I’ve always been good at quitting obligations (see: piano lessons, ballet classes, infinite sports teams, and, in one memorable instance, a babysitting job that would have required me to fly from New York to Los Angeles in sole charge of an eight-month-old). But when it comes to vices, I have a hard time letting go. I love to ride the absolute wheels off the things I love—even when they stop loving me back—and, to that end, it took me about three years of near-constant cannabis use to realize that my relationship with weed was taking more from me than it was giving.
The language of recovery has been part of my life ever since I started attending Overeaters Anonymous meetings in my mid-20s to attempt to deal with what I had only recently begun to recognize as my binge-eating disorder. But it took me longer than I’d like to admit to apply the warning signs I’d learned in OA to my fondness for marijuana. Intellectually, I knew that popping higher and higher doses of edibles multiple days a week or sparking a bowl early and keeping it lit throughout the day wasn’t what one might call ideal, but I told myself it felt good whereas bingeing felt bad—so wasn’t that different enough not to be troubling? (This is even though many of my binges took place while I was high, but until recently I was studiously avoiding connecting the two issues.)
I don’t mean to succumb to weed exceptionalism here, but I genuinely think part of the reason I let myself get swept out into an ever-deeper ocean of anxiety and depression for so long was the fact that I was a fairly high-functioning stoner. I didn’t work or drive under the influence, but I did pretty much everything else high. And I told myself the fact that I would regularly clean the kitchen or go out for a long walk with my dog while stoned proved that weed was actually a good influence in my life, ignoring the many, many days when weed left me incapable of doing much more than sinking into the couch in front of Gilmore Girls reruns like the flat girl from that old antidrug PSA.
As of today—November 4, 2025—I’m two months and one day sober from weed, and in the time since I smoked my last joint, I’ve totaled my car (while sober, I might add), gotten a new one, mutually and lovingly ended my almost four-year-long relationship, started the search for a new apartment, and been buoyed through all of it by the love and support of my friends and family. It’s not that I couldn’t have done any of these things while I was smoking, but I shudder to think about how heavily I would have been leaning on weed in the aftermath of my breakup. It sucks not to be able to disappear into a cozy and comforting pot cloud when I’m stressing about my future, but it also feels incredibly good to know that I’m making one of the biggest decisions of my life (and all the little decisions that come along with it) with a clear head.
#Quit #Smoking #Weedand #People
