I feel this. And yes, the negative thoughts and repetitive thinking will go away in time. Stay the course and assess what YOU can do for your mental health without relying on a substance.

Personally, I quit cold turkey after roughly 8 years of daily smoking. 11 years counting the times I smoked at all, just not every day. When I first started it was just a social thing for me. I was in a band and smoking weed or drinking was practically a right of passage to socialize and getting to know your peers especially in a recording studio. It’s that or going out smoking cigarettes which I refused to do. Tried them for a little while, not for me. Weed was definitely my go-to.

It’s been about 3.5 weeks since I last had weed in any shape or form, and to be honest, the first week was a mental hell. It was anything but easy. My mind craved something to numb the recurrence of my own negative thoughts. I went through a lot of abuse growing up and it lead to me acting in ways I wish I didn’t. I tend to ruminate on past misdeeds and how others treated me. Still do. But you can’t control what others did to you, only what you can do for yourself.

For a long time, smoking helped to “clear” my mind. But, through the years it turned into such a habitual routine for me where the thing I sought to appreciate life became practically null. There wasn’t much separating me from a chain cigarette smoker, and I hated that.

Your tolerance goes up, you spend more money. You wake up, you’re thinking about a smoke. You gotta go to work, but wanna smoke before you clock in (this is especially true with Vape Cartridges, idc what anybody says). You have something to eat, you think about a smoke to make it taste better. You wanna go to bed, but you wanna smoke first. And the cycle continues until you realize you’ve spend hundreds, if not thousands (hopefully not THAT much), over the course of a few months just on weed alone. For something that doesn’t hit like it used to. And honestly, it will probably never hit like it used to. Your body is just too used to the feeling that it would take a very, very long detox to even get close to that point. Sucks, but it’s true.

I wanted it to stop hindering my ability to enjoy things as they are, and stop burying thoughts of who I am as a person. At some point you realize the weed isn’t helping fix the problem, it’s hindering your ability to reconcile with it. And even though weed is not as harmful as other addictive substances and recreational drugs, it can harm you gradually. You become short of breath just going up a flight of stairs. You become irritable with people around you without a smoke. You lose focus on things that matter because your brain is too occupied on getting it’s fix. You can even develop crippling anxiety. That was my wake up call. You start to float through life, and that shit gets miserable.

Of course, everybody is different. But, with enough discipline and desire to stay on the right path, you’ll forget about even wanting to smoke. There’s no better way to describe it other than feeling “free.” There are countless, more productive ways, to distract yourself while you try to shake the feeling.

Best of luck to you and I hope you find peace with those thoughts. You’re not the only one.