On a Personal Note

Last weekend I decided to quit smoking pot. I don't know yet if that means for ever or for a week, but it just seemed like the time to make a change. So what is different? Not much really. Ironically, the things most people associate with pot smoking are now creaping into my life whereas before they were not a problem. Let's have a look.

I'm finding it a bit harder to concentrate and stay on task. I haven't been blogging much since I quit for two reasons. Firstly, the one I just stated, and secondly, I just don't seem to have any good ideas. I don't know if this has anything to do with quitting, but I do know that most of my ideas for stories have come to me under the influence. I liked to smoke, let an idea hit me and then roll with it. I found it easy to stay focused for a long period of time on one idea and give it the thought and work it deserved. Now, not only do I seem to lack any good ideas or angles, even when I do get one, my mind wanders away from it before I feel inspired to write anything about it.

I'm a bit more moody. I've always been fairly arrogant and rude and I found that pot helped me temper those qualities to a great extent. It tends to humble me and make me see the error of my ways. This week, however, I feel quite righteous even though in my heart I know that is not the case. I haven't blown up at anyone or anything like that, but the hypocricy that surrounds me (and the rest of us) seems much harder to bear.

I'm bored out of my mind. Pot tended to give me the sense that what I was doing was engaging and fun even if it was rather pedestrian. This week everything seems quite tedious and boring, unless I've had a few drinks.

So why did I quit? Well, I am quite familiar with addiction. I kicked a pretty serious speed habit in my mid teens and I also kicked a very serious cocaine habbit in my early twenties. With the speed, I felt like I couldn't function without it, and I didn't want to be a slave, so I quit. With cocaine, I finally succumbed to paranoia (which I had always thought was a sign of weak-mindedness in others) and I was convinced I was going to die of a heart attack. I never went to meetings or counceling for these addictions. People say it is rare that someone kicks these habbits without counceling or hospitalization or both and thus I have a lot of will power. To that I say, if I had so much will power, how did I let myself get addicted in the first place? Life is all about choices. If you get addicted to something you have no one to blame but yourself. If you want to quit, you have no one to turn to but yourself. It is all about choices.

So with the pot, although it wasn't messing up my life like the other two drugs had, I felt like I had become dependent on it. Addiction is much too strong a word as anyone who has actually been addicted to something can tell you. I don't believe it is possible to become addicted to marijuana, but it can become a crutch and a habbit. It can become something you turn to for satisfaction instead of the things in life that healthy people turn to (like friends and family for example). When I realized that I couldn't simply cut down, I knew it was time to quit.

Now I am curious to see if there will be any benefit. Will I be able to think more clearly? Will I perform better at my job? Will my interpersonal relationships improve? Honestly, I doubt it. The other time in my life when I smoked a lot was in college and I managed to get strait A's for the most part. There were even times I remeber (yes pot heads do remember things) trying in vain all night to put together a wealth of information into some comprehensible form and while sober I was unable to get the ideas to click. Then I would smoke and about a half an hour later everything would fall into place and I would go to sleep feeling confident. Then I would wake up in the morning, go to school and ace the test.

The point I'm trying to make is that smoking pot has never prevented me from learning or thinking: quite the opposite. What it has prevented me from doing is acting like an arrogant prick and a cynical, depressed, attention-span challenged alcoholic which seems to run in my family. I've always said I could quit whenever I wanted to and so as I tend to challenge most people to do, I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

I'll let you all know how things progress.