Six Months Without Weed: The Messy Middle No One Talks About

What I’ve learned in the last 6 months — living life without smoking weed every night.

The first few weeks were so hard to sleep — night sweats every night, irritability from lack of sleep, and having no appetite. Once I started to sleep again, my dreams were vivid and wild. Sometimes they’d haunt my thoughts the next day. My subconscious was finally able to process, and for that I’m grateful. This wasn’t fun though.

Two months in — gut health issues started. How do I know it’s from quitting weed? It happened to me last year too, when I quit for just over 100 days. It happened in the exact same timeframe. What I’ve come to learn is that’s how long it took for all of the THC to process out of my body. Then, my gut was like — hey, let’s totally recalibrate and you can face all kinds of body image issues while we do it. Cool?

Bitch, no!

This sucked so much. This was the hardest part of all of it.

Old shit being dragged to the surface, screaming “look at me”!!! I was bloated no matter what I ate!!! I researched FODMAPS, if I needed to be gluten free, cutting all dairy, should I go back to vegan? Fuck, I can’t even eat a banana without blowing up?! Should I eat only meat? Carnivore diet? Maybe keto? Jeezus, nothing is working!!!! I can’t handle this!

Many episodes of wanting to give up and just smoke and not care anymore. I just wanted freedom from my mind and body! This never happened when I smoked?! Yeah, but what I was conveniently blocking from my memories was not eating all day, living on coffee, and then stuffing my face. Eating whole cheese pizzas and then feeling like absolute trash the next day, bloated all the same. I mean, who wants to relive that?!

So, this gut health reset took 6 weeks! I spent a lot of time frustrated and wanting to give up. I cried a lot. I questioned my life choices, and I asked myself why the fuck I was even doing this?! And then I started to feel normal again. I wasn’t bloated after eating, unless it was just like a normal “body being a body” kind of thing.

Bloat is normal, but it’s not normal after eating any little thing. You shouldn’t be bloated all the time — something is off and your body is talking, maybe screaming.

I’m so glad I didn’t give up, and I learned a valuable lesson about waiting it out. Good things don’t happen overnight, change is hard, and it takes time — and a lot of that time includes discomfort. The thing about that is the discomfort is temporary and it’s for long-term benefit. It’s worth it.

This was probably the hardest part of getting clean. I felt so alone. I couldn’t afford to go see a nutritionist, there isn’t any info out there about this part of quitting weed, and I felt crazy. It was even more of a mindfuck because of my history of body image issues and an eating disorder. This part of the process lit my past on fire and challenged me in the deepest ways!!!

Another part of this time, the “messy middle,” is that there aren’t stories out there about people’s journeys through quitting weed. It’s still such a new way to cope that it feels a lot like how it felt to get sober from drinking in 2012. There was a billion-dollar NA market then, there wasn’t popularity in being sober or all kinds of sober Instagram pages. It was my coworkers pushing me to “just have one” and people asking why I wasn’t drinking. I was looked at as “other” for my choices. I was the weird one for not drinking.

I’m so glad that it’s all so different now. A lot fewer people drink now — but I think that has a lot to do with the fact that they’re smoking instead. I’m not judging, that’s exactly what I did. When I quit drinking, my emotions were insane and early on weed helped me. And then it didn’t, and I became dependent on it.

I spent all day ruminating about how much I wanted to quit, and then immediately thought about the withdrawal symptoms and would convince myself to just go back to the dispensary “one more time.” I was stuck in that cycle for years!

What happened? The pain of continuing to live in that pattern became heavier than the dopamine hit that lasted minutes before I felt immediate regret. I could no longer enjoy it without the guilt and shame of being so stuck just suffocating me. There was no going back. This was it — end of the road.

That was 6 months ago today.

I’m still in the process of relearning who I am without it. Fuck, I’m learning who I am without an addiction to self-medicate with every night. It’s been about 20 years since I’ve been free from dealing with some kind of addiction. The profound presence I have now has given me so much clarity.

I always knew I wanted to do something with what I’ve lived through and overcome. If you haven’t read my other posts, I’ve been in recovery from bulimia, and sober from alcohol for almost 13 years. Weed was a whole different thing, and it’s still stigmatized. It’s scary to share about it, but it matters so much. I needed these words when I was trying to quit. I needed to feel less alone and know I wasn’t crazy for being addicted to weed. I needed to know it happens and withdrawals are very real.

So much of this battle is mental, and nobody can fully understand the swirl of thoughts that go on when you’re stuck in an addiction. It’s the same swirl for all of them — or it was for me. The spiral of bulimia, alcohol, and substance abuse with weed. The attempt to solve it, the plans to stop, the erosion of self-trust as you fall back into it every single day, the attempts to start over, the relapsing, and the deepest shame a person can hold. I see you. I understand.

I want to work with women in this messy middle. I’ve been there. I’ve lived through it, and I am so proud of who I am now. It would be my honor to walk alongside you as you find your way home to yourself.