Weed slowly took over my life over a period about 2 years long. I had managed to stay away from drugs in general for the first 21 years of my life, however after my brother started smoking weed I was naturally more interested and did not think it would hurt to try. It started off amazing; it made me less anxious, reduced my anger and enhanced every activity I could think off. I suddenly felt betrayed, betrayed by the government, my mother and everyone else who had warned me essentially that drugs are bad and that you would become addicted after trying something once and decided from then on I would make my own mind up when it came to trying different drugs.

From that point onward I smoked on occasion, maybe once or twice a month, after about 6 months of this I upped it to smoking every weekend to relax and wind down after a week of studying. This was the point I should of stayed at, it was at this point that weed was a positive addition to my life, I’m not a big drinker and never have been and weed really allowed me the release I needed.

Of course now being a “real stoner” it was only natural that I wanted to educate myself and expand my knowledge on the subject. Multiple source’s (I do not know how credible they are) were all giving me the same information, that weed was not addictive, you could smoke every day and be fine and that weed even had health benefits.

Now i’m not saying this is reason I started to smoke everyday. I started smoking daily because my father was dying of cancer, I hated the degree I was studying for and I was bored, I had no real career goal, no direction in my life despite the opportunities being given to me. In short I was depressed and anxious and I realized I had felt this throughout my entire teenage years without knowing what it was and therefore didn’t deal with those problem. Weed and drugs in general offered me an escape from that hell of a reality and allowed me to feel like a normal human being for a change, however they were an easy and temporary fix that were soon magnifying the depression and anxiety rather than subduing them.

Once your in the cycle of smoking all day every day, you need the cannabis to just feel like yourself again, the you who smoke’s weed every day however is different to who you were before the weed. I became anti-social, keeping up relationships with people is really just too much effort when you can just sit in your room and puff away, I felt myself slowly becoming dumber, I get severe brain fog making it hard to concentrate on anything that require’s real brain power. Not only that but I completely zone out when people talk to me without realizing, It can be hard to remember certain words and to just talk normally in flowing sentences, even when writing this post its hard for me to collect my thoughts and to get them on paper. The effects of a chronic cannabis habit are many and can change from person to person and at some point if you’re not happy with your life and you are smoking every day then you have to consider the possibility that smoking weed is actually making things worse for you now.

It has been just over a year since I came out of denial and after a few attempts at quitting, nothing has changed apart from cutting down slightly but still smoking multiple times a day. The thing is I never really wanted to give it up properly, even thought I knew it was fucking me up, It was still worth it to me deep down. Now though I feel that if I don’t do something about it, i’ll end up taking my own life eventually. This attempt is different however, this time I don’t want the weed, this time I have my partner who is currently at the same point as I am and we want to start living our real lives together and so I know that this time i’ll make it.

Just for the record, I don’t think cannabis itself is bad, people can smoke frequently and still be successful and happy, there are so many examples of this. There are even people that can smoke every day and be fine. However abusing weed and smoking weed are two different things, I am sure those people have their lives on track and are not using weed to hide from their problems. This is just my Journey of gaining back control.