This is a journal of re-sensitization and tolerance testing and how stopping smoking cannabis cold turkey impacted my daily life.
Having grown up in the midwest and having been thoroughly indoctrinated by the state with their scare tactics and DARE programs, I’ve always had what I assume to be a kind of Catholic guilt, or “cannaguilt” you could say, when it comes to enjoying pot.
This became more so after moving to Oregon and having the realization that I’d pretty much entirely replaced my drinking habit with vaping and smoking marijuana.
The social and societal conditioning made me question whether or not this was a good thing. Everyone drinks alcohol, and there are endless medical news stories touting the actual BENEFITS of having a couple of drinks EACH DAY.
Meanwhile, people are only now just waking up to the practical benefits of cannabis outside of the OG pain management application. Even then, the media seems pretty quick to try to find a way to nullify any type of positive news around cannabis.
Table of Contents
For example, anyone who has smoked good indica knows how calming the effects can be, with some being downright sedative. Heck, the term “couch lock” is almost as old as the phrase “Mary Jane” itself!
Yet we have mainstream legacy publishers like CNN going out of their way to find one study that attempts to nullify this widely accepted practical benefit.
Then there’s this hit job by Forbes that attempts to paint cannabis-induced appetite stimulation as a bad thing simply because many people end up eating unhealthy snacks when they get the munchies. Don’t mind you; that is entirely the voluntary cognizant action of the user and not the plant.
Finally, during COVID, there was some very interesting evidence found in multiple studies about how cannabis actually inhibited COVID-19 replication. Despite this promising research, the Boston Globe had to go out of its way to ensure everyone knows that’s not really true.
The point here is not that cannabis is a PERFECT plant. Everything in moderation.
The thing that is abundantly clear here is how the mainstream media and large legacy publishers have absolutely zero qualms about bashing cannabis while endlessly pushing big pharma products without ever mentioning their risks (hello, opioid epidemic!).
The net outcome, I believe, is a subconscious paranoia that somehow, despite my life going the best it ever has been (relationship-wise, health-wise, financially), there must be SOMETHING wrong with this activity I had been regularly partaking in.
As such, like a good, socially programmed little American, I decided to take a break for a week just to see if I had indeed become addicted and if my life would become a sleep-less living hell once I ceased my cannabis consumption.
Well, that was part of the motivation. Still, the other part was simply the desire to resensitize my cannabinoid receptors so that I could again experience the plant with some fresh eyes (and lungs), which is one of the most lovely experiences of my life.
Planning My T-Break To Maximize Potential Negative Outcomes
Not only was I going to stop cold turkey after over a year of daily puffing, but I also tried to engineer my experiment in a way that would maximize the possibility of experiencing a negative outcome.
Having become a regular smoker as well as a participant in the vibrant culture of the plant, I wasn’t terribly worried about significantly negative outcomes.
I’ve had enough multi-day hangovers from alcohol to understand that cannabis was, without a doubt, a better replacement just on those terms alone. If you’re honest with yourself, you’d probably agree.
So I made sure to time my t-break (THC-break) to occur the entire first week of my beginning a brand new job. Starting a new job is already an intense experience with the meeting of dozens of new faces, along with the inundation of piles of training and onboarding documentation, along with the headache of new insurance and retirement plans; it’s a lot to take in.
As such, I figured this would be as good a test as any to see if any of the stereotypical negative withdrawal side effects would impact me as I’d be under abnormally large amounts of stress. If this didn’t trigger a bad experience, nothing would.
The implementation was pretty straightforward. On a Friday night, I had one last rip off my water pipe, and then I didn’t touch any flower or edibles for the next 7 days, including the weekend lead-up to the job and then the entire first work week.
Below is a summary of my experience “quitting” marijuana cold turkey for a week:
Day 1: Into The Unkown
The first half of the first day didn’t really feel any different from any other day. Even when smoking regularly, I relegate my intake to the evening, essentially replacing the 2-3 brewskies that would normally assist with my “unwinding” from the day.
Honestly, what I notice every morning more than anything is my caffeine addiction. I find dry bitter single-origin African beans locally roasted to be simply irresistible and as such, will very honestly admit to my long-standing coffee addiction.
What I was waiting for was the intense sense of motivation to overtake me, given how popularized the “smoking weed kills all your motivation bro” saying has become.
That feeling never came. It never felt like I’d been released from my shackles of demotivation. In the late afternoon and evening, I felt a little more bored.
Still, I’m generally productive in the evenings even when I’m stoned, albeit more inclined towards creative productivity vs. menial task-type work.
So with a free and clear mind, I ate dinner, read a book, and went to sleep. Reading is a little more challenging for me when
I’m stoned, for sure, given how much my mind likes to run off on existential tangents. Reading sober did seem to help me plow through pages of Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality in a more efficient manner.
When it came time to sleep, yes, I will admit, it took 10-15 minutes to actually fall asleep. I love sleep so much that the idea that quitting cannabis prevents you from falling asleep was a fear that was in the back of my mind the whole time, which in itself probably did me no favors.
That said, I don’t think closing your eyes and waiting 15 minutes for your mind to also clear before you stumble off into a deep slumber is a nuisance.
Do I fall asleep faster when I’m high? Yes, there is no denying that. But comparing the almost instantaneous way I fall asleep when stoned to the very modest wait time associated with being sober is like comparing an F1 race car to a GT500 and exclaiming the GT500 is “slow.”
Day 2: Withdrawals Any Time Now…
To put more pressure on myself to experience SOME type of adverse reaction, I decided to take a coffee break on day two. I’m a 2-3 cup kind of guy most days, so this was a big event, and it took the better half of the morning to finally wake up.
Thankfully it was a Sunday and I wasn’t really in any type of rush.
In replacement of my usual cuppa, I had some really nice loose-leaf tea with a bit of condensed milk. I logged onto my computer and went about my routine as normal.
In the afternoon, I went to the gym as usual, checking off 1 of the 4 days I try to get in every week.
The fact that I’ve been going to the gym consistently, 4-5 days a week, for the last decade of my life, including the last few years in which I’d been consuming cannabis regularly, is itself a proof point against the “weed makes you lazy” dogma.
The second day was concluded with another healthy home-cooked meal, an hour of reading, and then an uneventful retirement to bed.
Days 3-9: Realizing I’m Fucking Fine
My friend was flying in the weekend after my self-determined tolerance break, and seeing as he doesn’t have access to high-caliber cannabis, thought it would be cool to extend my one-week break out to 9 days so we could blast off to the moon at the same pace upon his arrival.
I’m lumping these days together because they were all pretty much the same. After the first couple of days, I noticed myself falling asleep almost as fast as when I did when stoned. The quality of sleep was equally satisfying, although it did feel like my dreams were slightly more memorable than usual.
During the course of my break, nothing really noteworthy happened. I wasn’t particularly anxious. If anything, I felt quite calm and grounded.
I don’t feel that productivity increased or decreased, although boring tasks (some light accounting work, scheduling a trip) seemed just a bit more boring.
Cannabis definitely helps put an intriguing lens over everything, even the most menial work, that seems to take some of the pedantic bites out of it.
The only negative I noticed was some grogginess after quitting coffee for a few days, but as soon as I gave back into the bean, that went away, even while abstaining entirely from cannabis.
I do feel like the intensity of my workouts increased slightly. I felt more inclined to push myself closer to failure with heavy lifts than normal, and exercises like lunges or Stairmaster work that taxed my cardio seemed to be slightly easier.
A Summary of the Entire Experience
At no point was I legitimately afraid of experiencing life-altering withdrawal symptoms from cutting cannabis cold turkey. I usually take at least 2-3 days off each month simply for the joy that comes with resensitizing your endocannabinoid system.
My observations included:
- Slightly longer falling asleep initially
- Felt more bored doing boring tasks
- Felt a slight increase in cardiovascular stamina in the gym
That said, each of these points comes with its own counterpoint. When I say it took “longer to fall asleep” initially, that’s by 10-15 minutes. At no point did I find myself staring at the ceiling for hours on end, unable to sleep.
In fact, I think 10-15 minutes is a really reasonable time to fall asleep, and if anything, cannabis simply accelerates this “natural” timeline of relaxation and drifting off to sleep. So technically, it took longer, but when you’re comparing it to “almost instant” anything will seem longer when in reality it was no problem at all.
In terms of being bored, I’ll use preparing dinner as an example. Usually, I’ll find a fun Spotify playlist, rip my pipe, and then let my culinary creativity and blooming munchies take the wheel. The net result is always a delicious meal that’s always a little bit extra.
Sober, I was able to make meals of similar quality, but the act of preparing the food, cooking, and timing all just felt like it took a little longer, and I didn’t feel as totally absorbed in the work as I did when stoned.
The only benefit that I liked, in particular, was the slight bump in gym intensity. I’m not talking about drinking pre-workout levels of energy, just slightly less huffing and puffing and under-my-breath cursing after lunging down the astroturf with 70kg on my back.
Being a lifelong devotee to the church of iron I’m always appreciative of anything that gives me a little bump in the gym.
That said, it’s important to put this all in perspective by reiterating that even when smoking weed habitually, I still easily maintained a 4-5 day per week workout schedule, maintained a healthy body weight, and continued to slowly progress with my body composition, at least as best I can tell with my cheap home digital scale.
In the end, my t-break was rather uneventful, which admittedly was the outcome I was hoping for because I’m planning on adding extended breaks into my routine, probably every other month, in combination with my existing 2-day off cadence.
Since this original test, I’ve traveled overseas for weeks on end, which also involved stopping cold turkey and which led to no note-worthy side effects or challenges.
Who knows, maybe I’m just lucky.
I DO know that the world is magnificent and scary and perplexing whether or not you’re high. You can be lazy sober, or stoned. Controlling your appetite is an exercise all too familiar to even the most straight-edged of individuals.
Cannabis is simply an augmentation for me, a colored lens that simply shifts the hue of my experiences without actually altering their material substance or core meaning.
Concluding Caveats
One very interesting aspect of cannabis is how it affects everyone slightly differently. Given our unique biology, it would be foolish to say, “Because person A experiences this, then person B will have an identical experience.”
Some people have very addictive personalities. Video games, smartphones, nail-biting, gambling, and I’m sure, eeeven cannabis.
I intentionally try to stick to flower and casually-approximate edible dosing. Extracts and dabbing intrigue me, but there’s so much variety in flower that I’m still exploring I have not yet bothered to add dabbing to my consumption repertoire.
I’m not against it, and surely one day will taste the glory that is a fat live resin dab, but that’s for later on down the road.
So perhaps, comparatively, my existing tolerance level from smoking a gram or two of flower daily is lower than the average stoner’s tolerance level. Thus my tolerance experiences are uniquely mild.
I am perfectly happy to accept this as reality since I don’t have experience ripping dabs all day, every day, starting right away in the morning.
That said, I think enjoying a joint after a long day’s hard work is a fairly safe baseline for what an average American’s consumption might look like under federal legalization, for example.
I never tire of describing the benefits of replacing a daily drink or two with cannabis. In the long run, it is cheaper, makes me happier, augments my sleep and creativity, and just makes the world a little more curious.
You may have an entirely different experience. The web is full of anecdotal stories of people being inhibited by their cannabis use. As such, I wanted to share at least one positive story, documenting my own little experiment.
The point of this little journal is not to try to dictate to anyone how much or how little weed they should consume if any at all! It’s important people take their own reactions, their own lifestyles, and their own personal goals into account when determining what to put into their bodies.
This applies equally to coffee and alcohol, and social media as it does cannabis. Personal liberty is a beautiful thing and should be respected. As such, I think it would be polite if we didn’t all automatically assume daily tokers were all unmotivated foggy-headed addicts. That has never been my experience.
