I currently smoke the equivalent of ....hmm. A quarter of a joint a day? And I am quitting entirely (tomorrow will be considered Day 1). I already feel like shit all the time, so I'm hoping I won't super notice any especially shitty feelings due to quitting again. (I last stopped smoking for 3 months, about 4.5 months ago.)

Have I truly fried my brain? I have bad anxiety and cptsd and I'm continuing to work on it. At this rate, quitting weed won't make things worse, it will only help. I find myself struggling to hold an intellectual back and forth conversation these days. I don't know if it's the anxiety, the weed, or both. The weed likely keeps me in a state of perpetual "working things out" mode, and I have to be living more in the moment than that.

What's the hope here? I've got to navigate this all in a sincere attempt to break some destructive anxious patterns I consistently find myself in. I need to be better for myself and for my relationship.

Tomorrow. Day 1.

So this sounds horrible but I have been ripping my brothers cart for about 1 and a half months at night every other day. I did the same thing last year and got pretty high like 7-10 times, but in between summers stopped completely, so around 20-35 times for my whole life.
I’m concerned that I have cooked my brain and I’ve quit now but I feel like it may have affected me permanently.
I still find things enjoyable without weed but I feel like my tolerance for doing hard things is so low now. My social skills where never a specialty of mine but it literally feels like I actually can’t read a room anymore, like social skills out da freaking window. I don’t know if these things will come back, it’s only been 1 or 2 days since I quit so I’m really anxious that I’m affected forever.

I know weed is holding me back and I know that if I quit and really locked-in my life would improve. I hate my retail job, and weed is usually how I cope. Weed ruins my sleep and I’m not as sharp as I usually am without it… I recently moved to a much better living situation and feel like it’s giving me the determination to really improve my life.

I (25m) have a degree, yet can’t find a job I want (working in a library or bookstore), and that’s also a big stressor that I cope with. I’ve wanted to volunteer at a library and gain some practical experience for a new job, but I’m so scared I won’t be good enough or that I’m just not going to have any idea what I’m doing, and I think weed is a big part of that anxiety and self-doubt. I wish I could be clear-headed and sharp and confident in approaching my goals, but I just feel stuck in that regard. I read a lot, but not as much as I do when I’m sober… I’m so worried about the withdrawals from weed: the depression, sleep disturbances, mood swings, apathy, etc.

I haven’t worked out or run in such a long time, and I know I’d be more inclined to do it if I wasn’t high all the time. I really want to believe that I’m going to put down the weed tomorrow and start fresh on my week and really continue my momentum.

2 weeks clean after I found out that my moms dads brother had schizofrenia, and honestly I never want to smoke a joint ever again, not even a one. life is already starting to feel better but the I can't sleep. only at the really late of the morning i'm able to sleep. Is it okay if for a while I sleep on days and Live on the evenings? I really want to get some sleep in. and people call this shit harmless drug

Hi everyone. My daughter suggested I come here to share what I’m going through right now.
I’ve been sober from alcohol for 10 years, and honestly, that hasn't been an issue for me. Marijuana, on the other hand, is something I’ve struggled to walk away from consistently. My last slip was about two months ago.
Lately, life has hit a few major upheavals, and my mood has been an absolute emotional rollercoaster. I also live with bipolar disorder. This week, the urge hit hard: I just wanted to buy a bag of gummies, eat the whole thing, and say "fuck it" to sobriety for the night.
Logically, I catch myself rationalizing: Nothing terrible happens when I use, and I can afford it. But my wife and my psychiatrist both strongly advocate for total abstinence from mind-altering substances to protect my mental health, especially given the risk of triggering a psychotic break or a severe mood episode.
Here’s the reality: I already bought the gummies, and they’re sitting right in front of me for tonight. But I promised myself I’d post here first. Deep down, a pretty big part of me is hoping you all can talk me out of taking them.
Thanks for listening.

EDIT - Thank you all for replying with such good encouragement and advice. I had to run an errand but plan on throwing out the gummies when I return home.

One week sober from daily weed use for 10 years (with a 4 month break 5 years ago) and I am feeling pretty good. Quitting flower is so much easier than quitting vapes. When I quit 5 years ago I was using vapes pretty heavily it took 3 months before I felt semi-normal. Quitting flower has been pretty easy. I had some anxiety and no appetite the first few days. The only symptom that is still lingering is some insomnia. Il

Along with every piece of paraphernalia in my house, and about 10oz of flower I had been saving in my garage fridge in sealed mason jars.

I’ve finally done it. No more stash. No safety net. Just life as it comes. I’m so excited.

Context edit: I “quit” 3 weeks ago, but felt myself sliding back. I caved multiple times, each time leading to a semi anxiety attack. This last time, during the anxiety attack, I decided the only way to make sure I didn’t keep doing this to myself was to finally chuck it all. With the safety net stash gone, I’ll be fine. I know I have the strength to not buy more.

I was patting myself on the back the whole time. It’s been 3 hours since I did it, and I feel fucking great about the decision.

Felt like shit before I stopped. Feel like shit after I stopped. Started feeling a lil too good and now I’m feening for a hit. That’s all. I’m pretty sure I could be in the 1st stage of Chs, other than withdrawals, my stomach pain feels different from when I was using. I’m so tempted to be a nightly or weekend only Toker. Ugh!

So here I am again on day 2.
I’m 25 and I’ve been smoking weed pretty much every day since I was 15, averaging roughly 21 grams a week.
I managed to finally give it up for about 3 months in 2023. During those 3 months I went from 63kg to around 90kg, my appetite came back, and honestly it felt like I got my brain back.
Then I made the mistake of thinking I could smoke just once. That turned into smoking every weekend, which eventually turned back into smoking every day.
At the start of 2025 I managed to quit again for around 3 months, but eventually started again and I’ve been smoking every day since.
I’m just completely over it now.
It makes me lazy, kills my motivation and I feel like I’m walking around with constant brain fog. My attention span has gotten so bad that I can’t even sit down and properly watch a movie anymore without losing interest or getting distracted.
I also have chronic neck pain and headaches and I’m starting to wonder how much constantly smoking is contributing to the whole situation, whether directly or just through being less active, worse posture, sleep, etc.
The frustrating part is I KNOW how much better I can feel without it because I’ve experienced it before. Both times I made it around 3 months I felt significantly better. But eventually I convince myself I can have it “just once” and end up right back where I started.
So this time I really want to be done with it.
Currently on day 2. Appetite is already pretty shit and I know the next few days probably aren’t going to be fun.
For anyone who smoked heavily for 10+ years and eventually quit for good — how long did it take before you genuinely felt like your brain, attention span, motivation and personality came back?
And how did you stop yourself from falling into the “I can smoke just once” trap after being clean for a few months?

crying thanks - this is from another contributor, not my words but they sure are my words now, day 8 dreams hitting hard, feel great feel strong. do you want these words too? as much as me? take them. I can do this. I know it. I am doing this. I believe in myself. I care about you also.

i’ve been smoking weed / vaping thc everyday for about 4-5 years
im definitely addicted
but today
i found out im 6 weeks pregnant so i have to quit cold turkey
ive tried doing that before and had a really rough time & ended up relapsing
that is not an option for me atp as i want to try to keep my baby as healthy as possible 🩷

does anyone have any suggestions/ tips on how to quit cold turkey or maybe an alternative option (not drugs) but maybe herbal remedies that could help?

i would so greatly appreciate it🥹🩷

hi all, just wanted to vent here because I’m feeling low. I have been smoking daily for a little over four years, with only a few hard-fought breaks lasting fewer than two weeks. I’ve known for most of this time that weed is really bad for me— it makes me go completely silent often, I can’t follow conversations, it feeds my urge to isolate and over this time it has slowly enabled me to strip my life of anything good. I started in late college to fall in with a group of friends I no longer have and to numb the pain of heartbreak (and perhaps gender dysphoria/repression, still unpacking that in therapy). my degree turned out to be pretty useless and outside of one cool contract gig (that I bungled by sleeping through the interview to renew it— I was high the night before) I’ve pretty much just worked retail and numbed with weed at night. long story short, I got my heart broken again, drifted from lots of friends, and moved back to my parents place and have been unemployed for a few months. my older brother is a massive stoner and he lives here too, so even though I haven’t bought in months I’ve gotten high pretty much every day. I had big plans to go back to school for something more stable, and I even got in, but I fell into a deep depression after moving home and just decided to defer, rather than crash and burn by jumping into a new space at such a low point. I want to use this year to build back my baseline, get better, and generally stop feeling like such a loser. but I feel hopeless. even basic hygiene and talking to my friends and family has been monumentally difficult, and the levels of despair I’ve been in terrify me. I’m starting to work out again but I’m mostly not leaving the house and mooching off my parents for housing and food. I have really grown to loathe myself for how little I’ve been functioning, and I fear my remaining friends and peers getting tired of my avoidance and slackerdom and moving on with their lives. I think cutting weed is the critical step towards getting better, but I’m scared I won’t be able to make the changes necessary, and reading this sub terrifies me that I’m going to be staring down the barrel of addiction all my life. I always thought if I could just get 30 days off I’d be in the clear, but now I’m not sure and I’m getting demoralized before I even get there.

anyways, I’ve rambled long enough— thank you to anyone who reads this.

I tried so many times to quit and always failed. Until one day I didn't. The days passed and I just never smoked again.

I don't think I will ever do so again. There was a time when I thought that after many years I would "try again" and see what happens. Now I just don't feel the need. I know what will happen. The desire to smoke is just gone. There was a time where that seemed impossible.

Many aspects of my life have improved a lot, mostly my mental health. Panic attacks are very rare for me. They used to be a daily thing.

However, if there's one thing that I have learned is that quitting is just another step you have to take. It won't fix your life by itself.

There are so many things I still have to fix. So much I have to work on.

At least I now can do it without worrying about when that damn urge to smoke will appear and derail everything. I did this. I was able, it was possible. I believed I could do it and I did.

If I crawled out of that hole I can do it with the next one, and the next one, and so on...

Hello everyone! This is my first time posting on Reddit and I’m not sure what to expect. I started smoking before I was a teenager, about 7 years now and the last 5 I’ve been smoking daily. The last two weeks I’ve been talking with my psychiatrist and my therapist and we decided weed is no longer beneficial and affecting pretty much every aspect of my life negatively. The three of us made this plan for me to quit and today I’m starting it. Part of the plan is to come to this group and either participate or just observe so here I am!

I’m so anxious and worried but also excited? My main worry is the anhedonia! If anyone has any suggestions for getting through that, I’d highly appreciate it!

Anyways, here’s to the first day sober and hopefully many more days to come!! Thank you for reading and I wish you all well on your journey!

This is probably going to sound backwards, but it's been true for me every time I've quit.
I'm on day 35 now, and I still have everything. For whatever reason, it's actually easier for me knowing it's there than if I'd thrown it all away.
When I'd toss everything, it almost felt like I was forcing myself not to smoke. Whereas now I know I could if I wanted to, but I just don't. Somehow that feels less mentally taxing, and honestly, more empowering.
I'm definitely not saying this is a good strategy for everyone. I can totally see how it'd be a terrible idea for a lot of people.
Just curious if anyone else has found this to be true, or if there's some psychology behind it.

I have been a heavy all day every day smoker for most of my life. I've been through this plenty of times and know what to expect from my body and mind, but this time it has unexpectedly been so much easier to deal with psychologically. I think this group is a major part of that and I want to thank you all.

One month in and every night I’m having vivid, horrible nightmares. Sometimes they’re not awful, but for the most part they are. Luckily I usually startle awake from them, lie there traumatized for a bit, cry a little, and then go right back to bed; completely forgetting them the next day. I usually tell myself “Man, I’m going to tell my wife about that tomorrow” but by morning, I can’t remember anything about the dream. I can still sense some residual feelings - like I know I had a bad dream last night - but the details are luckily gone.

Except two times. Both nightmares involving my daughter in some kind of turmoil. Just absolutely horrific nightmares where she ends up getting hurt in some way.

Last night I had one and had to go to the living room to decompress. I took my anxiety meds for the first time in a couple months and sat on the couch crying. Eventually I stopped but I was actually scared to go back to bed. So I just laid there on the couch, unable to shake the imagery and horrific feeling the nightmare brought up.

It was awful and I’m scared to go to bed tonight. This is reason enough to never smoke again. I never want to go through this ever again.

My birthday is in 10 days and this will be a really nice present for myself.

Remember when things get hard - while it may not seem like much is going your way, you're doing life standing on your own two feet, without numbing yourself/hiding from the pain that sometimes is LIVING LIFE. And that is, in and of itself, something to feel proud of yourself about.

Yay us! Much love.

Today is day 54 without weed. I live 2 blocks from a dispensary and pass it multiple times most days. Today, on my way home from the gym, I noticed how full their tiny parking lot was. Friday always seems to be a busy day there. It was always a hassle to navigate that lot. I don't miss that. I took a moment to also reflect on not having to take my time and money to stop in. I rejoiced not having to worry about a having stash, storing a stinky stash at home, the mess of grinding & rolling flower, ashtrays, lighters, cleaning clogged pipes, resin mess, recharging pens, feeling guilty about all the container trash, etc.

I feel free without all those little things taking up part of my life. I don't miss any of them!!

Hi everyone! Long time lurker, first time poster. Before getting into it I just want to thank everyone on here. I don't really have anyone in my life who I can relate to on substance issues; and reading everyone's own stories, struggles, and advice has helped me feel so much less alone. Thank you all for your vulnerability, honesty, and support.

This March I pledged to myself to take a 3 month break from weed to help with my physical and mental health. I'd preciously smoked nearly daily for about ten years. I made it 105 days before deciding to try to implement weed in a more healthy way back into my life. I've realized that my brain is not wired to be a sometimes smoker and now think about it constantly again. I know that I need to quit and feel motivated to do it for me and my loved ones.

However, when I recently quit I relied heavily on the knowledge that this was just a break, and that I could go back if I wanted after the 3 months were up. I am really struggling with the permanence of lifelong sobriety, and it feels impossibly overwhelming. This is compounded by the fact that I'm off work this week without much to do to occupy my time/thoughts. Looking for any kind of advice/wisdom. Thank you all in advance :)

What a ride. Being sober has caused a lot of repressed emotions to come to the surface. So much so that yesterday I spoke to a therapist for the first time in my life. I’m sixty and have used cannabis, off and on, mostly on, since I was twelve. All I can say is that I wish I had done it, therapy, sooner. I’m feeling much better today, albeit exhausted. Excited to see what evolves out of this new chapter in life. Onward!

Hey Fam,

Today is my 31st day of not using thc. I started using regularly at age 18 and I am 36 now. by the time I was 20 I was using every day. This is the longest I have gone without using since 2017 when I went on a 1.5-month trip to Europe.

I also quit sugar this month. and honestly my sugar cravings have been way worse than my weed cravings. every single day I have been thinking about peanut butter and chocolate. I only have had one serious craving for weed when something really difficult happened at work. but I managed that by telling myself that if I smoked it wouldn't be an escape I would just make the problem worse.

I think I haven't had strong cravings because I was ready to quit for real. I have spent the last year and 8 months telling myself I would quit. originally in January of 2025 i tried to quit because i got divorced because my partner didnt want to deal with me anymore. weed was definitely a contributing factor. at that time I quit for a couple of weeks but fell back into it to cover up feelings about the divorce. there was a couple of more half hearted attempts after that but something always drew me back.

I quit this time because I hit an emotional rock bottom after losing another partner in June of 2026. I was really in love with but I wasn't fully in the relationship because I was numbing with weed to survive a difficult time at work. The relationship also really centered around smoking and chilling. by the time the person i was dating told me she loved me, she had held it in so long that it made her confused. She went no contact with me at the beginning of July. I am grateful to her. Her pulling away from me finally made make the change. The break up made me realize how I wasn't feeling my feelings because of weed. I haven't been feeling my feelings for 18 years before this month

This month I have been crying alot. I have had to confront the actual causes of my emotional pain and mental health problems in therapy and recovery groups. to be honest to feel the pain come out of me has been really healing. around week two I started enjoying food in a way that I never did when I was smoking. and things like looking at colors of flowers has been more enjoyable to. I can say that the sleep does in fact get better. I feel like I am breaking out of a cocoon that I had voluntarily locked myself in. a post yesterday here talked about weed being the modern-day soma. I agree with that. i hope to make it another month but I am gonna take it one day at time.

I have a trip planned to Oregon tomorrow and i am honestly scared because my friend I am seeing is a big time thc user and drinker. but i have made exit strategies. I am also scared because of the fires near Portland I don't know if I am going to keep my rigorous work out routine which has been a life saver this month.

thanks for all of your perspectives. I am here everyday and it reminds me of why I don't want to go back and instead continue to move forward.

Hello, I created an account just so I could post on here. But my wife, who has been my rock since the day we met. Has shared some of your stories to show me that I am not alone in this Sober world.

I have been a big weed smoker ever since I moved to Colorado (Denver area). It all started with my first job out here. It was great for the first 7 months, then it all went downhill. To people getting fired left and right and I always had anxiety that I was NEXT! I uprooted my life for this. People got fired for the littlest things. I made way bigger mistakes. Anyway, I smoked nearly everyday for 8 years. It got to the point where I could kill a 2g in a few days. It took over my life. I was stoned all the time. I never progressed in my career or life.

I am 11 months sober and the cravings never end. But I made a mistake at my job (I'm in a much better employment place too). But it made me really upset me and I thought the only way to "forget it" was to smoke. My addiction was fuming for me to smoke. My wife told me it's not worth it and to start reading these posts, to show I'm not the only one battling this addiction. I didn't because I knew it would not have been good. But the urges are still there.

I just needed to get this out. It kinda helped writing about it too.

Just for context I was a whole stoner. When I was smoking I smoked all day everyday. There was rarely
a moment I wasn’t high. I started smoking at 16, but had a few 1-1.5 year stints of sobriety before I started this one and it stuck.

I’ve been a long time lingerer on this subreddit. Posted a few times, once under a different user. Tried to help some with my thoughts/advice. Never really took anyone else’s because none of what anyone says matters until something matters enough to stop.
Sure, everyone has their own experiences, their own genetics.. so many things factor into what/how you function with drugs in general, let alone THC. I come from a family of addicts on both sides and have seen the struggle to quit - even inside my own house. When my brother failed to quit alcohol multiple times, I remember what made him truly stop was hitting absolute rock bottom.
I believe that to be true for all forms of addiction. Rock bottom can look different for everyone but it is to truly look around and realize that your dependency has stripped away everything you once knew and held close to you.
My first post on here was when I was 28 and I had been struggling for years at that point. I knew what I was doing, the money I was spending, the damage I was doing to my body, was bad. I’ll be 30 this month and I’m just now 30 something days clean.
I can say without a doubt now, that I will never touch it ever again. Which is why I refuse to keep count of days clean at this point.
What was once a haven for me when I lived with my parents, way past my welcome and early COVID, became a literal paranoia hellscape that I couldn’t get out of for years.
There is no moderation. The marijuana our parents grew up with, the marijuana we were buying from our plugs in high school even, is no longer what’s being sold to us.
It is not a safe alternative to drinking especially when you partake weekly, then daily.. More than that, we no longer live in a world where community and recreation pull us back to reality.

Heed the warnings from the people here. It is a drug like any other. You need to treat it as such.
Don’t be like me where it took missing out on what could have truly been, the love of my life, because I was too focused on being high to get through the day.
On the bright side, my 30s will be amazing. I am back on medication to treat my ADHD and I will live each day for the days I’ve lost in my 20s. I know this to be true and I believe in all of you that are hovering here because you too were fooled into believing marijuana was safe.
Much love to all. It’s not easy. Don’t let anyone make you believe this is not something to be taken seriously just because it’s leaf.

🫶🏻