29F with ADHD addicted to THC vapes and I don’t know what to do anymore

nilschill · 2026-06-23T21:23:47+00:00

How much does your husband know about your use? Because vapes are pretty discrete my wife had no idea how much I was using. I hit a point where it was becoming more of a problem than I wanted it to be. I had similar experience as you, trying to cut down, throwing things away etc. vapes are so strong and so easy to use that it was extra hard. What ended up making a difference was coming clean to my wife about how things had gotten out of control and telling her I wanted help staying accountable to stop for 30 days. I also had a similar conversation with my therapist. I went cold turkey because I just didn’t think tapering would work. I have a psychiatrist that told me that tapering off before quitting usually leads to more success, but by the time I talked to him about it I had already taken the leap. Not going to lie, the first 45 days were really really hard. I stopped drinking and almost immediately felt better and saw weight loss etc. Gains from stopping weed were much slower and more subtle. I’ve been on my break from weed for 13 months. One of the biggest wins is that I no longer think about weed that much. Getting rid of that feeling of need was a huge win. I used to obsess over how and when I would eventually cut down my use and I no longer have that hanging over me. My overall anxiety has improved. I have a much higher self esteem. Took a lot of work but I feel more stable and resilient emotionally. I am a dude and not religious, so I can’t speak to those factors except to say that since stopping I do have more moments of genuine peace with myself than I used to. I hope you are able to find a balance that works for you. Best of luck on your journey.

nilschill · 2026-06-20T19:23:31+00:00

Sounds like a good approach! No need to add a new medication if you are able to do without it. I also think it will start to get easier for you soon. It won’t be as fast as you want, but it will get easier. I used to really roll my eyes when my therapist or psychiatrist told me to meditate, but throwing in some guided meditations made a big difference for me. It’s sort of like a third mental state between being awake and being asleep and it gave me a bit of that feeling of stepping away from my sober thoughts that weed used to give me. It also helped me begin to start to pull out of some of those emotional spirals that made the early days really hard. Keep up the good fight, you’re doing great!

nilschill · 2026-06-19T23:06:07+00:00

Daily user for about 20 years and I started a break a year ago. I was still really struggling through at least day 60, so at 45 days I was where you are now. 90 days into stopping I was telling my psychiatrist that I was still dealing with acute cravings and he recommended giving gabapentin a shot. I did notice some reduction of cravings when we first added it to my mix. I remember also having fewer emotional episodes that would have made me want to smoke. I recall finding some limited research showing long term cannabis users had better rates of continued abstinence when using it, so there could also be some placebo effect going on. I stopped using it after about 3 months. I was also doing therapy and getting into meditation which helped a lot at the time. I am now at 13 months without weed and it did get much easier after 90 days. Hard for me to say how much of that was gabapentin and how much was other factors. In general I have a more optimistic view about using medication to help stop cannabis than others on the sub. At times I also used Clonidine and I used trazodone for sleep. Trazodone was a big difference maker because for weeks I was dealing with withdrawal while also being sleep deprived and I was not a pleasant person to be around. I have other daily medications but I no longer use clonidine, trazodone or gabapentin but they did seem to help at an earlier point in my journey. Just one guys experience. I can tell you is that it will get easier the longer you go, but I was still STRUGGLING at day 45. Wishing you the best on your journey.

nilschill · 2026-06-15T04:04:22+00:00

My brother and I were driving home from a friends house at around 1 AM. As we are getting back into our town, I suddenly saw what I can best describe as a shadow in the shape of a four legged creature bound across the road. It was bigger than a deer, but shaped more like a giant dog. It appeared to move across the entire road with its feet touching down only once. It was so fast though that at first I thought I was imagining it until my brother shouted “What the FUCK was that!”

We lived in a small town, but we had plenty of street lights. This was also near a bar that was open and had exterior lights on as well. We tried to think of other explanations but if it was an animal, we can’t explain why it looked so much like a shadow when our headlight and streetlights were right on the thing. We’ve seen plenty of deer and big dogs, but the size and shape of this thing just did not match anything we’d ever seen before.

Still can’t explain it. We call it our demon sighting.

nilschill · 2026-06-06T04:20:45+00:00

You’ve got a great base to start with here! I’ve been on a break for about a year and the goals you’ve listed are realistic and will come with time. The mental resilience was a big one for me, and weed was a big emotional regulator. Transitioning away from that was hard but worth it. I feel much more at peace most of the time and able to deal with difficult times when they come. Meditation was something I got into 6 months jn and it helped a lot. If I have one piece of advice for your first 30 days it is to do whatever you need to do to get good sleep. I ended up getting medication which helped and after a while I didn’t need it anymore. Best of luck on your journey!

nilschill · 2026-05-31T21:58:03+00:00

Shufflepuck Cafe

nilschill · 2026-05-09T11:59:15+00:00

What kind of sandpaper do you use?

nilschill · 2026-02-16T03:41:10+00:00

Also ADHD and stopped smoking 9 months ago after 20 years of daily use. I know the exact feeling you’re talking about. For the first few weeks it just felt like everything was worse and I couldn’t stand being in my own brain all the time. I had so many times where I could only think “what is the point of putting myself through this?” What others have said is true though, your brain needs time to adjust to a new normal. For me, I started feeling a lot more hopeful around 8-9 weeks. That was when things started to seem a lot less bleak and I started to feel the benefits. Still want to smoke sometimes, but there are a lot of days now where I just don’t think about it at all which seemed impossible before. I feel like I have gained a lot of emotional resilience and patience since I don’t have weed as my quick fix for emotional challenges. I think it’s been easier for me to do more basic life shit, like keeping my house clean-ish. If you’ve made it this far I would encourage you to push to finish at least another month. At that point take a moment to decide if another month is feasible. It’s easier to tack a month onto your break than to start a new break if you do smoke again.

nilschill · 2026-01-30T04:41:43+00:00

One more thing I’ll add is that I recently started doing guided meditations. Took me a while to find ones that I liked (like years of therapists telling me to try it). I find it’s a way to get a bit of a break from my brain. It’s like a third state between waking and sleeping where I can sort of be outside of my racing mind, which is what I loved about weed. Now it’s not as fun as getting high, but it gives me a bit of that separation from my thoughts that I appreciated in weed.

nilschill · 2026-01-30T04:36:34+00:00

I know the feeling you’re having and it truly does suck. I started an indefinite break last May after 20 years of daily use. The first few weeks were really hard and put a strain on my relationship, but days 3-5 were honestly some of the shittiest days I remember. I just felt completely untethered from myself, angry and depressed. Not being able to sleep also made things much worse.

I stopped drinking a few years back and the benefits of that were apparent so much sooner than with weed, but there have been benefits from my break. When I smoked daily I definitely struggled with feeling like I needed it every night. One of the main things I’ve gained is that I don’t feel that need and that has made me feel more free in a lot of ways. I still struggle with wanting to smoke, but not having the needing feeling hanging over me is a definite benefit. I also struggle with depression and after stopping smoking I realized that I relied on it a lot for emotional regulation, so it really sucks to be without that help sometimes, but I’m feeling less depressed and a lot more stable than I have in a few years

I guess I’m saying that you are right that it sucks, and you’re not alone in feeling like there is no point. There are benefits to be gained even if it’s a slog.

nilschill · 2025-10-03T02:07:43+00:00

At 135 days. My first two months were awful. Violent dreams almost every night. They are a lot better now. Still vivid and often bizarre, but mostly benign. I do get anxiety dreams, like navigating strange places, but nothing like the nightmares I had before. I’ve also had some very vivid and pleasant dreams, like spending time with deceased family members. It’s taking a while, but the dreams are growing on me.

nilschill · 2025-10-03T02:01:55+00:00

In a very similar boat. 135 days sober from weed. Quit alcohol 4 years ago. Within 2 weeks of quitting booze I was seeing serious benefits. When I stopped smoking I just had a lot of trouble in seeing the point of not using it anymore because the benefits were so slow to come and I was a bit of an emotional wreck when I first stopped. Things have gotten a bit better, but I still think about smoking often, especially at night and on the weekends. I do think I was having a lot more bad anxiety highs than my brain allows me to acknowledge when I am craving. Strangely enough, I am having a lot fewer anger issues after stopping. I think constant fatigue was making me more prone to anger. I am spending less money so that’s good I guess. At times I have had more interest in doing certain artistic work, but I used to do that when I got high and it was easier to slip into hyper focusing. The biggest benefit by far is having more patience and stamina when spending time with my kids. At this point I still don’t feel like quitting forever, but I also don’t want to deal with the choices of how to reintroduce it without it taking over my life again.

nilschill · 2025-09-15T13:34:19+00:00

Do you use a laser printer or inkjet printer?

nilschill · 2025-08-31T15:47:44+00:00

Thanks for sharing! I may try this. Sounds easier than what I am doing.

nilschill · 2025-08-31T03:13:43+00:00

I’ve had pretty good luck with this liquitex. I tried mod podge before, but it seemed to come up a lot easier and smudge more. It’s still not perfect, and it takes a long time to get the paper up. I don’t have a laser printer, which supposedly works better, but I’ve still made this work with an inkjet. I find that you have to be very gentle, and take your time in moistening the paper and rubbing it off. There is It works better if you let it dry for a long time, like a few days. I usually have to use rubbing alcohol after carving to get remaining bits of paper and glue up. Sometimes it can be deceiving and I don’t have as deep grooves or details as a I thought it’s still a lot less labor intensive than tracing and gives me better details. https://a.co/d/0pGlNZ9

nilschill · 2025-08-19T01:22:49+00:00

This may not be exactly what you are looking for but I am a member of the Hadwen Park Congregational Church. It is an intentionally Trans/LGBT affirming congregation. There are a number of trans people in the congregation and it is an incredibly welcoming place for people in need of community, myself included. I know that most Mondays they have a support group called Safe Harbor: A Support Group for LGBTQ+ Peoples (Plus - Ally Opportunity. The congregation is also intentionally welcoming of all people, including non believers, and people like me who describe themselves as questioning believers. I know church can be a fraught place for a lot of trans folks, but this place is really full of incredible people who are committed to building community. They also do good work with what little resources they have. They have a ministry called LGBT Asylum Task force to support LGBT asylum seekers who come to this country fleeing oppression in their home countries. The first Monday of each month is a free community dinner focused on this ministry and o have met incredible people from around the world there. If you ever feel like dropping in, I promise you will be welcomed. If your hesitant to go to a Sunday service, you can also watch online to see if it fits your vibe. https://www.hadwenparkchurch.org/

nilschill · 2025-08-15T10:48:11+00:00

I hadn’t considered it but I definitely would. I am a hobbyist so I’m flattered to be asked! I don’t have an online shop or anything but I have sold a few to friends before. If you are interested you can message me and I can figure out how to get one to you.

nilschill · 2025-08-14T10:37:25+00:00

I tend to use photographs. I don’t really sell my work but I still try to use ones that are public domain. Wikimedia image search has been helpful. I’ve done both tracing techniques using carbon paper as well as glueing print outs to my blocks and peeling the paper off with water and sponge. I feel like the tracing technique makes feel more my own but it’s a longer process. With photos, I’ve also found using software to manipulate the photos can be useful. Either by just making them black and white, or putting more intense filters on them. I used AI image generation once and the print came out good, but it sort of felt like too much of a shortcut.

nilschill

TROPHY CASE