Hey sirtophamhat, I'm glad you found my post useful. I've actually only not been stoned for a week, so I am typing down my thoughts like crazy because I become a little manic for a while when I'm coming off it. Not really, I'm just a little overwhelmed by my sober energy. And plus, I am still obsessing over pot at this point - the most I can do is write about it
I managed a 3 month break last year, and then I didn't get my dream job I really wanted and came close to getting, so I smoked a joint to deal with it. I immediately became a fiend again and everything just went straight to hell, all the amazing progress I had made was lost. Now, after burning out for 6 months or so and finally having had enough of chasing that initial high, I know better. I'm not going to make that mistake this time. Once a fiend, always a fiend... I really can't afford to smoke ever again at this point, my 20's will pass me by and I will think "what have I done with my life?"
I believe that my neurophysiology has been forever changed by weed, and that even after prolonged breaks the dormant addiction comes back full force. I have ruined this drug for myself by abusing it, which is ok, because it never did much good for me anyway and I can still very much get high off other mind expanding things on occasion, that leave me feeling liberated instead of angry, depressed, anxious, and craving another hit like crazy for at least a couple days.
A strange thing is that I have excellent self control with other drugs that I use, being able to take them or leave them. I've been persistently dedicated to exercise for a decade, and consider myself strong minded. It's almost embarassing that I've been caught by something so seemingly innocent, after sniffing all these lab chemicals and gotten away with it, a darn little weed has completely fucked up my life.
It was bad for me in university, I was stoned for everything and it made my social life far worse than I'm sure it would have been if I wasn't so burnt out all the time. But what is worse, is that I continued to smoke pot all day every day after university. I am currently careerless and I doubtless should not be at this point as I graduated ages ago. I know deep down that my total lack of self control with and obsession over weed is the primary reason for this, but in order to deal with it, alas, I smoke weed all day and days/weeks go by and whoops... forgot to apply all that much.