Hooked on marijuana?
Bonjour à nouveau:
Life is wierd, full of strange twists and turns.
Waaaay off topic, but because it’s something my life depends on, I’m doing another post.
In Me again 
, a little earlier, “Following my announcement, yesterday, that I’ve had to close down, a lot of people on- and offline have thanked me for p2pnet,” I said, going on, “You’re all welcome. But this was as much for me as it was for you. For far too long I was an addict, a drain on society. So it’s been wonderful for me to be able to put something back.”
And that’s the truth.
But what’s kind of eerie is: I had several completely unexpected emails, a Fa$ebook link and a couple of tweets from people who, like me, are addicts. (Actually, I don’t know for sure if the Fa$ebook link was anything to do with addictions, but the way it was expressed suggested it might have been … )
There was also a new comment from leroy on a post I did a while back about my own B&D troubles, and which I’d referred to in Me again Maybe he went there because of that.
I don’t know. But it’s clear a lot of people are having trouble with various substances, and it doesn’t matter if it’s chocolate, dope, booze or even sex.
Too much of anything is too much.
Says Leroy in a Reader’s Write >>>
Me and my partner have been off weed for a month. Feels amazing – so much has happened that is positive in the last few weeks. Determined to make it a year or more, sounds pathetic, but it’s a goal.
Nothing pathetic about it, mate. It’s more than a goal. It’s a new life.
Leroy goes on >>>
Hopefully this pot fast will end up being for like a lifetime, and hopefuly I can help others eventually.
I’m addicted to weed and used to say the same thing that other guy was saying, that it’s not addictive. It is. I’ve seen the past 9 years since 9/11 fly by in a puff. Here’s to a day at a time.
Here’s what I said to Leroy:
“And if you can’t make it through a day, do it by the hour. If not by the hour, then by the minute. I did it by the minute. And it worked.”
These last few weeks have been tough and I’ll tell you straight: more than once I jokingly said to my wife, ‘Maybe I’ll go out and get a bottle and an ounce of BC Bud’.
Except I wasn’t joking.
But thanks to my higher power, I stayed clean and sober.
I’m not religious. In fact, quite the opposite. But I believe there’s something out there that’s much greater than me. I can’t define it or describe it, but I know it’s there.
At the end of my post on my own addiction, “Yesterday is history and tomorrow is a mystery,” I wrote, adding >>>
… after a while, I’m far enough away from my last drink or toke to begin to understand a few things.
While you’re using, only one aspect of yourself is allowed to exist. And this part of you has only one interest: getting stoned.
I used to believe I couldn’t do any of the things I did while I was using. Play guitar. Draw. Write. But I was wrong. Big Time wrong.
It’s not a trick
I could go on, but there’s a bottom line, and it’s this:
None of us has any more than the one single minute of time that’s our life. And knowing that, we can survive anything.
Anything at all.
We can’t resist a drink. Or a smoke. Or a bar of chocolate for a week. Or day. Or an hour.
But we can do it for the minute we’re in. And the minute after that. And the minute after that.
It seems dumb. But think about it.
It’s not a trick.
All you have is right now, it’s all you’ve ever had, and it’s never been any other way.
By coincidence, one of my last posts yesterday was, Is Michael Bublé a pot head? ‘Embittered ex-girlfriend’.
In a comment post, “Michael Bublé is a normal guy”, says Dave. “Hardly news …”
Cheers!
Jon Newton
February, 2010
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
February, 2010
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February 2nd, 2010 at 3:39 pm
There is one thing I would like to say. You are a driving force and if you stop it will be a big vacuum. I can see things are very difficult for you but if it is possible you should continue to post. Sometime people have to do things they don’t want to do because it is for the best for everyone, if I may say that.
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Walt, I think Jon’s point is he’s been ‘running on empty’ doing the impossible for some time. He’s now run out of ‘impossible’, let alone ‘if at all possible’ or ‘whether or not I want to’.
I suspect Jon’s posting from this point on is simply cold turkey syndrome. Very difficult to suddenly give up something you’ve worked on day and night for umpteen years – even if you know you can’t afford to continue.
The only thing I can suggest is a monthly Kickstarter project, e.g. “If I get 200 pledges of $20, I will resume posting articles for one month”
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Cannabis is far less addictive than caffeine. Anyone who has been a long-time coffee and cannabis user can agree; caffeine withdrawal gives you headaches and makes you irritable. I stopped smoking cannabis for 3 weeks while on vacation after 2 years of daily use. I found no desire to use it nor did I have any withdrawal symptoms. It IS addictive in the sense that all good things in life are worth repeating (junk food, sex, video games, gambling). Some people just have an addictive personality, and if it wasn’t cannabis that filled in the void it probably would have a harder drug.
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:49 pm
American dad showed this in an episode last night. If you think you’re addicted to marijuana you might want to check and see if its another mental health problem you had prior to your usage. It is apparent to many and even myself that marijuana does a good job of hiding those symptoms (some would argue the opposite I beg to differ). I have been using marijuana since I was 15 years old. Still smoke it daily but I use it medicinally. I do not believe for a minute that marijuana is addicting. I know people who have been using it much longer than I have, who have quit for months even years at a time whenever they feel like it (I’ve done the same). They always go back to using it for their own personal reasons; not out of addiction or pressure. While you fight to stay away from it, I am fighting to get my medicinal marijuana card from Health Canada.
What is true is that too much of anything isn’t good for you. You can die of drinking too much water.
I have grown pot, I know many people who grow pot, I used to sell pounds in order to pay for my medicine and food on the table. You can imagine how many dangerous situations I’ve been in.
End prohibition. Tax it, use the revenue to pay for rehabilitation, hospitals and policing.
Jon I tune in every now and then to make sure your still kickin’ would be disappointing to see the end of p2pnet.
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:36 pm
I agree with Paul and lando 100%. I usually smoke 0.2 grams (a very small cone on a water bong, it relaxes me but I don’t get ‘high’) right before bed almost every night. I’ve been doing this for 15 years off and on. Sometimes I’ll stop for a few months, but I end up not being able to stay asleep the whole night, and my productivity during the day goes way down due to chronic lack of sleep. I guess I’m an insomniac or have some sort of sleeping disorder. Whatever it is, weed fixes it, and allows me to get in a good 8 hours of shut-eye which would otherwise be impossible without some artificial pharmaceutical with all the side-effects that go with it.
The fact that weed is illegal in this country is an absolute travesty. The authoritarian control-freaks bleat on and on just like they did in the states with alcohol prohibition, and the idiotic sheeple just lap it up as usual. I never thought I would see it defacto-legalized in the USA before it happens here in Canada, but now look. This medical-mj regime is a joke, it was always just a pressure relief valve so we wouldn’t get true legalization. Now even if you need it for medical reasons you have to jump through a bunch of hoops like a trained seal, and then kiss the brass ring of gov’t authority and beg for what should be a recognized RIGHT.
The police and organized crime (often they are the same people) make way too much money off MJ for it to be legalized. And the police unions and their cronies in the corporate media will keep the dumb sheeple entranced in their ‘reefer madness’ so long as it keeps the status-quo. Don’t count on your gutless politicians to fix this either. It takes a powerful corporate lobby and briefcases full of $50 bills to go that route.
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:21 pm
@ Crosbie:
“Very difficult to suddenly give up something you’ve worked on day and night for umpteen years – even if you know you can’t afford to continue.”
That about sums it up.
“If I get 200 pledges of $20, I will resume posting articles for one month”
Hmmm. Thinking ….
Cheers!
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:39 pm
Did you get the news, that Marijuana (=hemp) kills off the effects of stress induced behaviour changes (=conditioning) in rats?
They still learn normally, but introducing stress after a learning experience doesn’t change the learning effect, while in clean rats it reinforces the behaviour change.
- http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091104091726.htm
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:59 am
Well, i hate to say it, but i too realized lately i was an addict. Not just to cigerettes, but mainly to sex =/ it’s been 2 weeks since i have had any, and i realized that… this is the longest i’v gone w/o it since i started doing that when i was 16… It’s a little sobering to say the least.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:08 pm
“Sometimes I’ll stop for a few months, but I end up not being able to stay asleep the whole night, and my productivity during the day goes way down due to chronic lack of sleep. I guess I’m an insomniac or have some sort of sleeping disorder.”
I’m willing to bet this “disorder” only showed up after taking up pot.
If that’s the case, then it could very well be a withdrawal condition.
You wouldn’t be the first.
Different people have different sensitivities and addiction factors to substances. Pot is completely uneventful for some, while extremely addictive for others. It has been proven to actually bring out schizophrenia in some, and yet, some schizophrenics are being positively treated with it.
When I stopped using it, I didn’t experience any negative effects, nor did my little friend who won’t come out of the desk drawer, but talks to me constantly.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:22 am
@DA…. You’d lose that bet. Withdrawal conditions for mj (and many other drugs) don’t last for months on end.
Actually I have had sleeping problems since I was a child, which led to problems at school and then later on with work. I didn’t discover mj would fix this until I was 24 and I got hotboxed a few times in my buddies car. When I am using it for sleep, it’s not nearly enough to develop withdrawal, only about 1/2 cone per day, which works out to an ounce every 4-6 months. I guess I’m a light-weight lol.
I have seen people with mild withdrawal symptoms though, but usually those are gone within 7-10 days. But we’re talking about guys that can burn through an ounce in a few weeks… for sure that will be noticed when you stop cold turkey. They tell me it makes them lose their appetite and feel like crap for a few days, but after that there’s no problems.
Either way, even it was as harmful as alcohol or cigs (which it isn’t), it is outrageous that it is still illegal. Some enlightened society we have, eh?
February 4th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
“…I have had sleeping problems since I was a child…”
Well then, as I did qualify, the rest doesn’t apply to you.
You obviously do have some form of somnipathy.
“…it is outrageous that it is still illegal.”
Agreed!
The legal moratorium on pot is one of those things that governments everywhere use to justify different forms of draconian control.