ending cycles of despair, creating happiness

Its 3am, and I have work at 10am today, however its always helped writing out my thoughts of the day, to help my clear my mind.

I kind of feel my life has been dominated by a kind of bipolarity of mood changes, and fluctuations of anxiety and depression. For example for 3 weeks i will be exercising every day, eating healthily, not smoking, not toking, basically maintaining healthy lifestyle habits. Then I have a significantly bad day at work, and buy cigarettes or get high with friends, or take mdma, and after the depression sets in, a downward spiral starts happening. So the next 3 weeks is spent watching movies/tv shows, not really seeing friends or going to music shows, getting high and my anxiety and depression start to control my life.

Firstly, I really think that if i truly want to be happy I have to quit weed until I learn self-control, basically abstain from all intoxicants tbh. I gave away my tobacco pouch to my friend yesterday (for the record ive thrown about $300+ worth of tobacco in the bin / given it away to friends) in an effort to give myself a fresh start. I want to see how long I can live life without cigs as well, because I'm sick of my mentality that
a) I need cigs to enjoy a beer
b) I need cigs to enjoy finishing a meal
c) I need cigs to do most drugs
d) I need cigs to drink coffee
e) I need cigs to hang out with friends at night in the city

I've kind of reached a breaking point where ive watched myself make the same mistakes hundreds of times and I know where following certain triggers will lead me, that I want my own consciousness to prevail over my automatic reactions to emotions.

If I want to pursue a happier / more sociable / fulfilling life, i think the true keys will be daily meditation (hope to do 15 minutes twice a day building up to an hour over a period of time), daily cardio exercise (running and swimming now that it is almost summer, also dog walks), I need to find ways to help others as well (i figure its best to start in your own back yard so I want to be more proactive helping with chores around the house) and as noted previously sobriety.

I've said all of this to myself many many times, but I wanted it to be under my own name so i can come back to blogs, report on my progress and see if i really do have any will-power/inner strength, because I want to learn to love my self because i'm so fucking sick of being unable to care / connect / empathise with others because I constantly beat my self down which leads to complete self-absorption

its been about 40 hours no cigarettes, 2 or 3 days no weed, i'm going to have a shower, meditate, watch some firefly and try sleep, i miss the times when i was really high on life

 

I had to quit smoking about 4 years ago because it was bothering my throat too much. That's pretty much what it takes for me to quit - an actual visible sign that it's impacting my health. I started having half a cig once every two weeks or so and have been able to be disciplined with that. My other stuff (including alcohol) I use in moderation pretty well, but I'm pretty sure it would take a health-related issue again to scare me into quitting those.