Let's get some of the early details out of the way..
When did I start?
High school.
Why did I start?
It was gross, rebellious and I knew it would kill my parents if they found out.
It was also a good buzz (in the beginning).
Hello chemical addiction!
I chewed daily from that point on.
I quit once on my own for about a year. It took one bad relationship ending badly to start up again.
Ahh, self destruction...
23 fucking years later.....
I'm in my mid 40's. I go thru a can o cope about every 3 days. I smoke a 1/2oz of weed a week. I like Belgian ales.....a lot. I've been thru the dot com crash and got layed off from 3 jobs in 2 years. I have a dead end pay the bills job. I'm overweight, not married and have no kids.
What the fuck...
Then an series of events occurred:
1) My dad dies after fighting cancer for 12 years. I held his hand when he took his last breath.
2) My mom is diagnosed with altzeimers. She dies 3 years later.
3) The rest of my family gets into a huge fight over some cock-sucking, mother-fucking, piddly-assed money that my dad had left over instead of supporting each other.
I went into a verrrry verrry big, bad, dark place in my life. Dope, alcohol, chew, no sleep, no food, no friends.
Once you hit bottom there's always another deeper bottom you can dig for yourself or you can try to crawl back out. While wallowing in my own cesspool of self hatred and depression I reflected on the things in life that truly made me happy. I decided to revisit these things and sure as shit it worked. I started climbing out of the pit o despair.
First thing I quit was weed. I can smoke dope, sit around all day and think up great shit to do and DO NONE OF IT. Funny thing was how easy it was to quit. No withdrawals at all. Go figure...
Next up, spirituality. I was raised christian but it never stuck. I knew too many devout "christians" who were bad, evil people. I want truth, clarity and the ability to see, hear, feel, speak and live the truth clearly.
Hang onto your beer bottles gang: I became a Zen Buddhist. I sit meditation every day. I do weekend retreats once a month. I'm part of a community of buddhists. My limp, withering, flaccid...yes flaccid spirit exploded. This is a really good thing people. No joke! And no Greg40, I don't wear a bed-sheet and give out flowers at the airport. That's the Mormons....right?
At one point in my life I held a 2nd dan in TaeKwonDo and a 1st dan in HapKiDo. Now I break a sweat getting off the couch. I'm back at the gym 4 nites a week. Soon to be back at the Dojang. I'm slowly losing weight.
Only thing left was the nic bitch.
I knew I couldn't quit alone. I needed help. One of the members of the Zen school is an acupuncturist. I'd never had acupuncture so I decided to give it a try. It's absolutely amazing. It works. Straight up no shit it works. He helped me every step of the way including pointing me to this website called "killthecan.org". In between getting needled and sitting on a cushion I could jump onto chat and say whatever I wanted instead of driving to the store for a can. I cannot tell you how many times you guys saved me from caving. It's another community that I can connect to, get support from and feel a part of. You guys KICK ASS!
So far I've been at this transformation for 2 years. The last 109 days have been nic free!
jeff/huh?
