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RE: The Struggle to Quit Cannabis
Cannabis is not the problem. Your relationship to the plant is.
Your addiction is filling a void.
Eat well, exercise, sleep, have good relationships .. use cannabis, if you use at all, as a spice, not as the main dish.
I'd bet that you so often and so easily fall back into it, because you have no better idea of what to do with that time.
Create new plans and new activites, quickly you'll see you don't need the herb at all.
But remember, it's not the plants' fault..
I suggest you look up the work of a Dr. Gabor Maté, personally I've always liked his views on addiction.. may it shine some light on your situation as well.
Good luck!
This is the best reply so far. Some of the other comments are downright dangerous. I second the recommendation of Gabor Mate, here's a video of him talking:
First thing I would point out is that I think this would be a great series for Steemit. You could regularly update us on your progress. I think that would be fascinating. Plus through those updates we can all work together to try to help you through this. Weed is not the problem. Probably the biggest problem facing you right now is actually that you think it is. As long as you blame weed or blame yourself you will never "quit" it. These beliefs will only make you feel worse which causes you to go running to your favorite form of medicine: weed. Even IF you could quit weed without addressing the underlying problem, the odds are you would simply run to an even worse substance like alcohol or opiates. I love Peter Boghossian's quote, "If you don't have the right target, by definition you have the wrong target." Weed is not chemically addictive. You may need it, but you are not chemically dependent on it. What you need to figure out is why you are psychologically dependent on it. Step 1, therefore, should be finding a good therapist. How will you know they're good? When they give you some genuine insight as to why you might be overusing a substance. Hint: if they say it's because you "have an addictive personality" or because, "Weed is just too good," look for another therapist. But they likely won't because they're professionals and that would be moronic. They'll talk to you about your relationships, past traumas, etc. to attempt to search out what it is that is triggering you to smoke so often. Generally it has to do with a deficit of human connection in your life. That both you and your wife smoke so frequently would suggest that your marital relationship is not healthy. This does not mean you should get a divorce. Quite the opposite. I suspect that something is not "right" there but since you two love each other you're attempting to plaster over the problem with weed out of fear that addressing the problem head-on would lead to separation. Pretending the problem doesn't exist, as you can see, will not help and in fact will likely lead to separation. If you want to stop smoking then you should probably enter therapy ASAP as well as couple's therapy. As far as couple's therapy is concerned, I would personally steer clear of any therapists whose focus isn't 100% on saving your marriage. Don't fuck around. It literally can't hurt so you might as well do both right away. If you needed help funding the therapy that could be a good use of this platform. I'd gladly contribute.
@karnal Thank you for the advice and guidance I'll definitely look into his work more! I definitely don't blame the cannabis the planet is so hopeful to people and its just like anything else too much of a good thing can be bad for you. We are working on more family hobbies that include more activites so I wont procrastinate some much with my life lol.
@andrarchy Thank you for your advice as well its provided a lot of insight! I've considered blogging on my Steemit to share my story and experience to hopefully one day help those in need of advice as well. As far the human connection part you are spot on with the deficit of human connection I work from home and generally the only people I see is my family and our neighbor who is more of my wife's friend. We moved here from out of state about a year ago and its been a struggle to rebuild our life here to stability so I haven't had a lot of time to make new friends but I do talk to existing once on the phone and through social media quite frequently so that may count for something I'm not sure how professionals look at that. As far as the relationship with my wife, we have our up's and down's there are periods where things are what I like to call a "Utopia" period where we are very much in love with each other and then there are other times when its a "Hell" period and we fight and disagree and things have gotten pretty bad before no violence though we've never even thought about laying a hand on each other; but eventually we learn to get over it and apologize to each other and try to avoid it going forward. I definitely don't think couple's counseling would hurt. I have no doubt I need therapy(who doesn't these days?) and that would be very constructive the problem is I've had one therapy session in my life when I was 19 and it did not go so well so thats left quite a imprint on me that I struggle to overcome and actively seek counseling. Divorce is not on the table for options at this point we've both agreed on, we just had a new baby in February and both of us know that we work better together for the children then we do apart and I believe that help offer a feeling of security to help with the dark days lucky.
Awesome, glad you find it helpful. Your reply does give some more info though so since we're trying to work together to get through this allow me to render some additional feedback given this new info.
Regarding friends. Time to get out there and make some. It takes a village. The more people you know, the more friends you have, the less strain you will have on your marriage and the less of a strain it will be on your kids. Join a church. Join a biker gang. Join some gay board game club where you hang out with a bunch of nerds. I don't care if you're not religious, that's not what this is about. Part of the reason you are having problems at home is probably because you aren't outside dealing with real humans and learning from them. Is the wife being annoying? Guess what, literally every other married guy is dealing with the same shit. If you're not talking to them about it, you're not learning from them. Have social anxiety? Time start developing "My marriage sucks and my kids are going to be traumatized" anxiety. Giving your kids anything less than a loving relationship is a disservice to them that will plague them their whole lives. How was your parents' marriage? I'm guessing not good. Do you think it's a coincidence yours isn't? You and your wife can love each other all the time. That is possible. But it's not either of your faults that you don't, I would suspect neither of your parents had especially healthy marriages. That's why you need a couple's therapist. Not because you guys are "bad" at marriage, or you "made a mistake," but because you simply haven't learned how to be married. That's why you go to a professional.
People make promises all the time, I don't care that you and your wife have agreed to take divorce "of the table." You really think you're the first? Ultimatums like that do not work because you are effectively resigning yourself to the fact that you and your wife do not love each other at least some of the time. You and your wife need to be figuring out how to love each other, not trying to figure out how to avoid conflict. You need to learn how to resolve conflicts, not avoid them. Therapy is NOT something you need because you're SICK. There is nothing WRONG with you. A good therapist helps you learn how to deal with conflict, relationships, emotions, tragedy, etc. in a healthy way as opposed to an unhealthy way.
So based on your response I would recommend getting to a therapist sooner rather than later. I'm certainly not an expert, but I can guess some stuff from your post that might surprise you. First off, I'm guessing your parents didn't have a very good relationship and you didn't have a very good relationship with them. I bet you think that the way you and your wife argue is "normal" for couples. It may be normal ... but it is super unhealthy. The fact that physical violence seems to be the line you two have not crossed is extremely, extremely bad. The standard you should be applying to yourselves is that you almost never raise your voice. People who yell do not know how to properly resolve conflict. That's what a couple's therapist will teach you. I suggest you get on that ASAP. Your promise to stay together will not work. Right now WEED is your couple's counselor. Good news, it doesn't get any worse than that. I promise you, if you do not get a neutral 3rd party expert into the situation, your family will not last. Now, if you had a robust social network, I would say talk to your closest friends about this stuff. Making friends who are themselves in healthy relationships (which usually means they also have good relationships with their parents and other family members) would be good too. Until you can make those happen (which you should by the way), a couples therapist should be your first course of business. You might even find that the couples therapy is enough for you. But if not, don't hesitate to get some additional counseling in there. BTW, I don't recommend therapy willy-nilly. It's just that in your particular case I don't see any other option. Frankly, weed might be the only thing keeping your family together :/
Oh shit, one last thing. If you are jerking off to porn STOP THE PRESSES. Stop jerking off to porn for a week and I BET you that you are becoming the fucking Einstein of how to make your wife love you and fuck you. This isn't about morality or any of that shit. If you're watching porn there's almost nothing else we have to talk about. Your BRAIN doesn't know it's watching porn. It thinks you're having sex with 10s and then it looks at your wife and sees a 6. Quitting porn should be step #1. In fact, if you are a porn watcher, that is probably doing you more harm than weed. At least weed is giving you and your wife something to bond over.
@andarchy Well thank you for the feedback I'm not sure my relationship is really that bad and I may have made out to seem like its worse then it is so I apologize if I have. We'll definitely look into our options because so far you've been spot on so maybe there are things there we just don't see and couples therapy has never hurt anything. The porn thing isn't really a issue we have a very active sex life so no time for porn lol. Again thank you for the feedback!
Oh well that's good! About the sex that is. Unfortunately what that means is that the source of your problem is something other than porn. One of the problems people have is that they think that if they're "managing" something, it's fine. You are looking at your relationship and going, "Well the relationship is fine, therefore, it's not a big deal." First of all, your relationship will be "fine" right up until the moment it is "not fine." So the fact that it is fine is totally irrelevant. The titanic was fine right up until the moment it struck the iceberg. I am not looking at your relationship to determine whether your relationship is ok, I'm looking at your substance abuse (BTW I smoke weed about every other day, so I actually have personal knowledge of the substance and using it habitually). That's how I was able to know so much about your relationship without knowing anything about you. Once you stop feeling the need to stop smoking weed, then I'll believe you when you say your relationship is fine. But right now, I'm sorry to say, you are certainly in no position to evaluate your own relationship. Now, I'm not saying your relationship is "awful" or "doomed" that's the whole point. You want to turn the ship around before it gets to that point. Your weed consumption is a symptom. It's a signal. It's telling you, "Hey, something is not right in your life." Everyone who has commented on this thread talking about tricks they used to stop consuming a substance have not solved their real problems. That's why many of them talk about their continued struggle. They haven't solved the problem obviously. I'm telling you that the weed is a signal that you are heading toward an iceberg and you're going, yeah but we're still going forward. Um, yeah. Congrats. There's a reason why the divorce rate is so high and that is exemplified by many of the responses in this post. Most people still do not understand the real sources of substance abuse and how to maintain healthy relationships. Instead, as always, they look for cheap tricks and quick fixes. The fix is actually quite easy though, you just have to abandon your ego, seek professional help and guidance and open yourself up to your mate. My guess is that right now you are primarily governed by fear. You're afraid to see a therapist. You're afraid to go out and meet new people. You're afraid that if you and your wife separate it will be bad for your kids (it will be). What you need to understand is that these fears will create a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don't conquer them ASAP. You will not receive the help you need. You will not meet new people. Your children will be raised in an unhealthy environment. There is no chance I'm wrong. Humans aren't that hard to predict. That's how I make money actually (investing).