Finally making the decision to permanently quit.

I've felt all kinds of ways about this. It's been really difficult to come to terms with and acknowledge an addiction that I claimed I didn't have. This coming from someone who worked in the industry, producing the very things that ended up really messing with me.

I actually did kick it for a while, too. I went probably a few months without consuming any cannabis. I thought myself lucky that I didn't have serious urges. Told myself I could quit it at literally any time. At the time we still kept it around, though. The tricky part, of course, being that my wife had come to rely on it to help with her bouts of insomnia. I told myself I would quit, and only enjoy a pre-roll on my birthday, for example. Treat myself on rare occasions. I kept telling myself that and enabled myself to go back to my old ways. Carts make it way too easy to consume and I kept getting sucked back into frequent use. It's always easy for my sober mind to forget why I stopped something that didn't FEEL bad but most certainly, for me, was.

I've got a lot of guilt with this, too. I was such a heavy advocate for cannabis when I introduced it to my wife, who was at first very much against it. Now, I'm trying to clear the house of everything cannabis-related that we have. It's more challenging to do so when you have an e-rig, multiple 510 batteries I wouldn't know where to take to dispose of, etc. I felt terrible when I tried to ditch cannabis last time, because I ended up just throwing everything I had into the trash, lithium-ion batteries and all. I still worry and feel a deep sense of shame and regret about the Waste Management workers I likely put in harm's way as a result of my impulsive action.

Cannabis has really messed with me. Emotions end up feeling so blunted and fake. I can tell it's deteriorating both my wife's mental health and my own. It's making me a person I don't want to be, and it's inhibiting my ability to chase life goals that are of crucial importance to me.

I pass no judgement on anyone going through something similar. I was one of those "plant medicine" type guys who thought that the downsides only affect *some* people without realizing how it was not only deteriorating my own mental health, but also the relationship I have with my friends and my wife.

Just wanted to leave my story as a little biography of sorts that I can look back on and remember the things I was able to leave behind, and why I did so.