Your Questions about Weed, Sobriety and Healing

In this episode, I’m answering some questions and messages I’ve been getting on social media about sobriety, healing, and what actually helped me quit smoking weed after struggling with it for a long time.

I talk about some of the things that helped me personally, but also why recovery isn’t the same for everybody. What works for one person might not work for someone else. A big part of the process is finding new things that help you grow, heal, and reconnect with yourself again.

It’s not easy. Some days are harder than others. But if you stay strong and keep moving forward, little by little you start feeling more like yourself again. More emotionally grounded. More in control of your reactions, impulses, and cravings. More present in your own life.

For me, sobriety has also brought a deeper sense of spiritual awareness and connection to a higher version of myself. This episode is just an honest conversation about the process of coming back online and learning how to live fully again.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Alright guys, how are you doing? Welcome to Coming Back Online, where we have honest talks about long-term weed use, mental clarity, and coming back to yourself. My name is Derek. I'm your host. And um today I guess I'm gonna do something a little interesting. Um I've been getting a lot of messages on social media, um, comments and questions, and uh people asking me what helped me get sober, um, and just kind of overall advice. And, you know, I don't necessarily think that I know um everything. Well, I not necessarily, I definitely don't know everything. I don't have all the answers. Um, you know, it's been about eight months for me being sober. I'm still kind of trying to navigate it and figure it out along the way, but I have made leaps and bounds in that last eight months. I do feel a lot better. I feel like I can manage my anxiety better. I feel like I'm in more control of how I react to things, my emotions, my physical anxiety, my um uh stomach issues that I was having when I would smoke all the time, and just overall control and more contentment and more balanced. Not perfect. Um, life isn't perfect for anyone, uh whether you're sober or not, and um a lot of people um say, you know, life's too short just to to um not be sober and just enjoy yourself or just relax and smoke a bong rip. But, you know, I did that for 25 years, and I, you know, I know what that's like. I know that cycle. I know what that feels like. I know that at the end of the day I just want more of it, and it doesn't really help satisfy it doesn't really help calm me in the long run. It makes it kind of worse, and it just stuffs everything down. So I feel better just processing things. I definitely believe in like the power of sitting with your your own life, your own emotions and feelings, and processing them and handling them, and that might be tough at times, and you might go a night or two without sleeping, and you have to kind of figure out ways around that. And I think that those obstacles are put in front of you for you to try to figure out, and once you do, you kind of level up in your life, and um so you know, I'm I've been having difficulties trying to um I don't know if you guys saw, but I put one episode up that was like six minutes where I have video and audio, but it's not synced up, and so I'm gonna have a buddy come by who's more um knowledgeable in podcast and production and try to help me get that rolling and everything so I can just do the videos here with my new podcast wall and um upload it and get it all situated. But um today I want to see if I can um read some of these questions I've been getting. And I'm gonna do it anonymous anonymously. I'm not gonna tell the usernames or anything, but I really want to um kind of address the questions so we all can work together and um get different perspectives and um and try to figure this out together. So let me go through my messages here. And um let's see here. Yeah, so there's okay, one person here. Wow. Okay, one person really related to my story, and he says, uh, hey dude, discovered your podcast recently and was blown away by how similar our upbringings were. I also had a chaotic upbringing with my mother who had addiction issues, and I'm also a musician. I've been struggling with cannabis use for a long time, and I've been waiting and I've been wanting to quit, but have found just a habitual act of smoking and listening to music is hard to shake. Thanks for what you're doing, it's very inspiring. See, messages like this just wanna make me keep going, you know. Like I I don't even care about all the haters if I can just keep getting messages like this. And um, yeah, you know, to to respond to this is I would say, you know, it's not I'm not gonna sugarcoat it or give you some fluffed up answer. You know, it's not easy. Um definitely your inspirations change, your motivation changes. Like I don't I honestly don't play music as much as I did when I smoked weed every day. Um it's something that maybe I think I'm kind of starting to walk back towards again, but I'm trying to navigate playing music again without feeling um without getting that that um surge of creativity from smoking, which I don't know if you would call it a false sense of creativity or if it if it did help me create more music, I don't know. But there's always some kind of sacrifice in anything, and you have to weigh out your sacrifices, and for me, it was harder for me just to keep smoking weed and to feel all those negative symptoms, and um and just it was easier. I mean, in the in the long run, in the short term it was difficult, but in the long run I feel a lot better. And um I know how it's hard to to shake those things that are habitual to you and routines, but you know, honestly, you you will find new routines, and those new routines might be healthier, and they might be, you know, something where you're more social or you're inner you interact with more people and you find different aspects of yourself that you didn't know were there before. And you can start liking those new parts of yourself, and then you can kind of find your way back to the things that you love when you were growing up or when you were smoking. I don't think they disappear. I can just I think they kind of um evolve into other things. And um, so I guess I I don't know if that's the best answer for that, but I would just say to keep trying new things. Um be join hobbies and groups and be social and communities and figure out what you really love to do if your if your um outlets change or if different if you start thinking about something that was helping you or calming to you, or if it if it evolves into something else, just go with the flow of it. I don't know. That's my first question. Um I guess I kinda answered. I don't know if that was the best, but I'm trying here. So let's do another one. Um alright, this is a good one. Um this guy says six months ago, one week off trees. Uh six months, one week off trees, trying to become social again, ten plus years living in a fog. Starting from scratch at 45, never married, no kids. I avoided connection, then COVID amplified the isolation, and it's not easy to make new meaningful connections. I'm trying though. And he says, I lost all my friends quitting substances. I tend to re-acquaint negative people over time. I need to be more accountable. Yeah, when you uh I'll start, I guess, addressing certain um there's a lot going on here, but I'll address one by one. Um the last thing he says, you know, I tend to reacquaint negative people, and I've kind of lost some friends over time. You know, being um I've lost a lot of friends over time too, and I guess the wording of that is do we really lose the friends? Do we lose the love that we have for somebody or the memories? Or will we never talk to that person ever again? And in my opinion, there's people who I I love deeply who I kind of had to um create a little distance from just to kind of focus on myself and my sobriety because they weren't so sober at the time, and I didn't want to be influenced in that and kind of um sabotage my own sobriety. If you're not making yourself number one and you're not your friend, you're not being there for yourself and being your number one person in your corner, then it's gonna be tough to find other people who are gonna do that for you, who are gonna support you in a positive way. So I think the biggest thing is not to hold any resentment towards people in your life, but just kind of learn and not lose love for them, but also see when you need distance from them. Um never married, no kids. Well, I haven't had kids either, but I have been married, and I was in a really long relationship for 15 years, and divorce is not an easy thing. Um, I think that's something that's gonna take me. It's already been almost two years, and I don't think I'm over it yet. So maybe it's kind of good not to have that emotional baggage. Uh, yes, I did learn a lot from it. Yes, I do cherish all my memories with my ex. Um I loved her very deeply, and you know, you know, it was but it's really tough losing your best friend and um not really having the answers on how to get that person back when you didn't want the divorce. Um avoiding connection is definitely, I think, a uh an issue in today's society when we have our phones in front of us all the time, and it's so easy and convenient to avoid interaction, but I think we need to fight back against that. We have to find new things to keep our minds stimulated. We're we're social creatures, we have to stay social. And I think isolation is one of the worst things that we can do, especially when we're getting sober. I think someone um I heard recently someone compare isolation to like smoking. Um I don't know, you hear so much nowadays, but I I just think I felt a lot better getting out there and trying new things. Um, there's a website called meetup.com where you can just kind of type in your interest and you can find groups of people doing things, whether it's hiking or a certain uh hobby or educational or just social environments are really important for our sobriety and just for our overall peace of mind. And I know it's not easy to do it, you come across a lot of different personalities. Some people you feel like don't really like you, some you connect with more, but you gotta focus on the positive, the ones that you feel connect with more, and not hold anything against the ones who you feel like are not really resonating or feeling your vibe or your energy right away. And I think it's important not to let other people, how they treat you, dictate the way you treat them. Don't let them dictate who you are. Like if you want to be a social outgoing person and they're more um um, what's the word? They're more um uh introverted and not as social, or they kind of give you a weird kind of look or something, just still be yourself. Just treat them like you would treat someone else that you feel like liked you. Um because I think it's easy when you're getting social and back into talking. A lot of people say, oh, this person doesn't like me, therefore I don't like them, and I'm gonna start acting weird around them. And then that can manifest into treating other people who are just having a bad day or whatever, who like you um poorly because you think now you're correlating that to the person who you think doesn't like you. So don't let them don't let different personalities dictate your personality. Really try to fall in sync with your personality. So there's another good one. Um, let's see here. Okay. Yeah, I've been getting a lot of messages, guys. And I want to kind of answer the ones that I've already replied to because I don't want to um I want I don't want people to feel like I haven't read their messages and responded, but I'm getting a lot and I'm I'm trying to respond to them, but I'm also balancing my own life with school and work and starting this podcast and coming back to my own sobriety and trying to feel better with my own life and um you know it's not always easy. Alright, so okay, here's another one. Alright, here's another one about uh sleep. Which is definitely a big problem when you're getting sober. That was oh man, not being able to sleep is one of the worst things ever. It really affects your overall mental health. But uh, she says, hey man, just wanted to message you and talk to you about exhaustion at the moment. It's been over six weeks since I stopped and it went on for ten years of daily usage. At the moment, I'm finding myself quite depressed, and I'll be flat out all day. Soon as bedtime comes, I'm thinking about everything, and it's been a struggle. Has anything helped with that? That is a struggle. Being so tired from not sleeping and just trying to get off of weed from smoking for so long, and it's been something that helped you go to bed, it's hard. There's no easy answer for this. The best thing that I could say is to be active. If you are so active all day, you go for multiple walks and you work out and you're doing stuff around the house and you're taking the stairs instead of the elevator, and you limit stimulants, like a lot of coffee and things like that. Um I do think that we have this excess energy that we've kind of kind of um that we've kind of um muffled by smoking weed throughout the years, and that energy resurfaces, and we don't know what to do with it. And trauma and energy and all the all these um things are stored in your body, I think, more so than in your mind. And sometimes you're just so tired, but your body won't shut off. I dealt with that for a long time. And sometimes I still have nights like that, especially as you get a little older, it becomes kind of harder to wind down after a long day and a lot of like mental and um stimulation, you know. So moving your body is really important. I tried um TM meditation, and that's where you kind of focus on a word. You would do it twice a day, once in the morning and once a night, and you'd kind of just sit there, clear your mind, and if a thought came in, you wouldn't like try to push it away, but you would just kind of um repeat a word that you pick. Um and you would just kind of you wouldn't say it out loud, but in your head, and you'd kind of say that word and until that thought disappeared and you can clear your mind again. And you do that twice a day for 20 minutes. That definitely helped me, but that's hard to keep up with, um, for me at least. Um but meditate, any kind of meditation or relaxing videos or like sound baths on um Spotify really helped. Um winding down really early, limiting your screen time at night, especially, having a good like sleep routine, or like what's it called? Sleep hygiene. I believe that's what it's called. Like just winding down towards the end of the night, not watching TV, not doing things that not talking to people late at night, not going on your phone, but just maybe just sitting with yourself, reading a book, um, maybe just laying in your bed and kind of just like you know, relaxing and and I know it can be boring at first, especially if you're um, you know, on the younger side and you w want to go out and have fun, but it's not permanent. It's just while you're initially in the phases of um trying to come back to yourself and trying to feel normal again. Um because, you know, when you're doing it long term and you smoke every day long term, you usually at night is when you smoke the most, and then you get so high that you just pass out. So you have to kind of find ways everybody's got their own um, or like everybody's like a walking chemistry set, and we all have our own things that work for us. There's no one size fits all, and you have to find that. That's part of the fun part about getting sober is finding yourself, finding what works for you. So, anyways, there's another question. I guess I'll answer a few more here. This podcast has gone on for almost 20 minutes now. And um, like I said, I still want to grow and try to figure this this whole thing out. It's fairly new, and I want to post more. I know I haven't been doing it that much, but it is the goal. Let's see. What else can we find here? Alright, okay, this is one, um Okay, well so you know, I kind of dealt with everything all at once, a divorce and getting sober. The divorce was kind of the catalyst as well as not feeling well, but the divorce was a big catalyst for me to want to stop too because I would smoke with my ex. And now here I am at home in the same place smoking by myself, and it just felt so low. It just felt like it was a piece of what I was holding on to, and I needed to just clear everything out of my life that was connected to her just to move on. So keep that in mind, and here's um one more that I'm gonna um read. And if I'm reading, if you're listening to this podcast and I'm reading your message, just know that I'm you know, I'm just trying to digest everything, and I've read your message, and I will get back to you, um, especially if I read it on here. Um So he says, I saw your post about a date uh you went on where the woman said, You have been through a divorce was a red flag. I saw this and thought of you, so sad, but true. He showed me a reel that was connected to about divorce where she runs away from him when he says that he was in a long uh relationship. It's kind of funny. But um uh people should be more impressed to have kept a relationship going on that long. I agree. Um, how many short-term relationships should be the red flag? Just wanted to say I love your content. It was honestly encouraged me to try to truly try sobriety after smoking weed for 25-30 years. My girl, nine years, broke up with me last year, and I'm starting to get into a better place, but I realized um I realized sobriety is the only way for me to grow. Thanks so much for putting your s your story and your message out there. Man, see, this is another one of those messages that I really resonate with like people like this who are just like it really makes me feel like I'm not alone. We're not we're not alone in this, you know. There's other people who have very similar stories to you. And like I said, the weed is connected to your relationship, and anything that makes you think over her, or if you anything that brings you back into that space, I think is good to walk away from, at least for me. Um yeah, it is kind of sad. Some people look at marriage and divorce as a failure, but I really look at a 15-year relationship as something that was a success, especially in today's day and age. Um, you don't see it that much anymore. And I learned a lot from this person. I learned how to love deeply, I learned how to be selfless, I learned how to care for other people. I also learned about myself and where I need to be a better person, and where I needed help, and how I was stuffing down my feelings and my emotions and my past trauma and. And maybe it I was taking it out on my ex and I didn't always treat her fairly. And it was uh a big wake-up call for me to change my life, to be a better man, to not carry the same and not repeat the same cycles and patterns that I did in my marriage because I feel a lot of guilt about it a lot of times. And it always it always takes two in every relationship, not one person, you know, is perfect. Um but I definitely could have been better. Um not to say I was horrible. I I I was a good husband, I believe. I did everything I could to take care of her and make her happy, but I wasn't perfect. And you know, we carry these things since childhood, um, these traumas and this um these feelings that we have that manifest in different ways, and you know, I think just the complex complexity of relationships and and love is very hard to navigate, especially when it's your first love and your first marriage. And you know, I met her when I was 25, and we divorced when we were both 40. So you're pretty much a kid when you're 25, and then you're all of a sudden shot out on the other end and you're middle age, and it's not easy to figure out. So I definitely recommend any kind of big catalyst like this is making some kind of big change that you feel like you've always wanted to make that you never have. And for me and this guy as well, it sounds like it's stopping smoking or getting sober and getting in a better place and being more mentally stable and control of your urges and your your thoughts and your and and navigating your mental health issues and processing the things that you used weed to self-medicate. Um and it's not easy at first. You have to try things, you have to try therapy, you have to try group therapy, you have to exercise, you have to try new social hobbies, you have to maybe go to church, or maybe travel more, or do things. There's so much to do in life. I I started this coming back online from getting sobered, which is kind of like something that really helped me uh hold myself accountable, is this page and seeing the success with it. Although it's still on a small level, it feels like the one thing in my life where I'm moving upstream and not downstream, and it feels like more of a calling and a purpose rather than this goal or dream that I've always fantasized about. Like um, so this this podcast, this page, really helped me. Um, this was something that really helped me uh in my sobriety and navigate everything, and um you need to find what works for you. And not to say, you know, like uh everybody has the same thing, but what is it your one thing that you've always wanted to do, or what interests you, or what have you dealt with in your life that's kind of kind of always been there, even though you didn't want it to be there, like a calling. Like what is something that you can run towards and battle that has always kind of followed you around instead of running from it? Like for me, it was addiction. I've had a lot of people in my life who have struggled with addiction, and I've said it before in my on some of my videos, and I've had family members, and I've lost my stepfather from alcoholism, and I've known people who've been addicted to heroin, and I've had friends in school that died from drug overdoses. And um, you know, even in today's current climate, I live in Los Angeles, and there's drug addicts um there's drug addicts under bridges and encampments and people using it out in the open and having psychotic episodes right in public and um you know it that's a whole nother story, but it's drug addiction and addiction is a huge problem, not only in the United States, but I think the entire world. And it doesn't always have to be one drug, it can be anything from looking at our phones too much to overeating to sex addiction to substances to overthinking negatively. Um you know, we all have our thing. And um You know, it's not easy, but I think when we run towards the things that are hard is when we make the real growth, and we ultimately, if we can do the hard work, it ultimately makes us happier. It makes us attract better people into our lives, it makes us feel like we have more of a sense of purpose, it makes us healthier physically, mentally, spiritually. Um and the road to that is not easy, but if you look at the bigger picture, um I think it's worth it. And it's not the road isn't easy, but there's good moments and there's really there's really great moments in between. It's not all doom and gloom, it's not all bad days, it's not all sleepless nights. There's some days where you feel better than you ever have in your entire life, or when you were smoking or doing whatever it is that you were addicted to. There's some kind of thing working deeper that we can't see, I believe, that rewards us for our hard work. And if we're willing to put in that hard work and we're willing to make the sacrifice, and we believe in ourselves, and we can tackle the things in our life that we feel like are holding us back, I think it'll definitely make us better people. And I guess I'm gonna leave the this podcast with that message today. Whatever you're going through, just know that you have more strength than you think you do. And there's all sorts of resources around you to become a part of, to help you, if you really are looking for them. And the power of the human mind and the spirit, I think, goes deeper than we give it credit for. So, anyways, keep fighting the good fight. If you're sober, keep up the good work. If you want to get sober, you know, don't be too hard on yourself, but keep trying to make steps towards that. Um, I thank you guys once again for listening, and um I will talk to you on the next podcast. All right, bye.