With the expanding legalization of cannabis across the US and world, it’s imperative that prevention specialists continue to educate youth, families, and communities that not only can marijuana use be harmful, but life can be good, even joyous, without the use of marijuana to get high.
Focus on the Positive
Sadly, prevention, health and medical professionals don’t spend as much time on presenting the benefits of living drug-free and healthy as we do on portraying the many negative health and social outcomes of substance use and misuse.
A focus on the positive aspects of avoiding recreational marijuana use is needed, particularly regular and heavy use, which leads to addiction and increases the chances of experiencing detrimental life effects.
While searching online for how to enjoy life without cannabis, I stumbled on a Quora (a Q & A website) post titled: What are some tips for enjoying life without marijuana?
Reflective Personal Experiences
While some comments on this website promoted marijuana use, several others were thoughtful and insightful.
It’s these latter types of reflective comments based on personal experiences that can fill a gap between scientific knowledge about addiction and commonly uninformed and misinformed public opinions.
Guido Gesh, a veteran cannabis user, shared his personal experience with the problem of smoking cannabis on a regular basis and the need to enjoy life’s non-mind-altering opportunities on Quora.
Guido posted:
After years of smoking myself and looking at all the people around me smoking weed (from now on “blowing”) in Amsterdam… I will be bold to state that there are no happy blowers in general. Apart from the exception to the rule…every daily blower ends up miserable and smoking more and more and more to get the same but never to be experienced again effect. Only after a detox and cold turky it will have the best effect again like it was when one started blowing. This vicious circle is hard to break and many give up and use the “it is not that bad” excuse to lead a normal life without anything else than tv and weed…. and even that will not end well. Get help and quit…. If one is unable to use it recreatively (which is 95%) one has to take action to get one’s life back. There is a great truth in Alan Watts words on any drugs: “When you got the message, hang up the phone”.
Enjoy life first by going out in nature…at least once a day…also go and get tired by sporting or running. Get to know your body again…then find new friends or rekindle old relationships….take it one day at a time. Bingewatch a series you always watched stoned and see that actually every episode is NEW! You can do it! (my italics).
Anonymous posted:
Meditate!!!!!!
It sounds really silly, but 100% honestly meditation will absolutely help you with this. You can learn to access that headspace that marijuana gives you, with time dilation to some extent, by practicing meditation.
A lot of people do this after having a few bad experiences with psychedelics - with some work you can pretty much live in that space without the fear of the uncontrollable bad trip or the need for the drug. (edited for brevity)
Jaimit Shah said:
Walking or jogging or running (in free time)
Take up an activity if incase you don't have a busy schedule 'coz all these years I have seen the people who smoke up eventually might not be having a tiring schedule.. one that makes them go to sleep the moment they fall in bed.. Please focus over career. (edited for brevity)
Conclusion
Listening carefully to the stories and advice of people who have struggled with marijuana misuse and addiction and their recommendations for enjoying life without needing to get high can be instructive.
Insights from personal experiences can help add to our knowledge from addiction and prevention science and offer hope and guidance for living a healthy and happy life.