Guide: How To Stop Smoking Weed

When you stop using weed it will take at least six weeks before most of the weed has left your system (sometimes up to ten weeks). It is important to abstain totally, because if you smoke one joint every day, you will never get a total elimination. In that case it will be more difficult to deal with your emerging feelings on an intellectual basis.

The quitting process may be divided into three phases, where each phase has its own characteristics and problems.

Phase one
has a bio-medical focus lasting until the 12th day after smoking cessation.

The symptoms listed below are often experienced by chronic users?

Did or do you have:

Sleeping disorders?	Yes	No
Cold and warm perspiration?	Yes	No
Enhanced dream activity?	Yes	No
Muscular pain?	Yes	No
Headache?	Yes	No
Head cold?	Yes	No
Indigestion?	Yes	No
Irritation?	Yes	No
Negative feelings?	Yes	No

What is your main focus during this phase of the detox?

Don't make the decision never to smoke again. Make the decision to abstain today. Tomorrow you make the decision to abstain that day, and so on.

Relapse during this phase are mainly reactions to avoid the above listed symptoms. Don't forget, these symptoms are only temporary.

Notice even the minor changes in your perception of the immediate social environment.

Consider in what different directions you change.

Compare your way of functioning, now and under the influence of cannabis.

Ask your friends or relatives if they have noticed any changes?

Phase two
has a psychological focus lasting until three weeks after smoking cessation. The negative feelings will surface during this period. Remenber that these feelings may be the result of the inability to verbalize feelings of anger, sadness and so on. In this phase your dream activity becomes more intense.

What is your main focus during this phase of the detox?

• You will still have difficulties to deal with problems in daily life. It will, however, change to the better.
• You will be emotional unbalanced. Think of the things that make you feel good, and what make you feel bad.
• Consider how you handle problems in your daily life.
• You have to identify your different strategies of avoiding difficult situations.
• Use your new found ability of considering and reflection.
• Relapses in this phase are often caused by an inability to verbalize emerging feelings. Therefore it’s important to continue to notice, compare and consider.
• Ask your friends or relatives if they have noticed any changes?

Phase three
has a psycho social focus. It is a new beginning in the process of maturation. In your cannabis period the maturation process has slowed down and a substitute identity has emerged. It is an important quest to identify your original identity.

What is your main focus during this phase of the detox?

Compare your old cannabis-related notions about a "normal" life, with how you look at it now.

Your old way of dealing with problems must be analysed and eventually substituted with others more suitable.

You have to focus on and question your goals. Where am I and where will I go?

Try not to forget that you are in the beginning of a new phase in life, which has no end. It is a continuation of the psychological maturation which was slowed down by the effects of cannabis.

Now is the time to try to remember why cannabis became an attractive drug.

It is common that the chronic user has a transitional period of emptiness and a feeling of loss.

Relapses during this phase may be an effect of several causes:

• The detection and confrontation with your own immaturity.
• A feeling of losing an important part of your life.
• That you got too much to catch up with.
• That the reorientation process is too overwhelming.
• That you do not possess any alternative strategies to solve your problems.
• That you always have to guess because you don’t know what to do.