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Addiction Recovery
The Addiction Recovery Podcast is the ultimate destination for individuals battling addiction or supporting loved ones in their journey towards recovery. With a focus on providing informative, educational, and persuasive content, our podcast aims to engage and guide listeners towards healing and transformation.
Addiction Recovery
56: Is Marijuana Really a Drug
Marijuana isn’t just a harmless plant—it’s a mind-altering substance with real consequences. This episode cuts through the noise of mixed messages about cannabis, offering straightforward facts, personal testimony, and biblical wisdom.
The hosts are direct about marijuana’s risks, especially for developing brains up to age 28. They explain how it can worsen anxiety and depression, act as a gateway to harder substances, and why it’s not simply a “gray area” but an issue requiring clear boundaries.
Grounded in scripture and recovery principles, the conversation shifts from substances to lasting hope. True relief, they stress, doesn’t come from chemicals but through faith, sobriety, and freedom from the “bondage of self.” They also highlight the importance of modeling sober living for children navigating a world full of harmful influences.
The episode closes with powerful testimony on the benefits of sobriety—clarity, self-control, and genuine freedom. If you’re questioning marijuana’s role in your life or struggling with addiction of any kind, you’ll find both straight talk and compassionate support here. For resources, reach out at hello@restoredetoxcenters.com
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Filling the Void book by Steven T. Ginsburg
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Welcome to the Addiction Recovery podcast, brought to you by Restore Detox Centers. We are dedicated to providing valuable and insightful information on addiction recovery. However, it is essential to understand that the content shared in this podcast is intended for educational purposes only. While we strive to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information presented, we cannot guarantee its completeness or suitability for individual circumstances. The topics discussed in this podcast are based on general knowledge and should not be considered a substitute for professional advice or treatment.
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Steven, today I want to talk about this question here. Is marijuana really a drug? So I typed in chat GBT, is marijuana really a drug? And it said, thankfully, yes, marijuana is a drug. Okay. But then I typed in the second prompt was is it really bad for me, though? And then it says, well, you know, it could be helpful and it could be harmful. It just depends on how you use it. And that's the danger of ChatgpT. This isn't an episode on ChatgpT, but if you go out there and you type something in ChatgpT and you say, hey, should I reach out to my mom? We're in a fight, it'll say, yes, you should reach out to your mom. But then, if I respond to that prompt and say yeah, but she's been really mean to me, it'll say, yeah, maybe you should consider not reaching out to your mom. It's going to tell you whatever you want to hear.
Steve Coughran:So if somebody is having a conversation with one person, steven, and they say, yeah, marijuana, it's not a drug. And then they have a conversation with somebody else. I'm like, oh, it's definitely a drug, you got to avoid it. How the heck does somebody discern this important topic, and I want to hear your perspective on this.
Steven Ginsburg:So, first off, thank you for the topic. Secondly, I'm very encouraged by the topic because, as I had shared with you, our youth pastor at Daybreak, our church, which I love, ben Graves, gave a remarkably bold, courageous and honest sermon yesterday at Daybreak and I'd encourage anyone who wants to look it up online go to daybreakorg and look up the sermon from yesterday, sunday the 7th. He talked about this he started off with should Christians smoke marijuana? He just did a perfect job and I told him as much. Here's the get down on marijuana. First of all, anyone who's beyond a certain age, up to the age 25 to 28,. Our brains are still developing and marijuana impedes and impairs neurological development. Secondly, if you're suffering from anxiety, it makes you more anxious. If you're suffering from depression, it makes you more depressed. Third thing is it's a gateway drug. It always leads and can always lead and will always lead to progressive and either more marijuana use or the use of harder and harder substances, or it'll couple itself well with alcohol and cause more unmanageability in your lives. There's dispensaries everywhere. There's gummies, there's gels, there's vapes. So what I mean? Alcohol has been around and been legal forever and causes as much damage and detriment as anything. Marijuana is right there with it. If you're driving high off of marijuana, you're driving impaired, you're driving under an influence and the influence so it absolutely is harmful.
Steven Ginsburg:I am not sitting here in judgment of the casual user. If such a user exists, that's not who I'm talking to. I'm talking to the people like myself. Look, I started smoking marijuana when I was 15. By the time I was 19, I was in inpatient treatment. Why? Because I am an addict and it's a progressive illness, and marijuana use led me right into the progression of my illness. So there's no in between. It's a black white with no gray area there. So there's no in between. It's a black white with no gray area.
Steve Coughran:There's no upside in my world to marijuana. Yeah, I love that. So what if somebody said to you Steven, well, you know, God created this world and God created the marijuana plant, so why is? It a drug, it's just a plant.
Steven Ginsburg:I'm going to steal right from my pastor. So, ben, thank you, god created poison ivy too. And there it is, and we don't go rolling around in it, rub it all over our face and then try to crush it up and smoke it. Thank you, ben Graves. Full credit to you, brother, for that beautiful answer I just gave Same thing. You know created the elements that eventually created ethanol. And what's ethanol? The basic ingredient of Alcohol.
Steven Ginsburg:This isn't up for debate. For me, this is life and death. For people who suffer from what I suffer from. This is going to really cause people who have mental health issues and other issues that need to be addressed properly to deviate to a path that is not properly aligned with better health and a better way. And this is life and death. You know, there is an emptiness we carry. There is strife we carry. There is hurt we carry. There is regrets of the past we carry, and there is no chemical element, nor elements, nor substance that is there to relieve us of that bondage of self. For me, the relief, the salvation, came through Christ. For any of you out there listening and you're not a believer, I'm praying for you no matter what, but I urge you to seek salvation in something greater than yourself and understand that the answer to what ails you is not in any substance. And including in those substances, the answer is not in marijuana.
Steve Coughran:Yeah, Meaning that marijuana is not going to be the solution to somebody's anxiety and depression.
Steven Ginsburg:Like you mentioned, no no, and biblically speaking and I'm staying on the biblical side of this again because of the great work done at Daybreak yesterday and I went and I found Ben and I said ,B en, thank you, we need to hear that. Thank you for being so bold and sharing the truth. You know it says in Peter 5, 8, that you know we've got to be alert. And what Of sober mind? Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Steven Ginsburg:Marijuana is not putting anyone in a sober mind. You are not going to make a better choice, have a better day, live a better way through marijuana. Oh, yes, I am Good, you go, do that and if you're right, god bless you, I love you, enjoy. And if you find you're wrong and there's, I love you, enjoy. And if you find you're wrong and there's pain and there's unmanageability and your family's suffering and your life is suffering, I am waiting for you and the God I serve is waiting for you with open arms and the truth. The truth is all we need is written in two of the best books I've ever read that they wrote for me the Bible and the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Steve Coughran:Well, I like how you said. You know this, it's black and white, there's no in between, but I think we live in this world.
Steven Ginsburg:That's increasingly gray.
Steve Coughran:Do you agree with that? I mean, it's not just with marijuana, it's across the board, where it's like well, I mean it's like it works for you, it works for them. And I think that's what creates confusion is because nobody will give a black and white answer, because they're afraid. They're afraid to speak out, they're afraid to stand up, because you know we live in the cancel society, like you say the wrong thing and I'm going to cancel you. Who knows, somebody could be listening to this episode. And they're like I'm never listening to Steve and Steven again.
Steve Coughran:You know, it's like I think the world needs more black and whites, and I don't think everything is is absolute per se. Not everything is absolute, because what works for me doesn't work for you, right? But there are certain things that are black and white. For example, a drug like if it alters your mind, by definition it's a mind-altering drug, right?
Steven Ginsburg:Amen, absolutely Including alcohol. Alcohol is a drug. Well, no, it's not. Yes, it is, because again, get to a chemist the base ingredient of alcohol is ethanol and ethanol is a drug. That's the compound that gets us drunk.
Steven Ginsburg:And again, I'm not going to die on that hill. You want to see me get triggered? There's all these soothsayers on social media who are like you don't need AA and you don't need to get sober and we know a way that you can manage your life. I will get triggered and I have been known to get on their threads and it is not pretty and I'm much less biblically sound when I get on those threads. And please forgive me, lord, I know he does, but I.
Steven Ginsburg:This is life and death. And when you are bodily and mentally different than your fellows, like I am, and you are ingesting something like marijuana, you are going to have that allergic reaction to that substance and this progressive illness is going to take hold and decimate and destroy your life and that's all there is to it. You know you can't be a little bit pregnant? People are addicts and alcoholics, or they're not. And the normies of the world. I love them, I support them, I salute them. I don't know anything about it. That's not how God chose me to be, that isn't how he made me and he knows every hair on my head and there's no upside.
Steven Ginsburg:Anything you start, you are going to eventually have to stop. So even the most casual marijuana user, at some point in their life for some reason whether it's health, mental health, family, et cetera is going to have to put that down. And if they're able to put it down, god love them. I'm their friend and their fan. If they need help putting them down, that is where I am called, that is where I'm equipped. But let's not ignore the severity of what this substance does, what it provides, and the proof of the lives it has decimated through time. The proof of the lives it has decimated through time.
Steve Coughran:Sure, and I think we always talk about probabilities and we'll just say it again, because I think it's so powerful when you talk about marijuana being a gateway drug for every person that it is a gateway drug for. There's probably somebody who it's not a gateway drug for.
Steve Coughran:Some people just look at marijuana and they never touch the other stuff, right, right. But when we think about probabilities, okay, if there is a probability cause, there is. If you smoke marijuana, it can lead to crack, cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, whatever. It is Right Because of the law of diminishing returns. In the law of diminishing returns is an actual irreversible law which says you know, the first time you do something you're going to get a high reward and then over time it declines. That's just everything in life. And so you smoke marijuana and then all of a sudden it's not going to give you the same high, so you're going to smoke more of it or look for other things.
Steve Coughran:If there's the probability of that happening at all, why would he even want to take a part of that? You know, and that's what the kids need to understand too, the black and white Cause. I'm very, I'm very passionate about this too. You put one poisonous Skittle in the Skittle jar and you say kids, have as many Skittles as you want. I love freedom of choice, right? Knowing that one Skittle that's poison, kills them.
Steven Ginsburg:You would never do that.
Steve Coughran:You would never, ever do that, unless you're some psychopath with your kids.
Steven Ginsburg:It'd be Skittles so that's where I to your point.
Steven Ginsburg:That's where I really look at marijuana, look at alcohol, look at everything and realize there's no upside to any of it.
Steven Ginsburg:And if your choice is to just pass on all of it, you are in the correct lane and there is nothing you will miss out on.
Steven Ginsburg:What you will gain is never having to go through some of the trials, tribulations and the steps people like myself had to go through to put those things down, and that's what I welcome people to. There is so much more to be gained and offered where life on life's terms is concerned, and I also just want to say this very quickly we are in a watching world and these children, god bless their hearts when they see mom and dad and mom and dad aren't getting drunk and mom and dad aren't getting high and mom and dad aren't drinking and driving, and mom and dad are putting Christ, the Bible, their marriages and their homes first. We are fostering and feeding into our children the blessings that we've been given, the right message and the right path and the right way. In a world where they are like unreal the amount that they are outnumbered, outgunned and outmanned we are giving them a foothold. We are giving them a chance.
Steve Coughran:Yeah, I love that, and they are watching us. We may not think they're watching us for sure.
Steven Ginsburg:A hundred percent and I'm grateful for the example we've been able to set. I'm grateful that I can go to a church like Daybreak and hear someone like Pastor Ben and hear that and he's a young dude with a young family and he's a great guy and he's like with it, he's all the things and he is stone cold, set on like hey, this isn't part of what we do, this isn't part of what works, this isn't part of what is biblically sound. And I am so grateful to be taught and pastored to and led in an environment like that and I wanna offer that same message of hope to anyone. Let's focus on the similarities, not the differences, and let's continue to build on the truth and build on hope.
Steve Coughran:Yeah, I love that, Steven, and I just say that you know, like from somebody who used to smoke weed I'd smoke weed almost like every day and I did that for a long time the benefits of being sober like sober mindedness, versus being enslaved to something like marijuana far outweigh anything that I've missed out on. I never looked back oh my gosh, I miss out on this. I'm like, I love being sober minded, I'm in control, I have clear thoughts and I just see people that go down bad paths and I don't have to worry about that.
Steve Coughran:I mean I have my own problems, right, but they're not related to or altering my mind.
Steven Ginsburg:I'm just so grateful. Together Steve, you myself, people like Ben, the congregants we know at Daybreak, the families we love we're living life together in clarity, life on life's terms, giving ourselves a real opportunity and a chance to live the way that God has prescribed and described biblically. And there's something better waiting for us, each day at a time.
Steve Coughran:I love it, Steven. So if you want to reach out to us and share your thoughts and your ideas, if you have any questions whatsoever, you can always shoot us an email at hello at restore detox centerscom. We also have a lot of great resources and if you need help and you want to connect, uh, you could do that at restore detox centerscom as well, Steven always a pleasure doing an episode with you.
Steven Ginsburg:Steve, thank you, just know if you're out there listening. We love you, we are for you Everyone, have a safe and sober day.
