Say No To Pot » how I quit marijuana

Drug Rehab – Part 1

admin — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 04:21:29 +0000

I was admitted to drug rehab at Ridgeview in the suburbs of Atlanta, GA on January 4th, 1996. First, I was placed into cottage “C” for detoxification and drug testing. I told the staff that I had not drank any alcohol or used any drugs besides marijuana in the last 3 months. They definitely did not believe me because most addicts are known to lie about their drug use to other people. I figured what was there to lie about now, it was over and I had to quit.

I recall meeting a few different people in cottage “C”. These individuals were people that I would strike up conversations with during outside smoke breaks. Everyone, I mean everyone smoked cigarettes. I noticed that my cigarette smoking greatly increased immediately upon stopping my drug use. I think it primarily had to do with the strong obsession toward marijuana and trying to make-up for it. One thing that I remember about one of these smoke breaks was talking to an individual who told me the doctors found out that he was bipolar. I was beside myself when I heard this information. I was a psychology major at a university, so I had a little bit of knowledge on the subject. I thought to myself that it would be terrible if they found something like that wrong me.

After spending 24 hours in cottage “C”, I was moved into the Half-way house. This is the place where you go after they feel you are not going to hurt yourself (or others) and that you have successfully been detoxified from all drugs. Treatment centers really have to be careful especially for alcoholism. Alcoholics can die from withdrawal if not treated properly. It was known in the early days of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) for sponsors to care liquor with them to keep the new comers from dying from withdrawal.

Once at the halfway house, I was settled into a room with another individual. I can not remember who it was to this date. However; he seemed pretty nice like most of the other people there. It didn’t take long to realize that a lot of wealthy people including doctors and lawyers were also there with me trying to stop using various drugs. I recall that they had 2 group meetings everyday in the halfway house. One meeting was early in the morning around 8:00AM and the other one was in the afternoon around 4:00PM. Each one of these meetings consisted of everyone telling how they felt that day. But, before each person began to talk, he or she would state whether or not they were an alcoholic or an addict. Some people even stated that they were both. When it was my turn to speak for the first time, I stated that I was a Marijuana addict.

In between circle based meetings, we had classroom like schedules. Each class lasted about 1 hour and were instructed by different teachers (drug counselors). For the first week, I was pretty cheerful and answered questions while a lot of people made fun of how slow I talked. To me, I did not seem to speak in slow motion, but everyone else clearly noticed and made fun of me from time to time. This obviously was an effect of my long term use of marijuana. But, it wasn’t just my speaking that was impaired. Marijuana had actually slowed down my thought processes. This was one reason why I had been unable to finish my 4 year college degree in psychology. Honestly, my mind was not nearly as sharp as it was just 5 or 6 years earlier. Marijuana had turned me into a slow thinking, slow talking person. These problems along with a few others like the inability to read well because my eyes lost focus quickly would continue to cause me problems for the next 2 or 3 years. Click to Continue ->>

Drug Rehab – Part 3

admin — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 08:25:53 +0000

The person in charge of the halfway house at RidgeView was Susan. Susan was a very strong individual and very commanding. She definitely had the halfway house under control for me and the other participants. One of the things that I noticed early on was they wanted you to do chores while you were in the halfway house. The thinking behind having us perform chores was that they felt most alcoholics and addicts were being taken care of by another individual. This enabling of an alcoholic/addict was something that the treatment center wanted to eradicate as quickly as possible. One of the problems that I noticed with drug rehab is the fact that everybody was categorized into one big group. Unfortunately, there is probably no other way to run a treatment center than to use this method. The main problem with using this of course is that everyone is different. Since everyone is different it makes treating alcoholism and drug addiction that much harder.

Most of the people in the treatment center that I encountered had bad personal relationships with their family members and possibly their siblings. The alcoholic/addict was responsible for these bad relationships 9 times out of 10. However; the individual that the alcoholic or addict married or was in a relationship with was also typically making the problem worse. Again, this problem was made worse by the enabling that was taking place by the people surrounding the alcoholic/addict (family members, friends, siblings, etc.). Enabling is when you provide money or some sort of assistance to the alcoholic/addict to allow him or her to easily continue using drugs/drinking alcohol. This enabling is prevalent in most alcoholic and addict lifestyles. Because my drug of choice was marijuana, enabling really wasn’t an issue with me. Marijuana is relatively cheap and the type of job that I had at the time allowed me to pay for my habit without placing a financial burden on me or someone else. This may or may not be the case with other marijuana users. If you find yourself in a rehab facility like I found myself, just keep in mind that it’s impossible for the doctors and counselors to run the rehab without putting everyone into one group and labeling everyone in a certain way.

During the first week in the halfway house my parents were brought in for meetings with me and the other counselors. They were told about how they could possibly be enabling me to continue using drugs and drinking alcohol. Again to this day, I really don’t feel that I was being enabled. If I was being enabled it was not to a great degree. However; given the circumstances my parents were eager to listen to what the counselors had to say as far as their possible enabling part was concerned. So to summarize; part of the first week in the halfway house consisted of meetings with the drug counselors individually and some meetings where my parents attended. The other thing that was taking place during my stay at the halfway house was a very organized daily curriculum. This curriculum consisted of waking up at 7:30AM drinking a cup of coffee, smoking as many cigarettes as I possibly could and going to my first class by 8:00AM. The class starting at 8:00AM and most of the other classes throughout the day consisted of small group conversations between me and five are six other individuals (other addicts) and a given drug counselor. I quickly realized during the short meetings with various drug counselors (in these small classrooms) that the other individuals at the rehab facility had problems with relationships that I had not experienced. Again, I really feel that this goes back to my age of 26 and the fact that I didn’t have a wife or any children.
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Drug Rehab – Part 4

admin — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 09:15:06 +0000

The first week at drug rehab consisted of this daily routine of going to meetings in small groups with counselors, as well as meeting with family members and drug counselors. In the evenings after these meetings with various drug counselors and possibly a short meeting with a psychiatrist earlier in the day, we attended AA meetings. We all had sign-off cards in which we were supposed to hand to the person chairing the meeting after that meeting was over. The chairperson would sign-off that we had attended that AA meeting. Everybody was instructed to go to at least one AA meeting every day while in rehab. However the treatment center was really unable to control what you did in the evenings. Some of us, (me included) decided that we didn’t need to go to an AA meeting every night. Again, this first week in rehab I was still just referring to myself as a marijuana addict. Truly, I was in denial that I was an alcoholic as well. One evening in particular I and my new found friend Jay decided that it would be fun if we went to a local bar and had just one beer and then attend a movie. We had made this decision while driving back from the local cigar shop where Jay bought some cigars.
For whatever reason, we needed to stop back by the halfway house before going out that night. Once we entered the halfway house some other addicts spotted me and Jay and insisted that we go with them to an AA meeting, because they knew neither one of us had been to a meeting in a few days. This was the first of what I would refer to as “strange events” that happened to me in early recovery. If it had not been for the other people in the halfway house that evening, Jay and I would have gone to the movies and would have relapsed. After attending the AA meeting that night I realized what a big mistake I almost made. Alcoholics and addicts must refrain from the using drugs and alcohol. Any use of alcohol or other drug typically will cause the craving effect to reoccur in that person. The craving phenomenon is so strong that an alcoholic/addict will usually migrate his way back to his drug of choice. This migration may take some time. In fact, you might be able to get away with drinking alcohol instead of smoking pot for a couple months. But sooner or later you will find yourself using your drug of choice again. The main problem I faced in early recovery was realizing that I was also an alcoholic and could not drink or use any drugs again. This “almost relapse” was caused by a denial. Denial is not believing that you have an alcohol or drug problem. Denial is something that you will find prevalent in almost every alcoholic or addict in the beginning of their recovery. Denial in itself is probably the worst part of the disease. Denial is probably the hardest and most difficult thing for the drug counselors, the family members, and the psychiatrist to arrest in the mind of the alcoholic and or addict. If it wasn’t for denial, alcoholism and drug addiction would be much easier to treat. At the treatment center, I learned that addiction itself had a specific goal. The goal of addiction “the disease” is to kill the individual in whatever possible way it can. The killing of the individual can be accomplished by the disease in so many ways. The disease might cause a person to overdose on drugs, the disease might cause the individual to get into a car wreck, the disease could even cause the person to even commit suicide.

The reason people have such a hard time stopping is because of denial. Once the addict or alcoholic can get past denial (and want to stop) he or she is on their way to recovery. For me, the denial was also very strong. The type of denial that I experienced felt like a war going on inside my head. To combat this war I used some of the early sayings that I’ve learned in AA meetings. The one I used the most was: “fake it until you make it”. I would continue to use “fake it until you make it” for quite some time (maybe 6 months) after leaving the treatment center.
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Before I quit – Part 1

admin — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:55:02 +0000

This is a story of how drugs, particularly pot (Marijuana) came very close to ruining my life:

I was born to a good middle class family in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia in 1970. I was a one of 4 children and was raised modestly, but was loved and never abused. My parents were Christians and made sure that all of the children attended church every Sunday until age 16. Once you turned 16 years old and could drive, church became optional.
I know now that I had the potential and personality to become an addict from the beginning. As a young boy I experimented with alcohol and tobacco. I thought it was cool and felt it impressed my friends if I did so. I took my first drink when I was in the 6th grade. I believe that I was 11 years old. I did not get drunk the first time, but did get a buzz. I thought it was a lot of fun and wanted to do it again. The next time I drank was in the 7th grade and got really drunk. I was at a friend’s house and we got into his parents liquor cabinet. I completely blacked out and was told the next day that I was out of control and he was surprised that I didn’t wake up his parents. I also remember feeling very sick the next morning. I mean really sick.
Well, the drinking continued off and on until my senior year in high school. By then, I was known as the guy who liked to party. Which at the time I thought was really cool. I didn’t get into any trouble, but I definitely did plenty of things that I should not have been doing. Before graduating from High School we had a night where “Silly Awards” were given out to the seniors. I received the award “Most likely to buy a house next to a Miller Genuine Draft brewing plant”. My senior year in high school consisted of going to parties every weekend and even on weekdays. Honestly, I was very happy that year and still feel that it was the happiest part of my life. Soon that would all start to change. Click to Continue –>

Before I quit – Part 2

admin — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:56:35 +0000

High School ended and my friends went off to college. It was strange, because they had been talking about college our entire senior year. I never even seemed to think too much about what I was going to do. However; I did take the SAT and received a score high enough to attend a local community college. At the time, I do not feel that I was an alcoholic or addict yet. I was really still in the early stages. I went to college and finished my freshman year as scheduled. I was really proud of myself for this accomplishment. However; I started hanging out with a new friend “Rick”, who I knew from High School. Rick was a good friend but also liked to drink and do drugs. Mainly, his drug of choice was cocaine. Rick was able to get us a small quantity of cocaine to take on a trip with us to Cancun Mexico. By this time, I smoked a little bit of Marijuana off and on, but was not completely hooked. Again, I do not feel that I was an addict yet.
I have to admit that cocaine was a really interesting drug. To me, I found it highly addictive (I could feel the itch for more after doing it) but not worth the money. I should also mention that I was constantly going to the gym to try to improve my physical appear for women. Being a skinny kid, I was not interested in anything that caused me to lose weight because again I wanted to be “Buff”. With all of that being said, I will still never forget the first time I really got high off of cocaine. I was in Cancun Mexico and did a few lines before going down to the bar. At the bar, I sat down and drank 5 or 6 draft beers and walked away sober. That’s when I realized why it was called the party drug. You could get completely blitzed and do a few lines and were immediately sober again. But, I would never become addicted to cocaine as you will later see because of my desire not to lose weight.
Time went by and I started working at pizza delivery business. I started when I was 21 years old and was still a student at my local college. So, delivering pizzas was a part time job for me. Around this time I started smoking pot regularly. I would say by the time I was 22, that I smoked it every night. By the time I was 23 I was stoned all of the time. If I wasn’t stoned then I wanted to be. My first finance broke off our relationship at age 23. This was a blessing for me to say the least. However; I could not stop smoking pot no matter what happened in my life. Around this time I went to the doctor for some reason and he prescribed me an anti-depressant. He felt that I was depressed. Indeed he was correct and it made a huge difference in the way I felt about myself. Even though I was smoking pot all of the time, I felt so much better once I was given something to help with my depression.
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Before I quit – Part 3

admin — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:55:57 +0000

By age 25, I was really addicted to Marijuana. Anyone who tells you that Marijuana is not addictive is a complete liar. This was my drug of choice hands down. In fact, at the age of 25 I really didn’t drink that much or do any other drugs regularly. My one and only drug was Marijuana. Well, I tried and tried to quit on my own. My little brother who lived with me at the time was constantly trying to get me to quit. He said that he tried to be “Mean”, then he tried to be “Nice” and no matter what he did I kept on smoking pot. I used to write notes on my dresser at night when I went to bed title “DSP”. This meant, Don’t Smoke Pot. I lived in a garage apartment behind my parent’s house and did not want them to accidentally see the full writing, so I created this short abbreviation. I cannot tell you how many times I put this note on my dresser at night. It just didn’t matter; the mental obsession to smoke pot the next day was just too strong. No matter how hard I tried, I could not stop smoking pot.
Well, you can probably imagine what happened next. That little brother of mine had given up trying to help me in his own little way. So he finally told my parents about my problem. I woke up one morning to a phone call from my parent’s home (about 100 yards from our little apartment). I believe my sister was the one that called me that morning. She told us that we were all going to the doctor for an issue regarding my mother. Well, I gathered my things wallet, keys, half and once of pot, etc. and went to this doctor for my “Mothers” problem.
I noticed as we were pulling into this place that the name looked a little familiar. “Ridgeview” I thought to myself, why is my mother going to see a doctor out here. Of course, the entire family was with me and we all sat down in a circle with this doctor. The first thing out of his mouth was “You must be Steven”. That’s when it hit me that I had been intervened. Oh yes, just like the famous Drug Intervention show on TV today. Everyone went around telling me all these things about how I needed to quit. I should mention that my parents never even knew I had a problem until my little brother told them. They were absolutely clueless naive parents. Anyway, this circle of absolute humiliation and crying continued. The thing that still makes me a little mad to this day was that “I would have gone if they would have just asked me in the first place”. However; my parents were not willing to take any chances, so it went down as described and of course I went right into Drug Rehab “for a couple of days”.

At the time, I thought “How will they fix me?” I had thoughts like maybe they were going to just hold me there for a while and give me some medicine. I really didn’t know what was going to happen. The first day consisted of staying in cottage “C”. Cottage “C” was really for everyone including the mental patients that were entering the facility. I had to stay there for 24 hours. I guess you could say that it was also the detoxify room. Yes, on January 4, 1996 I was admitted to into drug rehab. This is where my story of recovery begins. I’m going to continue adding to my recovery story on a regular basis. Right HERE….
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Drug Rehab – Part 5

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:28:10 +0000

As I mentioned in my previous article, I was using “fake it until you make it” in the beginning of my recovery. The next day at the halfway house (after almost going out and drinking with Jay), I told Susan the halfway house manager that I’d almost drank the night before. The response I received from Susan was not what I had expected at all. She was pleased and responded with something like “You are telling on your disease”. Jay realized that Susan was pleased and immediately confessed the same thing to her. This incident in itself really ended my friendship with Jay. I guess Jay felt like I had betrayed him in some way by telling Susan about our little plan. Jay was pretty bad off because he was addicted to both coke and heroin. He told me that he did so much coke during the day that he needed the heroin to go to bed at night.

My daily life continued at the halfway house and I really had not shown any anger up until this point. One of the very common actions for an alcoholic or addict is to get very angry at the beginning of recovery. This anger is caused by resentments (things that happened to us in the past coming to the surface). In my case, I did not suffer from any psychical or mental abuse caused by family members. However; these types of events are very common with a lot of addicts. Unfortunately, I found that the counselors were forced to lump everyone into one group. This group or stereotype consisted of a broken home where other family members were drinking and/or using drugs, enabling or even abusing us. We were all also considered to be untrustworthy with all regards to drug and alcohol use. Addicts and alcoholics are known to lie about almost anything related to their drug use. (I used to think that I was not hurting anyone else, so it did not matter if I lied about how much pot I smoked). We were regularly drug tested because the counselors and doctors had a hard time telling if you were lying or not.

Even though I did not have very many family related issues, (primarily because my parents did not even know that I was smoking pot until about 2 weeks prior) I did have a lot of resentments toward other people. Some of these things consisted of events that had taken place in my childhood between me and other friends. More or less, I held grudges toward other people and I was not able to let go of them like a “normal person” would be able to do.

I noticed early on that the halfway house was a money based business. This made me mad in a lot of ways because people would “graduate from treatment” once the insurance company stopped paying. When I entered treatment I did not have any health insurance so my parents were paying cash for my treatment. I think they ended up paying in the range of about $30,000 (discounted for cash) for me to be there for a total of 30 days. With the amount of money being spent I was not happy that we were expected to be doing “chores” during our rehabilitation. Today of course, I realize that the chores were based on trying to get “most” alcoholics and addicts used to taking care of themselves. Unfortunately, this is where the “grouping of addicts” at a treatment center comes into play again. Honestly, I did not need to be doing these chores. I was a working and functioning alcoholic and addict when I arrived at treatment. These chores consisted of sweeping the floor in the lounge area, making up our beds, etc.

I was assigned two psychiatrists at Ridgeview and both of these psychiatrists were addictionologists (they specialized in treating alcohol and drug addiction). The Doctor that performed “my intervention” at Ridgeview was more or less my main psychiatrist. I believe his name was Dr. Margolis and I also remember that I didn’t like him.
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Drug Rehab – Part 6

admin — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:41:49 +0000

On the 10th day at Ridgeview I experienced anger. I remember the night before sitting in bed thinking about all of the money this place was charging and how we were expected to do those “chores”. Wasn’t this place supposed to be club med at $1000 a day? Why were the beds so hard that we slept in, and the pillows weren’t even soft? I know now that these were psychological tricks for all of the patients. Basically, they were trying to push our buttons to get us angry. The next morning I had my regular visit with my main psychiatrist. I told him that I had calculated how much money the treatment center was bringing in and it was ridiculous that our living conditions were so terrible. I also mentioned the doctor’s salaries and apparently pissed him off because it turned into more of an argument than a session. Soon after leaving his office I encountered Susan (the halfway house manager). Susan told me that since I failed to make up my bed that morning that I needed to write a paper on “Why it was important to make up your bed in the morning”. This was the final straw, I became absolutely furious. I got so mad that I gathered up all of my things put them in my suitcases and walked straight out the front door. The funny thing was on my way through the parking lot I encountered my second psychiatrist coming up the hill in his truck. I chatted with him as if nothing special was going on (with my suitcases in hand) for whatever reason he thought I was just doing laundry or something. After talking with him, I walked across the street went into the lobby of an elderly care facility and called a taxi. I had the taxi driver drive me home to my garage apartment (behind my parents’ house). I then convinced my parents that I could just continue going to AA meetings and save them a lot of money. However; later that evening Dr. Sommers (the psychiatrist that I ran into in the parking lot) called and convinced my parents that my chances of recovery were slim if I did not return to the treatment center.

My parents were smart enough to listen to the doctor. After staying home for two days (without relapsing) I returned to the treatment center. I noticed that when I came back to the facility that Susan actually treated me better than she did before. I think there were two reasons behind this, one I had finally gotten angry and two they knew what I did when I got angry (leave). Getting angry (or pissed off as hell), I found was part of the recovery process. So basically, the entire staff was intentionally doing things to try and aggravate me so that I would get angry. The place was rigged from the chores down to the hard bed and pillows. The anger did not come from the money being spent, or the paper that I was told to write, it was the direct result of all the grudges and resentments that I had been holding onto for years. Most addicts have a lot of resentments that need to be addressed. The 4th step in Alcoholics Anonymous helps to remove these resentments or grudges. This step helps you to see where you were wrong and how you actively participated and caused some of these problems. It also helps you to heal from bad events that were not your fault.

Now that I’d completed the anger part of the treatment center, what the heck was next? I sure know that the cravings were killing me. We were all completely obsessed with drugs and alcohol. Almost every conversation ended up with drugs and alcohol being mentioned. We had a conversation about what everyone would do if they were to relapse with $20,000. People made fun of me because l stated that I’d buy a pound of weed. They all thought I was nuts and couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t want to buy coke.

My second roommate was a professional football player who drove a two door BMW coupe. Jay said that there was so much coke in his car that he felt he could get a good bump off the powder between the seams in the leather seats. Of course we had people who were relapsing which gave us something even more exciting to talk about. There was a guy who disappeared for an entire weekend on a crack binge. He and some others were sent off to a place in Texas. Texas was not a good thing, I knew that for sure. It was stated that: “In Texas they didn’t just show you where the water was, but they also showed you how to drink it.” Whatever the heck that meant, I do not know, but I did not want to end-up on that 3 to 6 month trip. It was fun to laugh again, but it sucked craving for anything and everything. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and going nuts. Thank god cigarettes were still cheap back then.
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This is my stopping point right now, but I will continue my story soon.