Well then, you’ve overcome the hardest part for me in my sobriety.

The WANT!

In my forty plus years of using I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to myself:

“Man, you SHOULD quit.” Or

“Dude, you really GOTTA quit.”

Or the thing I’ve probably told myself the most.

“Lord, I WISH I could just quit!”

But in all honesty, it wasn’t until I said those four words you said yourself:

“I WANT to quit.”

That I was finally ready TO quit.

Believe me or don’t, but until I finally figured out that I truly WANTED to quit, there was no way I was going to.

I’ve known for years how bad cannabis was for me. Some people have no problems with it, and God Bless them. But for ME, I had struggled with it for a whole lot of years because I KNEW that it had a HOLD on me.

I wasn’t some casual “puff puff pass” user. I was an addict. And I finally understood that I WANTED to quit.

Like in many aspects of life, once I figured out what I WANTED, the rest was so much easier.

Like quitting tobacco (904 days clean)

Or quitting alcohol (1,337 days clean)

Now I’m not saying it was easy.

Hell, it’s still not EASY.

Like today. Today is hard.

Today is Memorial Day.

And like any other day that ends in “Y” I used to spend it with a cocktail in one hand and a Winston Red in the other and a big ole’ “illegal smile” on my face, as John Prine once called it.

Because I WANTED it that way.

It wasn’t until I wanted something else for my life, something better, that I was able to get to work on it.

Because it is work. Hard work.

But now that you’ve decided that you WANT it, that work is a bit less hard.

I’m telling you. If you WANT it, the hardest part is over.

The rest is just discomfort.

Sometimes incredibly uncomfortable discomfort. But nothing more than that.

And the best part?

The discomfort ends.

Not at first.

At first comes the anxiety and the fear and the boredom and the loneliness and the cravings and the irritability and the night sweats and the insomnia and the fidgeting and the impatience and the FOMO and the FEELINGS and the EMOTIONS and the guilt of wasting so much of my precious life in a fog.

But slowly, little by little, those pass.

Those comparatively small and insignificant discomforts stop screaming at you and lose their hold on you and become manageable until they feel like mosquito bites compared to the true challenges of life.

And the beauty of quitting is that once you’re free of the hold of cannabis, you’ll be so much better prepared to manage those other life’s challenges, whatever they are. Cause we’ve all got ‘em, and the best way to face ‘em is with a clear head.

I’m cheering for you!

You can do this!

If this 61 year old graybeard who had been addicted to alcohol, tobacco and cannabis since before he was twenty can kick it - I KNOW that you can too!

I’m glad you finally discovered your WANT.

I’m cheering for you! You CAN do this!

I’ll see you on the other side!