I had extremely vivid nightmares every night. I’d wake up two or three times a night drenched in sweat. I had constant anxiety and clenched my teeth so much my gums receded. It probably won’t be that bad for you. But if it is, know that you can still get through it. I haven’t used cannabis, alcohol or any other drug for several years. I don’t miss it at all. In fact my life is much much better and I am far more productive without it.
