Day 5 after 36 years

I was a highly functional stoner. I actually get way more motivated and inspired on it than I ever did sober, even before I started using. I used it pretty constantly for over 30 years.

For me it always functioned like a temporary blast of focus.

In college, I studied on it and graduated 3.8 Summa cum Laude whereas, previously in my sober high school days, I was a pretty mediocre student. Also got quite adept and accomplished at music (bass guitar, hip hip) on it. I have a decent well-paying job, though I am still a wage slave without much savings to my name. Many of my career dreams and aspirations have not been fulfilled.

Also, I never liked the fact that whenever I ran out of it or tried to quit, I would feel quite miserable and lost. I did not like the fact that I basically needed it to function and just to feel normal. Over the course of 30 plus years, I tried to quit countless times, only to relapse because I just couldn't take the dullness. I even went a year without it and saw many improvement. Yet, the dullness never really went away. So I'd inevitably dip back into it, with some grand plan to moderate, "only on weekends," "only in the evening", "only with friends" "inserting regular weekly 3-day t-breaks" etc. which would inevitably devolve back into 24/7 use since ultimately any intervening period of sobriety no matter how long or short was just too uncomfortable for me. I would become irritable and unpleasant, bored and kind of boring. So kind of just resigned myself for a time to the idea that my brain just needed it. And since I am a highly functional addict, and basically a grouchy. uninspired zombie off of it, it was just better for me (all things being equal) to keep using.

It wasn't until very recently, that the fact that I just feel like total shit and hollowed out without it finally became my main reason and motivation to walk away from it, once and for all.

I began to see that, especially now with its fog lifted, that any substance whose mere absence has such a profoundly negative effect on me can't be a good thing. I mean, we're not talking about some essential nutrient here. We're talking about a drug that I placed myself in bondage to by simply abusing it over time.

I am now simply motivated by the desire to find out who I am without it, not just for a few months or years but, say, for a decade or more. I've never really given it a chance and I figure I owe it to myself at 54 years old, no matter how uncomfortable it becomes, to find out in my second 50 years of life who that unencumbered person is.

Perhaps others can relate. Good luck and congrats on everyone trying to quit. You are definitely onto something. Peace.