Are you contemplating quitting weed? Is it interferring too much with the rest of your life? Well here's a little write up on what to expect and how to deal with it. Disclaimer: This will not go in any particular order as I am not an organised thinker.
To start this off lets discuss your habit. Maybe you've smoked weed daily for the last 6 months or more. You've become comfortable with it and use it to regulate your emotions, sleep shedule, attitude, appetite, and life style. You budget your money with your weekly stash in mind and make sacrifices when you are short on cash to maintain a steady supply. Maybe you hang out with people that you know always has a stash and likes to share, but you dont care for their company. Or, perhaps you realized that for the last 20 weekends you havent left your house or seeked out new experiences because you're too content to be high on the couch. .... .... umm... and 50 percent of your diet is comprised of dollar menu items!! 
Any of that sound familiar? STONER!
That brings you to the present, you want to change, cut back, take a break from it, or maybe quit it all together. The difficulty varies between us all.
The first thing you want to consider is your goal. Smoke less, or quit all together. Either way you're going to have to quit for a substantial amount of time so you can re-learn the normal state of mind and dealing with all the extra time that comes with it. You'l suddenly realise that alot of what you enjoy isnt the same without weed. Because hell, anything bullshit can be fun if youre baked.
DIET AND APETITE
The first 2 weeks you may be compulsivly eating in reation to the feeling that "something's missing." You can also loose your apetite because the "munchies" are missing. This is how i dealt with both.
Go grocery shopping! This is going to sound like hippie nonsense but it is based on real science. Bare with me for a moment. Get fresh fruits - pairs, strawberries, peaches, pinapples, apples, oranges, mangos, blue berries, grapes, anything you like. Or get em all for variety. Get fresh NOT CANNED. Canned fruit is just sugar syrup. Get decaff sugar free drinks like green tea, natural juices (not the sugar water concoctions) milk, or water. The reason for it being decaff and sugar free is to keep you from unconciously resorting to them for a "lift". Sugar cravings are a natural response from your body when you're in a state of distress. Constant sugar intake will make your energy, as well as emotions crash through out the day. You dont need this right now. Caffeine often becomes the drug of choice for "sober" people. It will also raise your stress signs, adrenaline, hormones, and cause crashes.
fuck salads, they suck. just kidding.
Fruits will serve as a snack if your compulsively eating. Chances are, if youve been doing the munchie stoner diet, you've unknowingly become addicted to apetetite triggering substances like sodium, sugar, and processed food with perservatives. Because of this diet, you may have developed a seriuos lack of nutrition. This will stimulate your apetite - do you get hungry soon after you eat? Snacking on raw, fresh stuff will re-regulate your diet after a while. No uneeded weight gain, acne, sweating, or foul body oder. Or diareha... and taking a shit 6 times a day.
Are you eating conciously... are you aware? When you eat are you driving, watching tv, playing video games or working? Well you're gonna have to stop that. Spend at least a half hour eating meals. Just you and your plate. at a table. Eat slowly, chew your damn food, then sit around for a while afterwards. Even if you are still hungry, wait 15 minutes and your hunger will be gone. It takes a moment for your body to shut your hunger off.
Which brings me to meals! Whatever you eat, cook it yourself. The activity of cooking will suck up some of that extra time your sober life provides you with. There's plenty of easy stuff you can cook without too much work in half an hour. Rice, pasta, veggies, potatoes, corn, peas, sauteed vegies, some nice cuts of meat... whatever. Maybe some fancy bread you french fag nasty. You'l also be able to eat like a king for the price of eating dollar menu garbage 3 meals a day.
This will help you get away from apetite triggering crap, and get you eating healthy things give you a sense of well being. When you are stoned all the time, you dont notice how crappy a poor diet will make you feel.
You want to minimize the shock to your metabolism
Are you not able to eat? You dont want to loose too much weight too fast! Your bodys reaction is that you're in a state of famine. Loosing more than 4 or 5 pounds a week triggers this. Your metabolism slows down and you bring on unneededd distress. Side note - this is why fast diets do not work! Try supplementing with protein shakes in the morning to maintain muscle and body mass.
PARAPHENALIA
This is a quick section. No doubt you've accumulated a nice collection of high quality glass. But it's time to get rid of this. If you have enticing glass shrines dedicated to a habit you're trying to change, you're not dedicated to changing the habit. It's hard, trust me, I spent 2000$ collecting unique glass from local artists. I sold most, and gave some away. Once it's gone you dont miss it so much. Look at it this way; if you're trying to become an occasional smoker a joint here and there will get you off PLENTY. Shwag will rock your world. An eighth of middies will bake you out for a week for vacations or whatever. So all you'l need is a pack (high quality!) rolling papers for your occasional stashes. But this is way in the future.
Don't be that half hearted quitter who's sitting on the sofa and taking dry hits out of an empty bong. sheesh.
LIFESTYLE
You'l probably be spending alot of time with the people you used to smoke with. If you stay sober you'l realize how boring it is to be around alot of these people. Don't smoke to make it fun, find something thats actually worth doing.
You'l be lonely for a while, and extremely bored. Take up an instrument, get a library card (can i reccomend invisible man by ralph ellison?), start brewing wine, start growing vegitables, whatever. You need something mentally stimulating so you dont get fixated on what you AREN'T DOING. When i quit i made up for the lack of social life, crippling boredom, and negative feelings by reading. It rips your life away and doesnt rot your brain like TV. I also got immensly better at guitar, studied music theory, learned how to grow shrooms, and started getting my degree from a local community college. I got a 3.8 gpa and am working towards a transfer to a university. When youre not drugged up all the time, you'l enjoy little challenges with deeper rewards. I started doing meditation which i think was the biggest thing in helping me control impusive cravings and attitudes. It feels retarded sitting there doing nothing, but after awhile you'l understand what it's all about.
You may want to consider a hobby with lots of stuff to buy. That way weed money starts to look like a subtraction from stuff that youd rather do. I started investing in gold and silver just for kicks so i wouldnt spend extra money. Turned out to be a great investment and a fun collection.
EXERCISE
I don't. I hate treadmills, weightlifting, and everyhting else. fuck it. Alot of my hobbies provide plenty of physical activity. According to 98% of the science community... you need this! This is where I set my foot down and say FUCK YOU to science. Just kidding.
You need to get the exercise. It will help you mentally as well as physicly. For me its swinging a pick ax, hitting a punching back, digging, swinging a hammer... give me something to hit something else with. I'l get sweaty for a few hours and im happy. Walking is also nice and relaxing. Whatever does it for you, it's a great way to get rid of the tension you'l have. If you are an inactive person or youve been lazy for a while youl notice the effects when you stop. The rest of the evening you have a great sense of well being and your body feels great. You can do your own research on exercise. Im not a gym goer, or know anything about body building. If it makes me tired and sweaty, its exericise.
Oh and depending on the area where you live, id reccomend mountain biking. I sold my bike because it's impractical where i currently live. It's a cheap hobby (once you drop a couple grand on a bike), you can tinker with your bike in the garage when you're bored, plenty of stuff to buy ect. You wont want to buy weed (or food for that matter) when you're looking at the knobiest downhill tires in the bike shop. Or upgrading 6 inch rotors to 8. i miss it allready  . But you get what im saying.
A Breif note on psychology and picking the right activity for you Are you a fighter or a runner? Consider this - If you are the type of person who gets pissed of and hits stuff pick something similar. If you are the type of person who runs away or escapes pick an activity where you move alot. There is a huge link between the neuro peptides in your muscle (the "memory" in your muscle) and what activities personally will give you the most satisyfying emotional release. After all, you're trying to find alternatives to smoking weed for a release, right?!? Explore it and try some things.
TRIGGER ACTIVITIES AND BEHAVIOURS
What session of the day do you hold dear?
-"just get home from work" session?
-7:30pm "evening wind down session"?
-10:00pm "before bed session"?
-wake and bake?
-"driving home" session?
What things make you want to smoke consistently?
-A great day with great weather
-A bad day
-sex
-coffee
-boredome
-stress
-herpes
If you want to quit you have to REPLACE this pot smoking with something else in each situation. It's alot easier to tell yourself "instead of smoking pot, im buying a cream cherry soda... the good kind... in the glass bottle...with the pop top... on the way home" It's alot harder to just say "I'm not going to smoke on the way home today." That's because repression doesn't work as well as replacement. Repression isn't a solution, you're not changing anything. Behavior replacement not only forces you to create something new (intruducing new thought into the brain), but puts that repressed energy, pleasure, whatever into something else. The brain doesnt give negative commands, just like a computer doesn't give negative commands, it only cancels positive commands. You'l be doing this all day for a while.
Personal note - my "late evening wind down session" activity replacement has come around full circle and in time you will notice this too. I was offered some weed at a friends house before i went home for the night and said "no" without thinking. I thought about it on the way home and realized I didn't want the weed to interfer with my "replacement" activity. So it's a powerful tool for changing yourself.
The problem with this area is that there's so much room for you to rationalize. "man it's such a pretty day, i SHOULD smoke" or "this has been a great day, it can get better if i smoke a little..."
really its alot of words that mean the same thing. "I'm going to smoke because ________." And after you've had your little fix and the fiend side of you has shut up you realize you've been tricked again damnit!!!
IL ADD TO THIS LATER im taking a break.
Edited by moon_glue (05/24/08 11:23 PM)
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