Three weeks in and it's getting harder

I smoked almost every day for over ten years. I've quit for short periods before, once as long as a few months. About a month ago, however, I decided that the time had come to really get serious about stopping.

I never smoked that much, compared to many whose stories I read on here. It was only in the evenings, after the child had gone to bed. However, when you do it year after year, it changes you, bit by bit. I am a pretty successful person, doing well in my career and with a happy family. My wife never complained about me smoking. Over time, however, I began to feel that I wasn't getting the most out of myself, out of my life. I felt like I was sitting around all the time instead of really LIVING. I felt like I was doing enough to get by in my career, without really going after it, and this is with a job that I really love, that I've worked very hard to get to. I started to feel like things were slipping away from me.

Smoking itself became so routine that it really wasn't fun anymore. I'd look forward to it in the evening and as soon as I had the chance I'd step outside. But once I had smoked, I'd start to feel down, like I knew I shouldn't be doing it. I'd end up staying up too late playing video games or browsing reddit, just sitting at my computer half-asleep. I was a zombie. Then I'd get a crappy night's sleep, and the next day would be that much harder. Of course, the next evening would roll around and I'd be right back there digging into my stash. It got to feel like I was just feeding a pointless addiction.

So it's been about three weeks, maybe a month. I'm not quite sure exactly when I stopped, I just didn't buy any more. At first, like everyone else, I had super-vivid dreams, but overall my sleep improved. I started going to bed about an hour earlier, and it made waking up so much easier. I was more alert during the day, and I felt good, physically. I did have a pretty bad dip in my mood for about a week after I quit. Everything seemed pointless. That too passed, and I wasn't really craving it.

Now, I can feel the urge coming back, pretty strong. I think about it frequently, and I actually took my medical card (I live in California) with me when I went out to run errands a few days ago, but thankfully I didn't have time to stop at the dispensary. I'm glad I didn't, but I REALLY want to smoke. Of course, I know that if I buy some I'll be right back into my old habits, but I still want to. It's so strange to feel the addiction talking inside your head, telling you, "it will be great, you'll blaze a little bowl and kick ass on some video games"--but at the same time to KNOW that's just the addiction talking. It's not really me, it's the receptors in my brain that I have trained for a decade, trying to do what they've always done. I find myself rationalizing marijuana use, remembering that it's human nature to seek some form of intoxication and since I don't drink, weed is perfect. I think about how when I first started smoking, I loved the way that it gave me an alternative viewpoint on the world. I felt like I could see things through a different lens, things that most people never saw. Of course, those feelings have long since gone away as weed became simply a routine, but those old memories keep popping up into my mind.

I hope someday I'll be able to have the occasional smoke and just have fun with it. Maybe, though, I'm now realizing that that someday will never come.

Anyhow, thanks r/leaves. This sub has been a real help to me.