I’ve never paid much attention to who smokes weed, or takes pills or any drugs for that matter, in AA. I had only ever heard rumours that some members might, I didn’t care either way, as long as they told interesting stories of there recovery I didn’t give it any thought. But now I am a weed smoker in AA a few questions arise. How important are the traditions to AA? Do members really take on the primary purpose of focussing on alcohol and the only requirement for membership a desire to stop drinking? Or do most include weed as a part of being sober and judge you, or even call you not sober for smoking? When I initially starting smoking my naivety lead me to believe that the traditions would protect me from scrutiny, but three months later I am now under the impression that it’s best to keep my weed smoking a secret, or at least not publicized.
It’s a personal matter. If I had haemorrhoids, enjoyed some really weird niche of porn, or enjoyed sticking various fruits up my arse, I would probably keep those to myself to avoid alienating myself in meetings. Jokes aside I do avoid personal topics in meetings; I don’t share my views on monogamy or the methods I use to have a fulfilling sex life while being single, I don’t share my political view nor other things that are just not closely enough related to AA. I will share these with members that I befriend and see outside in meetings, but not in meetings or with people I don’t know so well. Weed should probably be one of those topics.
My personal view of weed is that weed is completely non-addictive if you are spiritually fit. I came to this epiphany while I was stoned out of my brain on weed while walking along Margate beach, which did strike me as ironic, but a couple months later, I still find it a solid hypothesis. If you are an alcoholic and arrest that disease on a daily basis by working the 12 steps, then smoking weed should not cause any problems of addiction. It’s not physically addictive and doesn’t hit the endorphin receptors so smoking it will not stop your body producing the natural endorphins like alcohol and heroin do. Weed should be less addictive than sex and gambling. I don’t get the gambling high some do, but sex has a stronger pull on my addictive nature than weed – although I must admit both have become a good combination recently – fucking on weed is very nice. So the only way you can get addicted to weed is psychological addiction where you just can’t face life on life’s terms.
AA is proven over and over again to arrest this very problem of helping people that can’t face life on life’s term do that very thing. When members don’t go to meetings they become what is referred to as dry drunks and act out on negative behaviour, trying to change the way they feel through control, fantasy, or other escapism. Just because you are sober and work a program doesn’t mean you don’t some times feel like acting out on an escaping behaviour, but the program gives you enough self esteem that you have the power to choose not to, or choose to escape in a non-destructive way.
I wanted to escape my reality the other day, it was just one of those days that I didn’t want to face the world. I considered smoking weed and going for a walk, having a few hours off life, but as I thought about it I didn’t really want to, in a few hours I may feel worse. It then dawned on me that I had also considered for split seconds gorging on chocolate or going to a brothel, both had been dismissed by my mind in under a second. Smoking weed was just one of many options to escape and I am no more powerless over it. In early recovery there were many times I had felt like that and gone out and paid for sex, ate ice-cream, watched porn, or some other distraction, but I have had more practice reviewing and deciding against these temptations. I have only had weed as an option for a few months.
This is similar a newcomer getting clean and getting fat, they have never had to worry about diet before and now they have to learn self control over food, this can take years. I have only really developed self control over sugar foods in the last few years. My body and mind have to get used to the temptation of weed.
I didn’t really know if I could control weed when I first smoked it again after a break of 17 years. As a teenager I had been chronically addicted to it and lacked the control over frequency, amount, or timing of when I smoked. I remember buying half an ounce and dividing them up into 14 foils so I could sell to my friends and keep 4 free for me. I smoked my 4 and then started pulling little bits out of the other foils before giving up and smoking the lot. Other times I remember having just one gram, getting nice and stoned and thinking what a good idea it would be to save the rest for the next night, but I could never, if I had it, I would smoke it all that night.
Almost twenty years later I thought worst case scenario was I would be powerless and smoke the whole bag and consider my weed experiment a failure. I was however confident it wouldn’t be a “gateway” to other drugs. By this time I had already taken LSD a few times and had no desire to use any other drugs. I bought a bag, chopped it up, and put it in my dry herb vape that I had never used before. I heated it up, started sucking on it and wasn’t really sure if it was working as there was no smoke coming out. I kept sucking for about 5-6 big pulls wondering if it was working and then the lights changed hue and space and time took on a whole new shape. Oh my God. I am fucking wasted. I went to the beach and went for a walk as high as I had felt on the acid. Oh no, I have really relapsed this time. I am way to stoned for a recovering addict, music, that’s better, as I placed my headphones in my ears and could almost see the beats coming into my brain. I spent the next couple hours half loving it, half terrified, and waiting for the obsession to smoke the rest to kick in, but it never happened.
I finally went home, had dinner, watched some TV, vaped some more – less this time, and went to bed. I woke up a bit hungover, but feeling ok and no desire to vape anymore. This was all a new experience for me. In my youth if there was weed there in the morning it was breaky bongs, but I had other things I would rather do. It was a freeing feeling. That night I vaped some more and enjoyed it, and did it again on the third night, but this third time I got really afraid that I had smoked weed three nights in a row and paranoid that I would become a junky again, it wasn’t enjoyable. The next day I was terrified I was going to be sent back to the horrors of addiction even though I had zero desire to take any drugs. I did my usual yoga and it was a purging of fear, my body was completely terrified, after being clean for 17 years I was back to using drugs. At the end of the yoga session I calmed down and looked at it rationally, I am terrified of a drug I don’t even want to take, it was absurd. I recognised it as my conditioning, the fear campaigns in school about this relatively harmless drug and NA’s continuation of that false narrative. Even still, I decided I was best off not smoking anymore for a while. Did I have that control? I asked myself. I wasn’t sure. I made a decision if I was stoned again that evening I would give it or throw it away.
I wasn’t stoned again that night and I went travelling in Indonesia the following week for 6 weeks. I decided not to take any weed in my body board. A few weeks later in Gili Trawangan where mushrooms and weed are pretty much legal I bought a gram of the local bush buds. It was very week compared to the medical grade buds I had bought in Australia and I quite liked it, just a mild buz with no paranoia. What I noticed was I had no compulsion to smoke it, I could take it or leave it and ended up having about 3 or 4 joints out of it. After the week there I still had some of the bag left and didn’t want to travel with it so left it in the room for the next guest.
I came back to Australia and had my jar of weed stashed, and thought I would give it another try. This time I smoked instead of vaped, thinking it might give me less fear. I had a joint at about 7pm and really enjoyed it. I went to bed at about 10 and considered another hit as I had only smoked half the joint, but thought I would have less of a hangover if I didn’t. I went to bed and drifted off to sleep on a cloud. In the morning I was hardly hungover at all and in a really good mood.
It’s been about 6 weeks since then and I have been experimenting with vaping, bongs, and joints, and using different amounts. I bought 7 grams at the start of January and now at the end of April, still have over half left. I am the sort of person I would tease, what used to last me a couple days now last me months with little effort. It’s not a perfect science, sometimes I smoke too much and get a bit fearful, other times I don’t smoke enough and it’s a bit like meh, but don’t want to smoke any more before bed and risk being groggy the next day. But the moral is I now have more control than I did when I first started smoking it, I seem to get more and more control as time passes, which is contrary to the progressive nature of the disease.
Weed may still get the better of me, it may lead to habitual use against my will or it might be a gateway drug to heroin or alcohol, but for now it is a positive addition to my life. I smoke or vape 2-3 times a week a few hours before bed and watch stand up comedy or just sit there and think. More will be revealed.
Red Pill Recovery 