Drugs/alcohol-experiences and observations.

I am smiling big-time today because I found out I have passed the drugs & alcohol test for my new job, and I can finally get on with the rest of my life after kicking a long-term pot habit.

good stuff. After climbing the walls for the first week, it gets a lot easier. A month and you don't even think about it anymore.

Cheers Wilso. Combatting the boredom has been the biggest problem. Mainly reading lots of books, playing PS2, exercise & a few beers have got me through. I suspect it will always be with me - even now after 2 months clean I can taste it in my mind.

Good luck with your venture mate as well.

Thanks Duke. Don't that I could have been as successful as I have been so far if I was still on the weed.

BTW, appetite improved?

Appetite has defintely moved towards the healthy end of the spectrum - it was mainly takeaways or breakfast cereal before (and I could never finish a whole meal, and ended up reheating stuff the next day to finish it off). I can now be bothered to cook 'proper food from ingredients' and as a result feel a healthier and have lost a small amount of weight.

I've also started dreaming again, which was a very rare occurance for a long time whilst stoned.

That's happened to me twice. Once when getting off dope, and when I experience a lift in depression. I think it's a sure sign that the stuff causes depression. Giving it up you get a large increase in neuro-transmitter levels. And depression is generally characterised by low neuro-transmitter levels!

Man, you guys talk about weed like it's heroin.

When it's the centre of your life, it may as well be. You can't go out, unless you've had a smoke first. You can't go on holiday's unless you can get it where you're going, or you can't enjoy it. When it's the first thing you do in the morning, the first thing you do when you get home from work, and the last thing you do before you go to sleep, it's as bad as any other drug.
What's worse is you don't realise how bad, until you get off it-and you're not depressed any more, and you've suddenly got an appetite, and energy, and you can sleep better, and you start dreaming a lot, and waking up feeling like you've slept, and you don't have to hide anything from people, and you've got more money in your pocket, and you don't get angry as easily- the list just goes on and on and on.

What kind of dope did you guys smoke anyway....depressed? No appetite? are you kidding me? I was a heavy dope smoker for years but it never depressed me and it damn sure never took away my appetite, and when i was in a situation where there was no dope available or it was inappropriate to be smoking....well I just didn't that's all.

I will still get stoned if the set and setting is correct, but like many other things with a busier life and more responsibilities it's not appropriate as much as it used to be, so I've cut way back....but I didn't feel like I was "kicking a habit" and it sure wasn't unpleasant....to me, pot is one of the most pleasant and innocuous things you can do...besides work out or SEX .........it's THE stress reliever and you can still go to the store or whatever......

Cocaine on the other hand can be a little more problematic...but even after doing coke for 20 years I quit one day when I decided to, and even then I was edgy for a couple of days and that's about it......I guess mindset has a lot to do with it as well....NO one or NO thing with the exception of "The South" is my master....and that's that. Not like I'm claiming to be virtuous, just headstrong...... :wink:

Pretty much everyone I knew in high school and university smoked weed. Most didn't have any problems with it, but I did know a couple of guys who had experiences that sound like Wilso's, so it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility. If it were liquor, they would have been alcoholics of the worst kind. People can judge which drugs are benign, and which are bad, but the truth is that addiction is related to personality, and does not discriminate.

Anway, Mrs. cav is going to a Lord of the Rings do this weekend, and her mom made her an elf costume. Seeing her in it this morning made me smile.

it can be very addictive. not physically, but psychologically. i had someone around who ended up with the situation wilso is describing. its sad. my friend is now back to three joints a day (i think ...), and even that - it wastes so much of your time, of your energy, systematically gets in the way between you and initiative in life. she had the problem with appetite too, but not with dreaming. and yeh, depression. typically an escape that, if you end up going there all the time to avoid facing the rest of your life, makes the need for escape bigger still - etc

cav is right i think. addiction is totally personality-related. some people are just more addictive-prone, something in the genetic or psychological make up i guess. almost everyone i know's smoked joints once in a while or still does, but i dont know any others, personally, for whom it became a problem like that - but i have friends who tell the same story about friends of theirs, two, three cases. on the other hand i have a friend who used coke (on weekends) for years, with no sign of addiction - like, she doesnt miss it when she goes travelling and she doesnt really miss it now that she hardly using it anymore either. she did crack two or three times, too, didnt get hooked. it seems like some people are immune or something. i did some e for some time, no addiction whatsoever.

it depends on what your life looks like, too, i guess - the more it is an escape rather than a pleasant passtime, the more risky. but again, once you use it as an escape, and you use enough of it, itll mess your life up enough for you to need ever more of it. i dunno. congrats to wilso and duke, in any case.