The best ways to fight weed addiction are as follows; first, slowly wean yourself off it before abstaining for several months. You then either quit permanently or resume usage but in moderation. Second, you should start to make changes to your lifestyle. Ones that facilitate filling a portion of the time you’d spend high with other less harmful activities.
The next piece of advice is to identify and develop a better understanding of any triggers that lead you to smoke pot as chronically as you do. Often these are most prominently at the root of a marijuana dependency. Finally, if you can’t overcome your marijuana habit on your own then it is best to seek professional help.
Is it Addiction?
For years marijuana was touted as being a ‘gateway’ drug. One that would lead young people to harder and more harmful narcotics. Thankfully, this nonsense has been disproved a thousand times over. However, to say that weed isn’t harmful at all is also incorrect. While it’s not addicting like other more nefarious narcotic drugs, it still can be habit inducing for some people and they’ll have trouble trying to stop.
There’s a well-regarded consensus among psychology of addiction experts. If you can’t go one month without using a substance then you have a ‘relationship’ with it. Whether that relationship indicates addiction is dependent on the individual, but often times it does suggest that you’re reliant on the substance in an unhealthy way.
Sure, someone with a marijuana dependency won’t be committing crimes to feed their habit the way a heroin addict might do. While these behaviours will be more evidently self destructive, a chronic marijuana user who can’t quit is in need of help as well. If you want to quit but can’t do it, then you’ll want to know how to fight weed addiction.
How to Fight Weed Addiction: Slow Quit Method
Stopping marijuana use cold turkey is inadvisable in much the same way it isn’t for most narcotics. 9 out of ten people will be overrun with cravings and will either cave in to them and use again. Or they’ll be nearly besides themselves fighting the urges and unable to be a functioning person because of it. Knowing how to fight weed addiction starts with understanding that it is best to wean yourself off any substance slowly.
Try to smoke a smaller quantity every time you smoke. Lay out a plan that eventually has you moving from smoking the lowest quantity needed to get high to smoking none at all once you reach a certain date. After that, set out and stick to a period of time where you will abstain from using marijuana completely. Do not make this an overly long period. In relation to the guideline above, 5 weeks is a good amount of time to get past your established ‘relationship’ with the drug.
Once you’ve gone through that period, you can re-evaluate and see if it’s best to quit entirely or if you can resume and follow the principles of moderate use.
Lifestyle Changes
Being high is pleasurable, and often people will choose that pleasure as a means of ‘scratching an itch’, if you will, when they don’t feel as well as they’d like. Again, doing that in moderation isn’t problematic, but dealing with it that way ALL the time is problematic. Try to identify activities or other choices you can make to deal with stress, anxiety, angst – whatever it is that’s bothering you that is masked nicely by being high on pot. Exercising or practicing a hobby are good choices, watching TV is not.
Making healthier choices more often (not all the time) is a big part of understanding how to fight weed addiction.
Identify Triggers
Many times just having a better understanding of what prompts you to want to get high can go a long way in allowing you to know how to fight weed addiction. For most people, simply enjoying the feeling of getting high doesn’t count for EVERY time they smoke pot.
For example, ‘taking the edge off’ is a common expression for a state of mind where you feel you need something to make you feel less anxious or frazzled.
Rather than acknowledging that you need to take the edge off and then taking it off with a series of tokes, try to understand evaluate exactly why you feel this way. Even if you’re still going to go ahead and smoke anyways. This process of introspection can go a long way.
Seek Help
There is no shame in being unable to overcome a physiological addiction on your own. If it’s not possible and you’ve given it your best shot then there are professional addictions counselling services available. Speak with your doctor, but if you’d prefer to go it on your own then a Canada nationwide resource like Canadian Drug Rehab Centres is a good place to start.
