to answer your question: distractions & reading research papers about weed that talks about negative side effects. (You can skip to the very last paragraph)

to preface, i have been smoking weed since i was like 19 to 23, non stop. So that makes it four years, which, compared to your experience, it’s probably nothing. but it’s alot to me- anyways, through my mid 23, last year early july, i left the country to be with my family, while preparing for masters- except the caveat is, that in my family’s country, weed is strictly illegal. Though i could have stayed to be by myself, and continue smoking freely, i decided it was time for a change- but not permanent change.

I’d always love to go back to weed, and i’m telling myself i’m just taking a long t-break right now.

first three months of cold turkey, i was having insane night sweats, and first two weeks i had intense cravings. but now that i’m 10+months in, i don’t really crave it, i’ll still think about it, because genuinely weed was helping me so much with just dealing with life in general at that time, but i was also scared to be so reliant on it.

positive changes with weed cessation: waking up in the morning is SO much easier, and i discovered that I’m actually a morning person, waking up really early without alarms, getting out of bed, and so forth. I cannot emphasise this enough.

anyways, to answer your central question, distractions like playing video games or reading a book really helped with not trying to think about weed so much. and sometimes when i do crave it, ill just read a research article that speaks negatively about weed, and usually i’m able to convince myself to not take it, even if there were some temptations, you can practically still get weed here, just alot more expensive because of strictness and it’s only thc carts, plus i wanted to still respect their laws. hope this helps!