Quitting Marijuana and Life-Long Regret: "But it makes me a better person!"

for me I've been smoking marijuana since
I was 12 to 27 I've had only the longest scent of sobriety I've ever had was a month so when I was going through that whole month period it was just extreme hell I hated myself I couldn't even Drive I hated traffic I hated how people just looked I hated how I looked I wanted to get a word I gave it I wanted it away from me my anxiety and my hate towards everyone goes up through the roof so much and I realized just like I guess reality just hits me so hard that I can't deal with life on life's terms without marijuana I can't be Who I am right now talking to you right now being super cool and chill I can't do that if I was off marijuana it's estimated 9% of cannabis users will develop an addiction or dependency which is less than alcohol and nicotine but for those who start talking as teenagers it's about 17% I gotta tell you it's a very psychological addiction when you stop it's some physical addictions there's some physical I mean you stop sleeping you get the chills you get body aches you get restless leg syndrome restless leg syndrome is the worst part of it I would say I have no patients I have my tempers through the roof and that is not like me I there's sleep is out the window forget about sleep I'm not sleeping for about three days until my body crashes and then I'll sleep for about four hours and then that'll be my sleep for the next three days until I crash again and another like and that and food is definitely out the window don't want to eat food at all appetite is gone at 15 it meant everything by the time high school was over Vanessa Markov and her friends were smoking pot every day Markov admits she probably wouldn't have listened to anyone's advice but she regrets spending more than a decade of her life in a drug-induced haze I was extremely lethargic I went from being an athlete to being a couch potato I was a kid I absolutely didn't think it was addictive because no one had ever talked about it being it fifteen years later she found herself in a doctor's office pleading for help with multiple mental health issues I just started to have extreme panic attacks and very high anxiety brutal social anxiety to the point where I had to be either drunk or high in order to really relate to people or feel comfortable in my own skin um one day do I want to not do smoke marijuana and just be sober absolutely do I think I can I don't know I'm concerned about living in a culture where I'm surrounded by drug addicts but I'm even more concerned about living in a culture that worships positive thinking one of the problems with the cult of positive thinking is that it prevents people from really engaging in reflection and regret I think that's the fundamental problem we're facing in the year 2020 not so much the fact that people refuse to acknowledge that marijuana causes brain damage that marijuana harms them or in a simple sense impairs them just in the 1 to 1 face to face basis you can normally overcome the hostility of the scientific facts through simple sort of Socratic method or explaining parallel instances if someone tells you self confidently that they smoked marijuana every day when they were in University and they still managed to get grades that were all eight pluses let's say if someone tells you that you can sit back to them how would you feel if you met someone who told you the same thing but who drank three cans of beer every day it's possible to get straight A's in university while drinking three cans of beer every day that doesn't mean your life wouldn't be better if you were sober that doesn't mean beer is harmless that doesn't mean the beer didn't have any negative impact on your life on your health or even on your say psychological development all right if you have two identical twin brothers and one drank beer everyday and one didn't one was completely sober and they went through the same four years of University and got the same grades which one do you think is leading a more more meaningful life just on this level it's quite easy to get someone who's devoted to making excuses to marijuana to stop and reflect and realize yeah you know what I am just making excuses for a bad habit so the hostility to the scientific facts behind the case are one thing and that's shallow we can engage with that on this kind of shallow Socratic level the hostility to reflecting on mistakes you made in your own life reflecting on excuses you've made for those mistakes and really being willing to regret it that's deep that's that's as deep as it gets and it's very very hard to overcome that with people it's very hard for me to evoke even with my own father or with my own mother get them to admit they did something wrong 20 years ago or just get me to reflect them why why can't you just write this you know what I mean and then I see the flip side of it I see the other side of it when I openly regret things and it often astonishes the people around me like I'll just openly say that I regret moving to Cambodia and study from the Cambodian language for me it's that's not a big deal I can talk about what my hopes and expectations were what I was trying to accomplish and then how things turned out I can regret that why not um you know I can regret relationships with women I had in my life I can regret choosing to study the Chinese language I can regret choosing say the Japanese language I can regret myriad decisions I've made in my life and those regrets I don't think of something I like to I do not think of the regret as something negative that I'm carrying with me is something that weighs me down I think that if I were living with those mistakes without examining those mistakes and feelings detachment above those mistakes and engaging in analysis those mistakes and regretting them I think if you're carrying those mistakes with you along with this kind of excuse making mentality that you never did anything wrong or you did the best you could or it was all somebody else's fault I think that I think that really does what are you doing I'm now 41 years old this mentality is precisely what I see members of my own generation carrying around with them I see them burdened not just by their drug addictions and their brain damage but by the excuses they are deeply committed to the excuses they're continuing to make all their lives long you just heard from a man who started smoking marijuana at 12 years old there are other people who started smoking marijuana at 15 16 and what have you naturally at that age your rationale or your excuses for why for example you might believe well it's less harmful than cocaine it's less harmful than whiskey whatever the ration are committed to there's no way that that rationale would endure and still be valid into middle age even if you're talking about a rationale for something that's that's positive in your life my ex-wife became a vegan as a as a child I'm sorry she was vegetarian first and later became vegan I misspoke but she became committed to vegetarianism when she was a child and when her reasoning was childish and naturally she grew out of it and I said to her look I don't think less of you for this it's inevitable that whatever philosophy you commits you whatever reason you commit to from the perspective of an 11 year old that's not going to seem meaningful or worthwhile or valid when you're looking back at it at 21 years old you say how did I talk myself into it this is ridiculous and that doesn't even mean you were wrong like I do think being a vegetarian is correct I do think being a vegan is even more correct but at 21 or 31 reasons for being vegetarian your reasons are being vegan are not going to be the reasons of an 11 year old or a 12 year old and for me the saddest and most dangerous thing of all is that this drug culture brings with it this culture of making excuses what I hear from marijuana smokers again and again is the claim that this drug makes them a better person I find that really deeply disturbing so your opinion of yourself is that if you were not using a sedative on a daily basis you'd be a worse person what does that say about you and what does it say about our culture in the 21st century that is now considered normal and even treated most dangerously of all as a scientific fact [Music]