I found just cutting it out to work best rather than wean off if it. It sucks for about a week, but overall quiting caffeine was harder. Just don't have any lying around and don't go to the store to buy more. I had trouble sleeping for a few days, I was kinda irritable but it wore off pretty quick.

Good luck!

Same, years ago I was a once-or-twice a day smoker. Needed to cut it out for a drug test, months in advance. Just stopped. Stopped buying it, stepped away if someone was smoking it in a social situation. Like you say, kinda sucked but not really. Never was sick, more on edge than normal. Lasted a week or two, then began to appreciate a bit more clarity. Now, I'm a once-or-thrice-a-month consumer and appreciate it so much more.

Yeah, as regards weaning, as I touched on in another comment, playing a game with myself about how much less I'd try to use today seems more wearisome than just stopping entirely and dealing with the feels. When I've weaned before I've usually snapped back even harder into frequent use.

I think it's possible that my own best strategy for feeling OK about it all is just to commiserate with other HN users :D so thank you and everyone who is commenting

Yeah, and you might get into a funk and decide to just hit it really hard one time and then you are pretty much back where you started. I found cold turkey worked best.

Swap to a dry herb vape, use it to minimize your consumption amount. A lot of the "brain fog" and other side effects we attribute to smoking marijuana are actually caused by other chemicals than cannabinoids, such as carbon monoxide, even benzene. Swapping to a dry herb vape can help with that tremendously, if you opt for a device with good temperature control.

It'll help you cut down on the cost significantly too. Of course, a good vape is an upfront cost, but you can save a fortune in cannabis costs. Like you, I partake morning, noon, and night. But I go through about 10g a month. Some friends of mine would run through that in a weekend.

I have been using a Pax 2 for a few years which has stood me in good stead. Very occasionally I'll have some water-filtered smoke but not often. The interesting thing about the vape to me was that, while it was a distinct improvement from the get-go, at first I really missed the full flavor and 'bite' (into my lungs, yes) so I wound up consuming more. Eventually I brought the consumption back down some but I'm still at more like 60g a month.

I also found another challenge specific to dry-herb vapes: the chamber ('oven') holds a lot, and I didn't enjoy saving half for later since when you started it back up it naturally wasn't anywhere near as fresh-tasting. I tried decreasing the effective size of the oven but with middling results. I almost bought a Tinymight [0] which are supposed to be good for very small amounts but I foresaw just loading its tiny chamber multiple times :D

Thank you!

[0] https://tinymightvape.com/

I left a comment about my personal recommendations but after reading this it may not be as applicable. My intent here is not from a basis of negativity but I’m impressed with the cannabis mass you consume monthly. It seems like a steady decrease may be a better approach for you - than cold turkey etc. As mentioned in another comment I’m not personally concerned about my cannabis usage (on the order of 5 grams a month) but I have had (and continue to have) addiction issues with nicotine. I’ve found that steadily decreasing daily or weekly intake is a viable way to decrease net consumption. Possibly packing smaller bowls could be a good way to start? Other tricks I’ve found to help a little is sort of an “intermittent fasting approach” - where you set a window of hours where you can consume and do not consume outside those hours. Once again best of luck to you!

While using a vaporizer is better than smoking, try switching to edibles (especially ones without sugar like tablets or oils) so that there's no ritual involved with ingestion. Much of the habit is packing the vaporizer and holding it to your mouth. When this link is broken by minimizing the ritual (swallowing once) and disconnecting the action from the reaction, (takes about an hour to feel effect) you can be much more rational about your consumption.

Edibles are... well there's a lot more options out there than there used to be, that's for sure, and I can't claim to have tried them all, but I can't see working them into a sane consumption schedule. I don't get the feeling that I want, meaning a perceptible but minimal level of cannabis euphoria, unless I go over a certain amount at which point I'm committed to a deep if not intense high lasting some hours. I could see it as a weaning strategy if I could keep it to small amounts but when I've done this before I can never stick with trusting the half or quarter doses to do the trick and always nudge myself over the line. For all-day hikes, bike rides, etc it's my preferred method but otherwise it lacks a a sense of precise control over my levels. Perhaps that sense is something I'm hooked on in its own right...

Thank you

Edibles are great if you manage dosing well for how you want to feel and when. You can take doses of any amount remember, maybe even something like 3mg just to prevent nausea and night sweats if you're tapering down. Just gotta remember that it can take 30m-2 hours to kick in depending on gastric emptying and contents

The chocolate bars I sometimes get are very consistent in dosage, easy to slice into even fractions, don't bother my digestion the way gummies often do, and seem to be less affected by whatever else is in my stomach at the time. However tapering has not been a good tactic for me in the past, I'm constantly tempted to bump my levels back up, so I'm just using melatonin and a little grit to get through the first few days. Luckily I don't get nausea, just a somewhat decreased appetite for a while.

Thank you

+1 The Arizer Solo 2 is well worth the price.

Didn't think I'd see the crux I use to get through each day on HNews! Can strongly recommend this vape too - Fast to heat up, long battery life, does the job.

You and I might be the same person

I just cut out cannabis a little over two weeks ago after about two years of near-daily use.

I happened to catch a cold right around the same time and felt generally miserable. My immediate reaction was "maybe I should take a hit, then I can deal with the head cold a little better."

Before quitting I found myself thinking about getting high too much, despite being in my mid thirties with a family and a business to run. It felt like too much of a crutch.

What I had to do was to get rid of everything I had, even though it killed me to throw away a handful of pre-rolls, as long as they were around I kept finding myself in a loop of "I'll just stop tomorrow"

I'm finding that playing guitar is a little less enjoyable, I've been really lethargic(sleeping in more than normal) but also more clear-headed. My short-term memory is a bit better and I'm exercising a bit more. I'm setting more goals and knocking them off my to-do list more frequently.

I immediately dropped about 6-8 lbs(205 > 197lbs) in the first week and have leveled off. It's funny, I was hanging out with some friends last night who were partaking and am glad to see I've still got the willpower to say no.

Life has a been a bit more mundane, I'm hoping to look back at the 30 day mark to see if that changes

Good luck to you!

Sounds extremely similar to me. Even the 6-8lb weight loss. Keep it up!

Congrats on stopping!

I stopped in 2020, after about 10 years of daily use. I only smoked in the evenings, otherwise sounds similar to your usage, I functioned well. I went cold turkey with the goal of 3 months nothing, then once a month.

First week was no fun, for me what worked is to just realize and accept I feel somewhat ill. Just like having the flu; be kind to yourself and realize it will go away. Sleep was a challenge; creating the right circumstances and just accepting it did the trick for me.

The hardest part for me was the first weeks after that, especially weekends. I didn't want to drink, mildly worried to replace weed with alcohol, so I stayed fully sober. It's a challenge of finding new activities. I practiced guitar.

For me thinking "3 months" is a lot easier than "never again", it's just a much more achievable goal. After 3 months I smoked weed again, and just like I had after not smoking for months; it was truly disappointing. It tastes horrible, I had to cough, and couldn't get to the nice level of high I could before. So after that, I was good. I did a few more times, but I haven't smoked weed since May or June as I don't feel the urge nor need.

It was my last vice, and strangely enough, I don't feel like much changed. I thought it would be more boring, but it's the same level of mundane as it was before haha.

Good for you for taking this step, I'm sure you'll have time where it isn't easy, but the way you describe it it sounds like you'll manage. Quitting cigarettes is great practice, if you can quite those you can quite weed as well.

Good luck, stay strong!

Haha "the same level of mundane as before" but healthier and less expensive seems like a very worthy goal. Thank you!

Although my situation isn't too comparable aside from the drug itself, quitting for me was a 7 year saga. I think the isolation may actually have some benefits when it comes to quitting, for I struggled greatly with people around who also smoked. I had to reestablish and redfine alot of my friend relationships due to a lack of disipline of being around them and not partaking. Finding activities that are not heighted/more fun while high was useful to me. Since weed was and still is mostly illegal in australia, i made the most progress when I pursued getting a girlfriend. Luckily for me, i'm attracted to fairly straight laced women, so being high/talking about getting high was not condusive to that pursuit. Exercise and sleep are big ones, since for mt they seemed to go hand in hand for the progress of the other and making you less irritable and thus more unlikely likely to seek pain numbing. Like others have mentioned here, get it out of the house, if you require a card to get it (for auth), slice it and dice it. Best of luck!

In my situation, being very much settled into mid-life and a whole house I only have to share with my very tolerant partner, I don't have the same aspirations that discourage heavy use. However I do think that during this time of increased isolation I've benefited somewhat from what I call the Groundhog Day effect – i.e. every day is so much the same that I can't help but notice the iterative effects of all these little choices I'm making. Even if I don't do anything about them I'm far more aware of them then I was when I was constantly mixing with other people and their other issues. I supposed that's kind of what brought me here today...

Thank you!

Are you sure you really need to quit? You mention the money you're spending on it as a downside but if you can afford it and don't plan on using that money for something else then that's not much of an argument. The "feeling of dependency" is not great but we're all dependent on many things. As long as they don't come with additional down sides then ... ignore it?

I quit cold turkey after decades of daily use when I was going to become a father. It gave me real brain fog and robbed me of the desire to do anything but go to bed. So the upside for me is a clearer head, better mood, less anxiety.

Don't feel bad for having this habit if there's no downsides to it. Maybe stay sober for a as long as you need to be able to compare the "stoned you" to the "sober you" and then decide what you prefer.

I envy people who can keep enjoying the positives sides of cannabis without suffering from the negatives!

Yes, you are right in many respects which are already familiar to me and my own long-held feelings about cannabis. Indeed I spent much of my life feeling like its relative benevolence was a reality that I needed to make more people aware of, if only to help destroy my (USA) culture's characterization which is widely employed as an pretext to jail people. At this point there is nothing external that has a strong influence on me either way. I simply am tired of it, and at the same time disturbed by the fact that I seem to have such a hard time controlling the habit.

I do also get 'brain fog' to an extent, but in my case it is far less of an impediment to thinking through abstract problems in depth, it's more that I simply get slower to come to a decision about anything, even simple matters. A compounding effect with ADD perhaps. As with many aspects of my cannabis use (and I suspect it goes this way with many drugs and many people) it seems to naturally enhance some of my specific strengths and also to equally naturally reinforce some of my weaknesses. I was known as a bright but inattentive child from very early on and none of my childhood friends were ever surprised that I grew to love cannabis.

Thank you!

Aside from physical addiction, I find the mental side of addiction even harder to deal with. I tend to do X when Y and so each time I do Y I suddenly have an urge for X.

You’d have to have a look and see if there’s anything that triggers your desire to see if it’s the same for you and then try to change the routines a bit. The biggest help will be to just not have any in the house for a while. That will stop temptation and can help break the association of having X when doing Y after a while.

I’d also suggest looking up some advice online about tolerance breaks as well, as there are various tips that ought help you. Not everyone is the same, so you’ll have to shop around.

Plus a t-break will reset your sensitivity to THC which may also help reduce your intake post break.

Good luck

I certainly find with cannabis that the mental struggle is far more significant than any physical dependency, to the extent that it even exists (and I can distinguish it from my overall mental state). Indeed I've dropped much more chemically addictive substances with greater ease.

"Tolerance break" is not a term I've come across before, but it's a great description of at least part of what I'm after. I have taken similar breaks before, and currently have none around and no plans for getting more. I'm not dead set on quitting weed entirely, I don't see it as intrinsically bad, I just have found that if I have it in the house I'm liable to consume it by increasing degrees until I'm back to being high almost all the time. My biggest trigger is simply being awake and looking forward to another fairly predictable day. Perhaps I should be trying to inject more unpredictability into my daily routine? This goes against everything I've fought for in establishing a halfway comfortable middle-class existence, but perhaps it deserves investigation.

Thank you!

For my new year's resolution, I decided to swap out my daily cannabis use with swimming; and so far this year, I've actually pulled it off and swim about 1250 meters a day. It's only 25 laps and takes about 30 minutes of actual exercise. For me, it taps into a lot of the same mental benefits of relaxation and focused thought I experienced when under the influence of cannabis.

I decided to do this, in part, because I needed a tolerance break. I'm also looking forward to getting high and watching Dr. Strangelove again. One issue, I think, people struggle with is making things so binary. It may help you to stop now if you recognize you can start again in the future.

I've made a couple of other comments about exercise in here but suffice to say, I have long since deeply integrated my exercise with my cannabis consumption, it's very much part of my reward system so my challenge is not so much substituting in new exercise routines but rather keeping up what I already do without cannabis. Honestly I have known quite a lot of hardcore athletes who are also enthusiastic cannabis users, I'm almost surprised to see so many comments opposing the two, but then I have known some odd ones so who knows what's normal now. Certainly I also endorse exercise for mental health as much as physical and feel it has great benefits that way regardless of one's other habits.

Thank you

> I have long since deeply integrated my exercise with my cannabis consumption

Me too - I love playing basketball high. I'm getting a little too old to play and sadly indoor hoops has lost a lot of appeal in the COVID era. I still love shooting free throws and seeing a ball go through a hoop.

I didn't mention this but I wasn't a regular swimmer prior to this year. I do think that the novelty of swimming helped me substitute it for cannabis. One makes so much progress starting a new thing, diminishing marginal returns and all.

With a lot of things, for instance this bug I'm procrastinating on right now, just attempting the objective feels good. Every day I succeeded at swimming and not getting high so far has felt good.

Having been in the same situation, as well a similar one invoking cigarettes, I suggest to you winter green life savers. (Bare with me.)

They certainly don’t help with any physical issues but they help with the mental side.

I’m not sure what it is but the fact that you can move them around in your mouth and gnaw on them while still lasting a while makes it feel like you’re “doing something.”

Every time I’d want to partake i would eat a life saver. They are also innocuous so there’s no guilt or anything.

And I’m sure you can replace them with whatever gives you the sensation described above. I know it’s silly but they were my secret weapon.

All the sedentary screen time (I am a SWE, surprise) is an ongoing prompt to indulge in little side rewards, and it makes good sense to substitute relatively innocuous ones. I used soda and cigarettes heavily early in my career which would scale up along with whatever project I had going on, so when it was crunch time I would consume horrific levels of these. My main challenge now is that I've cut out so much, I don't even eat candy anymore, so my options are limited, but perhaps it's worth a temporary trade-off just to get away from the substance I find most irresistible.

Thank you

Saw some others mention this but switching the majority of my consumption to a dry herb vape has helped a lot. I personally didn’t set out to stop using cannabis but wanted a healthier alternative to smoking out of glass. With a Pax 3 I consume less - possibly above 75% less and probably above 50% less than before. The Pax isn’t cheap but it’s roughly paid for itself in a couple months of use. I think cannabis is habit forming but not literally addictive - so going cold turkey seems viable as well. Best of luck in your journey!

Instant relieve after for about 8 days after drinking liquid xantohumol. Zero issues with sleep, zero depression, anxiety. Actually lots of happiness. But it works in body like woman's hormone so I would kot recommend to abuse if you are man. Ayahuasca, San pedro, pejote can also reset the brain. But most countries banned those, well except xantohumol.

TIL about xantohumol. Very interesting, I will look into it. Thank you

While I started up again during the pandemic, I managed to stop by restricting to off-work hours, and only 3 times, at 5, 7, and 9pm. This stopped being annoying after only 2 days, and after that was able to easily wean down after 6 weeks. The only real side effects from withdrawal were poor sleep, intense dreams, and increased libido.

I have done exactly as you suggest but it's tough. It's the early part of the day that's so challenging. I have perhaps built up my morning coffee + cannabis routine into too much of an idealized mental state. I really do love the initial sense of being up early, checking messages, getting ahead of my day's work, all while perking away on my hippie speedball flow. Doing without it feels, at least for a while, like disdaining technicolor Oz in favor of staying in black-and-white Kansas. I can fight through this for a while to re-establish a less frequent & early schedule but without anything reinforcing this routine I find it irresistible to slip back into the early morning 'treat'. The only thing that makes me want to not do that is the fact that once I break the seal, the rest of the day will feel increasingly bland. So in some sense it feels easier or at least more realistic to plan for no weed instead of constantly checking in with myself about whether I've reached the magic hour yet.

Thank you!

Hey there,

I am in a similar situation as you. I've partaken on a regular basis for decades but during the last two years, my consumption had gone up by a considerable amount. I also quit drinking during this period (also on a regular basis for decades...) so that was part of my mental justification for the habit. There's also a global pandemic and it can easily feel like the world is on fire - so we need our vices, right?!

Right now I am going on 6 weeks without THC. I feel mentally sharper, more motivated, and less depressed overall. Honestly I feel like the last few years of my life have been wasted in a hazy fog, and that can be overwhelming, especially since I'm not a spring chicken anymore. But it has been much easier after the first two weeks.

I was surprised by some of the intensity of my withdrawals. I was eating probably 1g+ of distillate in edibles a day, so my tolerance & usage was definitely above "average." I barely slept for the first week or so but my sleeping patterns are now back to normal.

Exercise, meditation, yoga, and reading books I really enjoy has all been helpful. ZzzQuil or Benadryl can help when you really need to get some sleep. Vaporizing/smoking CBD/hemp flower is also a relatively healthy replacement and could serve as a new pairing with your AM coffee.

Best of luck!

OK – well first of all congratulations on your recent success, but a word of warning. I have fully quit from cannabis before, though in my case this would be the first time it has not been prompted by some external circumstance. I have also gotten over the initial hump and felt a distinct improvement in clarity, memory etc. In my experience this can almost a high in itself – when you're swimming up to your ears in THC every day, as we have, the upsides of going without are very apparent once you get past the distress of the first week or so. I once saw a comedian very amusingly compare it to acquiring ESP: "hey, I know exactly where my car keys are!" However, after you get over the novelty of ordinary sobriety, you may find (as I have, repeatedly) that as that novel sense fades, you may get hit with a unexpected and possibly profound sense of craving, almost a deep nostalgia for weed. This I have no real insight on, it's a life challenge I suppose and one I have never seriously taken on yet though perhaps I'm starting to now. But I'll advise you to stay alert and look out for that second wave of longing.

Thank you and good luck!

I mentioned somewhere else in the thread, but I'm exercising a fair amount already, and in my case the traditional reward for a solid workout is a vape session so while I do intend to keep it up I'm sort of maxed out in terms of using it to compensate. Regarding sleep – in my commuter days the insomnia would wreck me but my schedule is a lot more flexible now so I think I'm going to try to ride it out with just some melatonin. Re caffeine – somewhat maxed out there too, I drink about a pint of high-grade Colombian iced coffee a day which is at this point a well-established personal upper threshold for well-being.

Thank you

Where did you get hyperemesis from? OP did not describe any symptoms.

It’s a common symptom in cannabis withdrawals. A lot of people are not even aware of it’s existence, since the legalization of cannabis in many areas it’s becoming a very common reason people go to the ER (without knowing that it’s linked to their cannabis use)

No it’s not. It’s not even a symptom of cannabis withdrawal, it’s a purported condition claimed to be correlated with extremely heavy cannabis use.

Supplements with evidence of boosting serotonin are worth a try. It costs about $65 at Whole Foods for 2 months supply of Tryptophan, 5-HTP, L-theanine, St John's Wart. Also consider saffron extract and fish oil or falxseed for Omega-3s.

I will look into these, thanks! I have found that I feel my best when I'm taking some vitamin supplements. Very likely a placebo effect but hey, if it works it works... Also I am taking some melatonin to hopefully help with the insomnia I tend to get when going off cannabis.

Exercise triggers many of the same receptors and may function as a substitute.

Yes, and I often recommend it to people trying to make similar life changes, but I already cycle 6-10 hours a week and do plenty of other stuff, yoga etc. Not only do I feel like I'm already fully utilizing the benefits of a physical regimen, since I had been very much in the habit of combining that with vaping sessions it's now yet another thing that I have to get used to doing without enhancement. This one hurts, really. Scratch an athlete and you will find someone very strongly opinionated about their optimal personal chemistry. Sometimes this manifests as a strict adherence to sobriety but at least as often (in my experience) it's a schedule of substances which ranges across the spectrum from licit to less-than.

Thank you

Another idea is ramping up the cbd over time. Or taking 1:1 and eventually high cbd low thc.

You may want to go to r/leaves which is a subreddit for people who want to quit.

Good luck on quitting!

I knew about that subreddit but for whatever reason hadn't thought of it recently. Maybe I'll spend some time in conversation over there soon.

Thank you!

Full spectrum CBD distillate can help. Switch out for CBD and cut back slowly on that.

I am going to explore this possibility

Thank you

N Acetyl Cyesteine lowers my desire to smoke weed to manageable levels

Interesting. I take a protein supplement with a lot of L-glutamine which I need to fast for, as I believe is traditional for amino acid supplements, so I'd have to carve out another time of day to make sure I'd take it on an empty stomach. Is that right, is that what you do? Worth considering anyway, though, thank you

My story could not be more similar to yours. I abused alcohol and cannabis starting in college and up until relatively recently. Eventually the alcohol use had caught up with me and caused serious ramifications in my life. I was able to get that under control (check my comment history for more information) and eventually the focus turned to cannabis. It is my last vice at this point, even porn is on the way out although that still took about a year of work to get to the point where I don't use it but some of the underlying issues are still lingering.

I smoked cannabis only after work for a long time in the before time. I had tried, although without any professional help, to get that down to only weekends. But inevitably it would creep back in: I'd end up smoking on a Thursday or Monday night, in addition to the weekend, and then slowly add weeknights back until it was every day. Things got so much worse during the pandemic, I started using it 24/7, it was seemingly the only escape from the mundane. At the very least I'm glad I wasn't drinking during those times but it was far from ideal given both my shift away from drinking alcohol limited my social life and COVID obviously made that oh so much worse. Smoking and playing video games was all that I had left. I'm back to the weekends now, given it is winter with COVID restrictions in my area, it is still the driver of my social life.

I'm not coming to you with all of the answers. I'm interested in what the community comes up with myself. But here are my own tips and learnings that you might find useful: - ADD is a HUGE part of this situation. I see you mentioned it in a comment but not the main post. I didn't even know I had it until I got help for depression during the pandemic and eventually was diagnosed. ADHD makes it hard to put up with the mundane. Cannabis can make any mundane task interesting for me, although with a pretty low success rate. Taking Concerta has helped in a non-trivial way but hasn't fixed everything - Recently I've started to put more effort into smoking the right way if I do smoke. For example, if I had some exercise planned that day, I do that before smoking. (I do powerlifting so I definitely don't wanna be high for that). Or, if I do smoke and play video games, do it when some of my friends are online so it's a social activity. I end up too introverted sometimes. I'm also working on starting later in the day when I do smoke. If I start smoking at 10am, I'm dead tired by 4pm and the rest of the day is ruined. Instead if I start at 6pm, I'm dead tired around when it is time to go to bed. This isn't some trick to get myself to consume less. If anything, this is causing me to enjoy smoking more, which might be my goal

I'll probably update this comment when I think of more things. Until then, I am with you my friend, your experience is shared. I wish I had better advice but I'm not any farther along in this journey so I don't have it. In the meantime, I hope you find these ramblings useful

Your comment is very kind and insightful, yes there's a lot to all of this but I do appreciate you sharing your experience, it doesn't have to provide answers and you know, I think sometimes it's better not to. One conversational tactic I've found hugely helpful in developing relationships is to preface some comments, especially when the subject is loaded with emotion/anxiety, simply by saying "well here's some random thoughts and feelings from me, please understand this is not a judgement or decision but rather a brain dump" – this opens people up tremendously and rather than examining your every word in anticipatory defense, if you have a good rapport and good trust then they will listen to you in an entirely different and more receptive way, and are more likely to venture something that they might not have otherwise.

Thank you!

Mushrooms may help

I'm meh on mushrooms, and most psychedelics. My relatively few experiences with them were neither enjoyable nor productive, in terms of personal insights. I contrast that with MDMA which I've used even less but found far more therapeutic and transformative. Mushrooms give me high anxiety, especially now in mid-life, perhaps because the people I've known who evangelized them most passionately (some quite brilliant) have for the most part not aged well in ways that I see as deeply linked with their drug use. It's just my personal experience, I don't think they're wrong for everyone and can see many comments on HN and elsewhere testifying to their efficacy but for me it's not a good option.

Thank you