Everyone I know is either quitting cannabis or talking about it. There are a few souls who are perfectly content in their daily use and have no intention of cutting back or cutting it out. Those people are mostly in the U.S. and see their use as therapeutic. Or they just like it and have little interest in anyone else’s opinion on the topic. But they are outliers, not the majority.
Is something going on in my world? Or are others seeing similar trends? Kristen Yoder recently switched me on to Reddit threads, such as Leaves, where users support in each other in the quest to quit cannabis for good. These people talk about how cannabis robbed their lives of forward motion and how much better off they are without it.
They also talk about their frustration that no one warned them about the Dark Side of cannabis. With 30 years of cannabis use under my belt I’m more than familiar with the Dark Side. But am also old enough not to be blame cannabis. What I see today is an unwillingness to talk about the full cannabis experience in a way that leaves actual users out of the conversation completely.
IS CANNABIS THERAPY?
I’ll never forget a conversation I had with Kristen Yoder, founder of Cynical Stoner street wear and Bud for Blood, in which she stressed the importance of balanced use, otherwise “cannabis will own you.” At the time, I was struggling with my own use, which is why this struck a chord. What frustrated us was the lack of space to talk about the reality of cannabis use.
And the reality is that a lot of long-term users find cannabis in their teenage years and fall in love with it because it soothes some unhealed part of their psyche. Before they know it, they’ve reoriented their lifestyle and life goals to accommodate a past-time that now dictates their identity, how they spend their time and who with.
And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Experimenting with drugs is a rite of passage nearly everyone goes through. If I’d only used cannabis in my 20s instead of mixing it with alcohol, I could have avoided a whole lot of trouble. There are far worse drugs than cannabis, chief amongst them, booze. Either way, it’s not so important what you use; far more important is why use it, how you use it and when.
THE DARK SIDE OF CANNABIS
Knowing how and when to use cannabis is a practice learned over years of use. Daily use only works if it’s integrated in a way that facilitates progress. Once progress stops, or the perception of progress stops, once it gets harder to feel motivated, or harder to do anything that isn’t you getting high, you’re in the Vicious Cycle. This is a place where high becomes your normal and everything else feels fake.
This is a place where you don’t really get high anymore but the mere sniff of cannabis relaxes you in a way that also feels like cheating yourself. Whereas once you laughed at the world because you had something they didn’t, now you wonder about all the things you’re missing out on because you’re afraid to be anywhere you can’t get high.
A struggle ensues. At first you use more to drown out doubt. Till you’re nothing but doubt. Till you learn what you doubt is yourself. And the only thing that will fix it is a Tolerance Break. It’s awesome that laws and attitudes around cannabis are changing today. But while no one talks about the ups and downs of cannabis use, actual users are left to suffer in silence.
IS IT TIME TO QUIT?
A bigger issue is that we still don’t understand addiction or what causes it, and we have no idea where cannabis falls on that spectrum. Which is why it’s so important to change the conversation around cannabis use to one that’s more inclusive and teaches people to have more respect for its power and its pitfalls. What we do know is that problems start when use becomes unconscious.
I chose to live in a corner of the world with easy access to my drug of choice, cannabis. The town I live in is also a party town but that didn’t stop quitting booze ten years ago. If something is important to me, if there’s a change I need to make, I’ll do it. I’ve done it. What bothers me far more than cannabis is tobacco, and it’s the thing I’d like to quit.
Because I’m in Europe where we mix tobacco and hash or weed to roll joints, my tobacco and cannabis use are inextricably linked. But of the two, cannabis is way easier to stop. I was recently abroad for a month, meaning limited access to cannabis, and when I ran out, I ran out, no big deal. I plan to quit tobacco this year and trust me it will be a big deal, a total pain in the ass.
To do this, I’ll also quit cannabis. In fact, I plan to kick things off with a T-Break starting next week. I’ve learned that a willingness to challenge yourself is the key to a life that feels like progress. And everyone, whether or not they use cannabis, is at war with themselves in some way. It’s called being human. And very often what’s missing from today’s cannabis narrative is compassion.
The Healthy Hashhead 