In 3 hours, I will reach 2 full days of sobriety.

I stopped drinking a few months ago, with the ultimate goal of quitting cannabis as well. I have a medical card for cannabis, but I kept finding myself using it recreationally and not just for my pain.

I did about two months of Physical Therapy to help my back, graduated like a month-ish ago. And since then, I haven’t often felt like I needed the cannabis for pain, but I still kept going back to it.

First I thought it was an oral fixation. So I told myself, I can have a 1 gram vape per week. Then I said I need to make it last for 2 weeks. I ran out of my vape 5 days ago. Since then, I used edibles for a couple of days because there was a monsoonal storm and my hands were hurting.

But I haven’t used it since Tuesday. I took an edible at 5pm on Tuesday, and I haven’t had any since.

---

This has been a year of “eye opening” for me.

I stopped drinking, it cleared my head and I had more motivation to improve myself. I stopped smoking in February-ish. I still crave nicotine every time I see an older movie, or get a whiff of a freshly lit cowboy killer. I worry that I’ll crave it forever. But I am unshackled, the chains removed… but we all long for our captors, no?

The last time I was completely sober was 14 years ago. I was in high-school. Someone I (at the time) considered a friend asked out a girl I was crushing on. He was rejected, obviously, she was a lesbian. I hadn’t transitioned yet, even privately, so asking her out was out of the question. I was still hurt though, defeated even. I wanted anything to make the sadness stop. So that same frenemy packed me a bowl of shitty weed, made of aluminum foil and a metal pen body. (I later learned that exposure to aluminum fumes are thought to cause Alzheimer’s disease.)

Over the next 14 years, I used cannabis, tobacco, alcohol, at least one of that unholy trinity every single day.

To quote a psychic gorilla:

“They put their shoulders to the wheel during the day, stupefy themselves with drugs or television at night, and try not to think too searchingly about the world they’re leaving their children to cope with.”

No More.

I’m clean. Forever this time.

With love, to myself,
Nora