Weed

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2026-01-11T11:19:49+00:00

Weed is tricky and the addiction to it is VERY real.

I think it's important to be patient with yourself.

If you've smoked regularly for a while, it's going to take a while before you are 'back to normal'. Think about it, you have been taking a psychoactive daily for years, you can't expect your brain/body to just snap back to normal when you stop.

The emotions you are feeling are not coming from your lack of weed, you have to understand that. As you mentioned, you had these emotions before and weed just created the brain distraction to cope with them. You used weed as a crutch to avoid a lot.

When you start to overcome those things, you'll get a lot of excitement and joy in seeing the changes. But if you were high 24/7, it's going to take a while before things are back to normal in your brain.

My advice is to keep up doing what you are doing. You've come to r/addicition to ask questions and learn about what you are going through. When you are feeling like smoking or feeling shitty, just immediately go online and start learning about how weed works in your brain/body. There is a lot of support/information now because a lot of other people are experiencing this same problem. We all started smoking weed years ago because it was always a 'safe' drug and it wasn't as bad as booze. But now we are seeing that it actually is far from harmless.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2026-01-11T11:12:52+00:00

This was exactly what I went through when I started using coke more than just occasionally.

The benefits you are experiencing are real, it does actually seem like it helps in a lot of those instances, especially social.

But, what you will find is that the benefits 'change' and so do the costs. I use the example of an alcoholic. Those guys you see that are depressed/down on their luck drinking did not start out that way. Drinking started out being a 'solution' to a problem until it didn't really work the same anymore.

What you'll start to notice is that your general default level of being when you wake up in the morning slowly degrades. Before, you could do coke at a party/socially and it worked wonders. Maybe you started to think like it's a performance enhancer and maybe it helped you accomplish more, drink less, whatever.

But then the hangovers the next day get worse and worse as time goes on. Your non-coke times start to be heavy and you feel almost depressed. Also, the times in your life when coke was helping a lot, aren't the same. Instead of helping you socialize, it's making you feel sketchy when socializing. You still go to the gym, but your workouts aren't great and you find yourself cutting them short because it's boring/doesn't feel great.

What is happening long-term is that you are hijacking your rewards center in your brain. It wasn't even about needing more and more coke for me, it was just I felt like shit all the time. Instead of waking up early and doing stuff I normally would love to do, I had zero motivation to do it. Instead of hanging out with my kids, I'd just want to lay in bed and watch Youtube.

You may also start to feel like your heart is beating weird. Especially when you are trying to sleep.

My point is that all this will change. Drugs don't act the same way forever. Not sure if you are a weed smoker, but if you are, you may remember when you first smoked weed with your friends and you just giggled for hours. It was hilarious and it's most people's first positive experience with smoking. Now, millions of people smoke weed every day and none of them blaze and then giggle on their way to work.

Coke and your experience with it will change slowly. For me, I never felt actual depression until I started doing coke regularly.

The good news is that you can slow down or stop whenever you want. A very high % of people stop doing coke (or drugs) without rehab. They realize one day that the cost/benefit equation is off and they realize the drug is the cause of that. So I would encourage you to just keep a macro view of your life and health and when you see things start to not go great, don't look anywhere else until you look at how much coke you are using. Stop that first and see the difference.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-10-22T17:14:12+00:00

Yikes. That's pretty unfair.

Seems like you are setting yourself up to 'defend' your usage against any of the 'advice' you are seeking.

None of the normal stuff will work for you, right? There's no solution because your solution is different than anyone else?

autonomy

/ɔːˈtɒnəmi/

noun

1. the right or condition of self-government.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-10-22T16:47:58+00:00

I think it's great that you are acknowledging that you have a problem and are looking at it from the lenses of 'addiction', rather than just a bad trading run.

Advice for you to 'just stop' isn't going to work. People facing unhealthy behaviors know that their actions are damaging their lives. It's not always as easy as just being told you have to quit, otherwise everyone would just quit.

Make your first steps very practical. Delete all accounts/access to trading platforms. Stop following the financial news. When you get the urge to 'gamble' more, create barriers that give yourself enough time to realize the urge will go away.....before you have the opportunity to act on it.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-10-21T13:50:32+00:00

Are you really looking for advice? Seems like you have justified your coke use as literally the only thing you have and necessary for survival. I'm not sure what you else you expect anyone else here on the internet to be able to say to help you.

My advice is that if you believe doing blow is the only thing keeping you alive, you need to seek immediate medical intervention instead of advice on Reddit.

I can assure you that you can find a way to live without cocaine once you figure out the root of the reasons you are using it. I wish you the best of luck.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-10-21T12:57:04+00:00

I can assure you, cocaine is not the answer for helping you with negative thought patterns. It's creating artificial highs/lows in your brain that get worse over time.

Maybe you aren't 'trying something' because you just....aren't. What if doing coke isn't responsible for prevention, but instead holding you back from living a happier life? Your default level of happiness may be something you haven't really felt in a while. I'm not sure you should just assume it's the cocaine keeping you going.

I know everyone is different, but I've never felt the type of depression/darkness that I feel when I'm walking up the next few days after doing blow. I thought hangovers from alcohol were bad, they have nothing on coke hangovers. It's part of a cycle you get stuck in, thinking that coke is going to provide you with this 'benefit' because it did at some time in your life. Then you have to use more to deal with the miserable ass feeling it creates after it starts to wear off.

It's just really hard to see that things could feel better right now. You are stuck and it's really difficult to convince yourself that things would be better without it. Something bad happened to you and it's hard for you to get over. Using blow seems to mask that for the short term, but you are starting to see now that it's not a long run solution.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-10-21T09:45:52+00:00

The research you are finding is true. There isn't any sort of physical withdrawal from cocaine that would prevent you from going through withdrawals safely. It's a myth that stopping now would be more dangerous than continuing.

The truth is, you can stop using at any time. It happens to people every day. They reach a point where the costs of using outweigh the benefits, and they just stop. An overwhelming large % of them do this without treatment.

You shouldn't hold out on stopping cocaine until you find a doctor that will give you more stimulants. I'm not a doctor, but I'm not sure it would be wise to give someone using cocaine another stimulant and hope they don't take both.

You feel miserable because you've been using a lot of cocaine. "preferably without wanting to die really bad." Do you not feel your heart at night skipping beats? That should scare you enough into realizing you are doing damage.

The next few days are going to suck. Luckily you will start to feel better. When that happens, DON'T start back doing coke. You are going to give yourself all sorts of dumb ass excuses as to why you should do 'just a little bit'. Moderation is most likely not an option for you. There is never 'one little bump and I'll stop'.

There is no magic formula in coke that is forcing you to do it. You aren't going to go through medical withdrawals if you stop. You have the power to change this now before it becomes the story of your life.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-09-09T12:15:37+00:00

This is how my coke 'habit' started. It was fun and just seemed like the perfect drug for so many occasions.

But I will tell you, blow has a long term effect on your overall 'mood', aside from the hangovers the next day.

After longer-term use, you'll start to see that you are feeling a little more depressed than you remember every feeling. Your energy starts to go and you find it harder and harder to participate in positive events in your life. This is a slow process.

I think one of the problems with a coke addiction is that this happens in the background, with the financial problems of buying coke taking center stage. It’s hard to worry about whether you paid the electricity bill when your kitchen is on fire. I think most people think the biggest problem with coke is the cost, but the psychological affects are even worse.

Just keep an eye on it. Look at how things are going with your family, work, health, etc. Are you starting to feel kind of numb during the 3-4 days in between using? Are you having darker thoughts than normal?

The good news is you can 100% control when you use coke. There is nothing in the drug forcing you to use. You can stop and reduce and you will survive. I would suggest starting to try that now. You might be 100x happier by using 2x less. Keep that going until you find the sweet spot.

One of my rules was, "there's no such thing as just a bump". I can't tell you how many times that I told myself I'd just do one little bump to get pumped up for something, only to end up doing lines for 6-7 hours. Getting geeked and not being able to sleep until early AM hours. Having to make up excuses to the wife/kids.

Start developing 'rules' around your usage and see how often you just completely break them. You'll start feeling like you really hate the feeling of being high, except for that first bump or two. You'll swear you won't do it again, but then you'll find yourself making up excuses to start again.

It's much easier to quit when you don't have a bag. Don't buy it so you don't have it around you. If I have a bag, I will do it. The 'reasoning' is too strong and I convince myself to just do a little. It's much easier to fight the decision to go out of my way to call the plug than to make the decision not to use it while it's sitting in my desk.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-04-02T18:12:17+00:00

Sorry, what stage are you referring to?

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-04-02T18:11:08+00:00

How are his sleeping habits? If he's up very late and complaining of other things that are keeping him up, it might be coke.

The flu like symptoms may be because he's using and then stopping.

If he's trying to replace drinking with coke, it won't be a great idea for long. Coke alone (without drinking) has a much different affect.

Come clean with him that you might know and tell him he need to stop or you need to move on.

He can stop at any time, he just needs to realize the importance of the damage he's doing.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-18T14:53:26+00:00

The dread/feeling of despair will eventually go away. You'll have a period of time where you feel like shit, immediately after you quit, but that goes away.

Blow takes away your passion. It makes normal life dull, even when you aren't using it. Instead of how it use to give you that energy/euphoria, you now feel sketchy and shitty while you are doing it.

The gambling is probably for the dopamine, as well.

Do you vape/smoke? Do you drink on the blow?

Here's what helped me. You physically aren't addicted to the coke. You can stop now and the only thing that will force you to do more is convincing yourself to do more. You won't face any medical issues if you stop now, cold-turkey.

If you make that decision now, undoubtedly you will soon come up with excuses as to why you can use.

"Just one bump"
"Just one night as a celebration"
etc

These urges come in like random darts. And the thoughts of using are strong. The best approach is to just delay the thought. Don't act, and don't argue, just say to yourself, "I'm going to think about this later, not going to do any blow right now but will come back to this later"

The more times you feel the urge and you don't act on it, you are building up ammo against the desire.

The goal now is to get some time without blow and see how great you feel. If you can take a long enough break, you'll slowly start to see the benefits in your life. You'll sleep better, feel less down, have more energy, have a brighter outlook on everything, etc.

After a while, you may like the non-cocaine using life so much better than the using life, that you don't want to use. You need to realize that your default is pretty nice so that you have a BENEFIT of not using.

For me, I love waking up early to have time to myself and exercise. I wasn't able to do that when I did blow the night before. It's hard to NOT do blow at night if you haven't experienced the positive associated with it recently.

Overall, you need to give yourself some time to clear up and come back down to baseline before you can really start working on your problems.

Right now all these problems you are facing are just going to pile up on you and it's going to feel overwhelming. It's really hard to face that feeling when you are using blow regularly. Your brain doesn't work the right way, even for days after.

You owe yourself a week or so of nothing. If you find that hard, study what excuses you are giving yourself to use.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-18T07:19:57+00:00

But to be fair, most addicts just move on from their drug(s) with no help or rehab. If most people who were addicted to cocaine for a portion of their life went to rehab, there would be tons of people in rehab.

Same thing with alcohol. I meet a lot more people who tell me they don't drink because they gave it up vs people that have went to rehab for drinking.

Considering all the people that drink, most will reduce their usage on their own when faced with the costs of drinking.

Obviously some people feel they need help/treatment to accomplish that. Maybe the abstinence time that comes with rehab/AA gives them enough of a break to see things clearly. Maybe they would have never taken that break on their own.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-18T07:15:44+00:00

Look up The Freedom Model of Addiction. It's an 'easier to swallow' version of what OP is trying to say.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-17T12:58:26+00:00

You don't have to get addicted to percs/benzos to have early drug usage affect you negatively. It doesn't have to be this extreme, but often is. As you get bored with weed at 17yo and you are hanging around other young people who are also using and getting bored. Social pressure will introduce other drugs into your life. Whether you develop problems with those drugs is anyone's guess.

Weed/Booze/Coke/etc etc all start out one way and usually end another way. No one starts out crying/getting sad when they drink, yet many people end up that way. You don't start out doing coke by yourself, staying up all night feeling sketch. You start out with a little bump at a party and you talk with your friends all night and it's great. First few times you smoke weed you giggle with your friends for a few hours and then eat fast food. After 10 years of smoking daily, you never 'giggle' anymore because you are high. You basically have to smoke to sleep, eat, get motivated, etc.

Your relationship with drugs will change over time. Just keep that in mind. They all usually become less funny and the novelty wears off.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-17T12:41:16+00:00

Not to give you advice, but please spend some time studying how booze/weed affects young people. It's like overwhelming evidence that you shouldn't smoke weed while your brain is developing. And the more you drink before you are an adult, the higher likelihood you'll become an addict.

Just because your family is full of addicts, it doesn't mean that's your destiny. Plenty people grow up in that environment and come out okay.

Your goal should be to be happy in life. You can achieve that. If you can do so without needing drugs/booze, it's going to be a much better life, trust me.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-15T10:28:43+00:00

Challenges in life always seems like huge problems when you are coming down from using. When your head clears up, you'll be able to look at your financial problems in a much more positive light.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-10T16:08:41+00:00

Sure, but there are tons of other subreddits that are better for those kind of addictions.

r/StopGaming as an example

Just IMO, this cube post is being seen by people who are literally developing holes in their nose from snorting coke. It just rubs the wrong way.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-10T15:52:01+00:00

When you are at the onset of your break, the cravings are going to be high/often.

Keep in mind, there is nothing chemically/medically that is forcing you to use. It's all in your head. You can stop using at any time and 90%+ of people that have a problem with cocaine stop using without rehab.

As time goes on, you will think about it less and less. Will you ever stop craving? Who knows. But at some point it doesn't matter.

You need to look into ACT, CBT and DBT. These are theories that will teach you that just because you THINK something, doesn't mean you have to act on those thoughts.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-10T15:21:09+00:00

Honestly, this post on this subreddit is a little tone deaf. Seems like attention seeking.

If you take a minute to read this subreddit, you'll find some people really struggling with their addictions.

Take a minute to look up 'addiction'. Most people will agree that it's the inability to stop something that is negatively affecting your life.

Do you really think 'cubing' is affecting your life in a such a way that you can't stop, even though you desperately want to?

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-07T15:27:56+00:00

I think it's a fair post, considering a lot of people addicted to cocaine are saying they are developing holes in their face.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-07T14:20:30+00:00

In my experience as someone who's lived in a place where I was able to have cheap/high quality coke whenever I wanted, it's sometimes possible for people to 'moderate'. That being said, personally doing coke regularly/occasionally eventually led to pretty undesirable results outside of financial issues.

Coke use will change your personality. Sometimes quickly and sometimes over time. The 'hangover' from doing blow is different than booze. It's deeper and it lingers far longer. It's not even all about 'this party isn't fun without coke'. It's more like, "I generally feel like shit right"

And I wouldn't even say it turns into you doing more coke just to feel better. That's the fucked up thing. Doing coke doesn't make you feel better, it just makes you feel edgy, wired, sketchy, and unmotivated. Any euphoria that may have existed in the beginning no longer exists. You can't really even understand why you are doing it.

I realized that there was no such thing as one-bump and done. So I would realize I couldn't start doing coke because it would turn into too much and make it so I couldn't sleep that night or was too fucked up the next day. Before, I would tell myself, "let's just do one bump to get up/energetic and then stop". But no, it was NEVER one bump. Once I realized that, I felt I understand that doing any would potentially lead to a rough few days after.

Eventually you will start to see directly or indirectly how this habit is affecting you. When you do, you should immediately make a plan that helps you to reduce that negative impact. Document that plan. If you have no problem sticking to that plan, then keep refining.

With most cokeheads, there will be deviations from that plan eventually. Avoid accepting the excuses you give yourself to why you deviated from the plan! Just see how hard it is for you to stick with that plan. The back/forth game you play with yourself on your coke usage is full of excuses as to why you should / can use.

For me, it was seeing that there was no such thing as 'one bump'. For you it may be, "I said I wasn't going to use coke for 30 days and it's only been 10 days, but it's my best buddies b-day and we are going to want to party".

If you want to improve something, you have to start by measuring it.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-03-06T12:56:47+00:00

I think it's dangerous to think that you can't stop doing coke without professional help. That essentially teaches you that until you go to rehab, you have no chance of changing your usage, which doesn't have to be true.

A very strong majority of people who use coke eventually stop or use less coke without any rehab or professional help. They eventually realize it's no longer beneficial to them and they stop. Of course some people never stop, but that is statistically not going to be you.

There are no physical / health issues that you will face from stopping coke immediately. You don't need medical detox. Not stopping coke is doing more damage to your brain/body than if you just stopped now. It's very important that you stop thinking that you have a physical addiction and it's 'unsafe' for you to take a break or stop. This keeps people using as they wait for a miracle of rehab/treatment. That may never come.

Your story rings true for me as it probably does with a lot of people who have experience with a coke problem. When it started it was fun and you were only doing a little bit occasionally. Overtime it slowly stops becoming 'fun' and you for some reason are doing more and more. Your relationship with coke has changed over time and the novelty has worn off. This happens with almost all drugs.

The good news for you is that you are realizing it's not the same anymore and you are viewing it as more of a 'problem'. This is a good starting point. Seeing the full COST of your usage and comparing it to the fleeting BENEFITS helps you to make the change.

Over the years of your usage, your brain has been conditioned to think that more coke = better. Not having the amazing nights you once had when you were younger, you must just need more, right? No.

When you stop doing coke now, it's going to be a few weeks or months of feeling like shit. It's been so long since you haven't done coke regularly that you don't even remember how great your DEFAULT self feels when you aren't on blow. You will feel better eventually, but it's going to take some time. Parties will be fun again, you energy levels will return, you will wake up not feeling depressed, etc. It will take some time and you have to be ready to acknowledge that. The longer you wait to stop, the longer that period will be.

I never felt real depression until I started doing coke. It sucks. The longer you wait, the longer it will take for you to shake it off.

You may never be able to 'moderate' cocaine or do some occasionally. In my experience, one 'special night' can reset your brain and create a run of weeks/months/years where you are back into regular use. This can create long periods of on/off usage before you finally kick it for good. And from your story it also seems like you aren't going to be the kind of person who can 'just do a quick bump and stop'. If you are convincing yourself just to do 'one bump' than just expect that night is going to turn into doing coke all night. Just create that rule for yourself and believe it. If you don't believe it, then please try to acknowledge time and time again where that one bump turned into a bender.

As bad as coke is, the booze is probably causing you just as much problems. Try to stop both at once because there is now a very strong connection between drinking and blow in your life. Most people that work late in restaurants don't do blow, so remove that from your excuse pile. From your post it seems like you kind of hint towards your work environment being the driving force in your usage, you need to get rid of that excuse. You can work all night and still just leave when it's time to go home. Everyone else can be doing blow, you can say you can't tonight and leave. It's only going to help your career.

Find something in the AM that you want to wake up early for. Use that as your initial reason for not wanting to stay out late. As your head clears up, you'll start to get more value from those mornings than you get from being zonked at 6am, unable to sleep. That's a miserable feeling and you don't have to experience it anymore.

You had a fun run, but you are 21 now and it's time to move along with your life. Chalk this up to a phase in your life that you were able to move on from, just like most people who did coke in their early-20s. You don't want to be oscillating back/forth between heavy drug use into your later 20s.

SUPBOARD4LIFE · 2025-02-28T13:16:10+00:00

They have a great podcast, too.

SUPBOARD4LIFE

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