So sure, life is scary, pain is painful and generally da shit is real. So let’s start small and work up. When you have a headache you take paracetamol. Pretty normal, right? Your head hurts, the tablet takes the hurt away, the headache passes and you get on with your day. How is that a bad thing? It ain’t! We all agree (I think).

Ok, so this is where I get slightly lost. If you’re in pain a lot, I think it’s fair you regularly take something for the pain. Obviously. Still fine?! Cos how is pain ever a good thing?

But here’s the thing, pain can be a message. And it’s been sending me messages my whole life, long before I ever smoked a fatty!!

THE PAIN DID ALL THE EXPLAINING.

You learn it as a kid. You touch the radiator and it’s boiling. OUCH!! You put your hand near the fire. OUCH!! Hmmm, don’t think I wanna do that again?!? You get a stomach ache so bad you’re curled up on the floor, and you’re thinking FUCK THIS SHIT!?! I ain’t eating that again, or that much again!!! The pain pretty much did all the explaining.

Sure, there’s nothing wrong with taking the edge off for one evening, i.e. a bullshit day… chillout time… have a smoke, a bit of quiet, then sleep!! BLISSS.

ONCE YOU’RE THROUGH THAT DOOR, EVERYTHING’S MUFFLED.

The problem is how easy it is to go from taking the edge off an evening to burying your head deep in the sand. Problems get big and start to pile up. Some days they are genuinely overwhelming, and a smoke is the easiest door out of that shit. Once you’re through that door you can’t see what the actual problem is anymore, with everything being muffled. You can’t tell the real issue from the noise. You soon can’t see the wood for the trees.

THERE’S A FIRE IN YOUR BELLY.

So yeah, I guess what I’m saying is, I need some MOTHERFUCKING PAIN!! I do. It’s just like when you’ve had your ass handed to you in sports/computer games etc. ASS WHOOPED, humiliated!! It does hurt, and that hurt makes you train that lil bit harder than you normally would have done… and then at last it comes round again for the rematch!!! And there’s a fire in your belly, cos you’re going to beat the absolute daylights out of that MF!!! That pain, that humiliation, is what you take into the rematch, and I feel that’s what the weed takes off me generally in life.

DUBAGE IN THE TANK

Plus when you’ve been high off your ballz, the classic tropes of being slow, sluggish and dosed up, we all know are true! I know there are those who’ll fight you to the death that being high is them at their best!!! Mate, if that works for you, that’s cool. But me personally, I wake up in a fog, I need loads of coffee just to get going, I drag myself through the day, then the evening comes round and I smoke again. Rinse and repeat. The whole time I’m running at about twenty percent battery on average and calling it normal.

NAH.

For a long time I had it under control. I remember my standard 9 to 5 days (pre vape), many nights I’d be like “it’s fucking cold outside” and I wouldn’t smoke, cos it was fucking cold outside!!

HEAD IN THE SAND

However this year, I’m gonna say it, I’ve just spent a year burying my head emotionally and smoking like all the bitches and bastards out there… and then on many an evening standing there wondering why nothing had changed?

I think people can do more and be more than they let themselves. Sure, some people aren’t fighters, or don’t feel like fighters right now. And I get it, some people (including me and probably most of the population) are just scared, and the fear swallows them, and they haven’t got it in them to stand up. If that’s you, I feel you, cos that’s me too! This shit is petrifying. You dip your toe in the water and it burns like a motherfucka!

SOBER SINCE 9:23AM THURSDAY? 22 HOURS AND 12MIN AND COUNTING!

Ok, I’m taking the piss. You know the type. The ones who can tell you how long they’ve been off it down to the minute. And a good friend of mine has a very interesting theory that if you’re counting, you haven’t put it down. You’re waiting. The count is the wait till my precious.

Fortunately I haven’t really been counting. The only reason I know the number (Day 13) is because of this blog. I genuinely had to look it up to work it out for this journal article.

Not counting doesn’t mean not wanting, though. I do want it. Not because I think I’m a lost cause. I don’t. I want it because the pressure is on. Money is tight. There’s a lot going on. A smoke wouldn’t make any of that go away. It would all still be there. It just wouldn’t land the same. That’s the release I’m after.

That’d be true. I think cold turkey is the solution for me right now, and I think I need to feel the pain, as I need every bit of energy I can get right now!

The pain isn’t a great feeling. It really isn’t. And whilst I really do look forward to sitting back and rolling up a fatty / doing my usual chill out regime, one thing I can say with certainty: the first couple of days were rough, but after that it’s been pretty good – I can’t lie and there’s been more progress in this period than in a longgg time before that.