Although these are areas of expertise for any chiropractor, your health is much bigger than how well you sit upright in your chair. I am not belittling the importance of these things, but I believe true all-encompassing health isn’t just about the physical body. Furthermore, getting away from an addiction requires much more than just stopping a drug like marijuana.

Most of us have heard the philosophers of the past speak of the relationship of the body and soul. From Aristotle to Plato to Descartes, each has written about this complex relationship and the interconnectedness of the mind, body and soul. Today, you will often hear these described as mental, physical and spiritual. Whether or not we subscribe to these as separate yet related entities, we can all agree that humans possess something that is very unique to the rest of the animal kingdom.

However, in terms of our health, I prefer to view these as separate entities with each possessing its own basic needs that have to be met in order for us to be truly healthy and happy. For instance, it is very obvious that the physical component has very basic requirements in order to survive; food, water, sunshine and rest (assuming we are active in the first place).

Although it took me a while to capture the basic requirements for our mental health, in my opinion, there are three areas that are absolutely necessary for someone to be fulfilled mentally; self-esteem, creativity, and purpose. Self-esteem is probably the most obvious of the three, but nonetheless, the most important. Without self-esteem, you will never be healthy mentally. But, what about the other two?

All humans possess the need to create. What we create is obviously an individual choice, but it is certainly something we can’t escape. Creation is a God given right that comes natural to us. In fact, your day is filled with these moments. Whether it is something small or large, all creations are significant in that they help stimulate the mind and, furthermore, they are directly related to the other basic need of the mental component; purpose.

Without a purpose in life, the majority of us feel lost. In fact, so many people spend decades trying to identify their purpose in life. I am not going to say that these people are wasting their time, but by looking too far into the future for who you may become, many times, will obscure the present moment in which you may be serving a purpose, or building the foundation for something to come. I believe we serve many, many purposes throughout our lives and by waiting until you find your purpose (versus it finding you) can prevent you from appreciating or being grateful for this period of your life.

At first thought, the spiritual component seems rather easy to identify some very basic needs. Most religious texts contain two very fundamental tenets; love and service. In addition to God, we are instructed to love and serve one another. In order to follow this creed we have to have one thing; relationships.

You may be wondering at this point what provoked me to write this article. Although I have had a keen interest in the topic and have studied Plato’s and other’s philosophies concerning this matter for quite a while, I am guilty of not practicing what I know to be true. If each of these components are interconnected and can affect each other, then all of the basic requirements need to be met simultaneously in order for us to achieve this level of health physically, mentally, and spiritually. If you are being honest with yourself, you too will admit that you are not satisfying many of these necessary prerequisites to absolute and total health.

Admittedly, my blunder has been with relationships. Finding the time for relationships, in what I deem as a very busy and sometimes hectic lifestyle, can be very challenging. In fact, I had recently conjured up the idea that I didn’t even have the time for what I perceived as unnecessary conversations. I know it sounds silly, but in an environment where success determines status, I didn’t have the time for anything that didn’t contribute to that success. I have always made sure that time is spent with my wife and children, but our relationships go beyond just our immediate family.

It wasn’t until a recent trip to Louisiana that I realized my error in thinking. My father, wife, three sisters, and I went to Louisiana to explore our family history. We visited several sites such as old DeRamus graveyards and other areas our ancestors grew up. We even visited the site of our cousin’s television show, The Cajun Pawn Stars. Jimmie and Johnnie are entertaining enough, but it was their father, Troy, who opened my eyes to the importance of slowing down for a moment to relish in the “unnecessary conversations” of those we care about.

In the three hours that I sat and listened to Troy speak about our family history with amazingly accurate detail, feelings of gratitude and family pride began to surface. But, I don’t believe it was just the details of the conversation that led to these feelings. It was looking around the room at the people sitting there that provoked these feelings. It took me slowing down for a moment to realize my error in thinking, and to appreciate the spiritual importance of relationships.  Although we were absolutely exhausted since it was the end of our trip, as we left his house we were already making plans to return.

Whether it is friends, family, or even a stranger, taking the necessary time to engage in unnecessary conversation is truly a part of our spiritual health as much as sunshine is to our physical health. Of course I want you to sit up straight too, but I would prefer you look at the bigger picture and start fulfilling your basic needs mentally, physically and spiritually. I promise that if you fulfill these necessary needs, you will naturally sit up straighter as a result.

There once were two friends who loved each other as sisters. One of the friends had the lowest self-esteem you could ever imagine. Every time she looked in the mirror she saw every flaw, even ones that didn’t exist. Her daily words were scattered with negativity and self-depreciating comments. The other friend had an incredibly positive outlook, but no matter how much she tried to lift her down friend, it didn’t work. As years went on, the friend with the low self-esteem lost eyesight in both eyes due to a degenerative disease. The friendship continued and they loved each other more each year. One day, the positive friend was killed in a tragic accident. She just so happened to be an organ donor and both of her eyes were transplanted to her friend.

After the surgery, when the bandages were removed, the friend with the low self-esteem looked in the mirror for the first time. The image she saw was not what she had been seeing her whole life. She saw a beautiful young woman with no flaws and a shining aura around her. She dropped to her knees and cried out of pure happiness. She now knew what her friend had meant all those years when she had said to her, “If only you could see yourself through my eyes, you wouldn’t feel the way you do about yourself.”

Of course, my story is made up. The point of the story lies in something I have told many of my friends over the years. It seems as though so many of us make the conscious choice to find our own flaws and focus on them, rather than point out our own perfections. I’m as guilty of this as many others.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had be opportunity to see ourselves how others see us? Even for a moment, if we could just have the vision put into our heads to give us a clearer idea of reality and not our own made up image of what we think we look like. If we could do so, we wouldn’t focus on the negative qualities that we think we have. We would see our own beauty in a radiant light, that we are all magnificently perfect, and we would love ourselves unconditionally, just as those who choose to be in our lives do.

My wish for you is to one day see yourself through my eyes. Then, you would love and adore yourself as much as I do.

On the other hand, some of you have stuck with your resolutions and have been willing to go through the “pain of change” to get what you want. I applaud you, and hope that you continue to succeed with your goals, no matter how difficult it may become. Change, such as getting rid of unhealthy habits like smoking marijuana, is not an easy task. It requires consistent effort and fortitude in the beginning. Even though it gets easier over time, most people are not willing to make the sacrifices in the beginning to get to the end result.

I am writing this because of an experience I recently had with a patient. I always assume patients that come to our office are there for one reason; to get better. However, some people lack the belief or desire to do so. Although some have just lost hope, there are some that are there to simply check one more thing “that didn’t work” off their list of reasons why they can’t get better.

Although I consider myself a very sympathetic person, I have a very difficult time understanding or dealing with excuses. This is true with the small things and the very large, such as a habit which interferes with your life and the lives of people around you. This particular patient who provoked this article proceeded to regurgitate all the reasons why he couldn’t get better versus the reasons why he could, or why he even wanted to improve.

This may be a surprise to you, but most of these were adversities that were created by him. Am I actually saying that we should begin taking responsibility for our actions and stop blaming other things for our situation? To a degree, yes. It is very difficult to improve in life if you are constantly pointing your finger at anything and everything, other than yourself. We should always look inward before looking outward when wanting to make change.

However, there are outside challenges, not created by us, which we need to learn to overcome. Even if the circumstance or challenge we are facing cannot be changed, we need to somehow find a way to embrace it to our best ability. This is not always easy, yet we have examples of people throughout the world facing hardships and very difficult situations that not only have overcome them, but utilize their misfortunes to help other people. We sit in awe of these individuals, and wonder how they do it. And as we should admire them, you need to realize that you are of the same origin, the same species, and have all the ingredients to do the same.

I have always been uncertain of the accuracy of the adage “everything happens for a reason.” Is it that, or is it just simply a characteristic of human behavior to optimistically see the good in everything? However, one thing is certainly true; adversity is a part of life. In fact, adversity is a necessary part of life. It may not seem fair at times, but situations such as these allow us to grow as individuals. Does that sound too cliché for you? Ask anyone who has overcome a difficult situation if they became more empowered or less empowered. I am certain you will find a consistent answer.

In the bible, Paul speaks of “a thorn in his side.” Although no person actually knows what this “thorn” in Paul’s side was, he even admitted that it had its purpose. The same applies to you as well. We all have our thorns. Some of you view your “thorns” as you do the thorns of a rose.  You view them as something that is there to prick you, ultimately causing you to bleed. However, let’s take a closer look at the true purpose of a rose’s thorns.

The most commonly understood purpose of a rose’s thorns are for protection. It is nature’s clever way of protecting the rose from being eaten by the outside world. Your adversity is no different in that it teaches you many things about life and about people which, if you learn, will ultimately help protect you as well.

However, thorns are not primarily for protection. Nature forms them in a particular shape for clinging and climbing. The thorn’s shape prevents the rose from sliding back under its own weight. Our personal thorns can provide the same function by preventing us from “sliding back” into situations we know should be avoided. Sadly, most people ignore this purpose.

Most importantly is the thorn’s ability to help the rose climb to greater heights. This way the rose can get to higher elevations where there is the most sunlight. From this high vantage point, they can then spread over greater distances.

You are no different than a rose. Your challenges are your own personal thorns, and when utilized properly, you too will begin to see the world differently.

I know the word “addiction” is still hard for many to swallow, especially for smokers who still function day to day, and may even appear to excel in some parts of their lives. In fact, there are many people addicted to substances who still get up every day and go to work, tend to their children, and participate in various social activities.

When we say the word addict, our minds typically picture the bum sleeping under the overpass bridge with no hope, no family, and no job. That scenario is actually the most rare depiction of a common addict. The common addict is the one sitting next to you in church, a member of your local Rotary club, a close family member, or maybe even you.

Addicts aren’t bad people…they just have a bad problem. I still squirm a bit when I have to admit that a drug had so much control over me that I had to refer to the word “addict.” No matter how high of a pedestal we place marijuana on for its so-called benefits, it still has negative consequences. There are consequences with our health, motivation, memory, etc. This is applicable to the simplest definition of an addiction…”use in spite of negative consequences.”

Certainly, marijuana is one of the lowest on the totem pole in terms of negative consequences. But, to deny that they exist is purely delusional. A pot smoker would not have any problems saying that a person who smokes two packs of cigarettes per day has an addiction. Unless, of course, they are the ones doing the cigarette smoking. The addict, most of the time, conjures up very clever ways of justifying their use. Obviously, this leads to the second most common description of an addict…denial.

I recently had a conversation with a reader of The Secret Addiction who, by the way, is an everyday pot smoker. He was upset that I continued to use the word “drug” in the book to refer to marijuana. In his opinion, marijuana is seen as more spiritual, medicinal, and “nutrition” for the mind and body.

I will not dive into the spiritual debate in this article, but the argument of “nutritional” does not fit into any of my perceptions of what proper nutrition is, or should be, for the body or mind. And using the argument of “medicinal’ has to imply that the user possesses an ailment of some sort that the marijuana is intended to be managing or correcting. This is not the case with the vast majority of so-called healthy marijuana smokers.

I will continue to use and can easily defend my use of the word “drug” and “addiction.” In fact, the mere definition of the word drug supports this position.

drug (drug)

1. a chemical substance that affects the processes of the mind or body.

2. any chemical compound used in the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of disease or other abnormal condition.

3. a substance used recreationally for its effects on the central nervous system, such as a narcotic.

The bottom line is that marijuana is a drug, and it does have the potential to suck people in to the point that the word “addicted” can become a part of their personal vocabulary.

Dr. Tony

It being the day after 4:20, and after reading the stupidity of people’s tweets to me about how much, “I am enjoying the day?”

Yes, I had an incredible day, did I need to smoke to do so? No, that’s just it, they did, and since they have no idea how to enjoy themselves or their lives without it, they figure I must be doing the same thing.

I am not judging smoking. Hell, I did it myself for a few years. My first drug of choice was sports and when that stopped working, I found marijuana. After that stopped working, I found Yoga and then spirituality. I finally got “clean” when I realized I was getting high on all these things in order to avoid the pain of not needing them. When I was finally willing to bear that pain, I was finally able to get a glimpse of how wonderful I am.

What? What the hell was I doing and why was my greatness so painful? I started to have the awareness that every time I was myself, very few people were able to see or receive the incredible contribution I was willing to be. I realized the pain I was trying to avoid wasn’t mine, it was the pain of all the people who weren’t able to receive anything but their judgments of themselves.

The way this usually shows up for them is their inability to see how life can be fun. They have so many fixed points of view about all the reasons life has to be difficult as if those justifications will provide some relief? They just make the situation worse. You can justify limitations hoping that will make them go away. Doesn’t it just lock them into place because every time you try to change and have more of life, the justifications you hold always convince you that change is impossible.

What does all this have to do with 4:20?

The day and the daily 4:20 ritual is not what you think it is.

4/20 is not International Smoking Day or time, but it’s the day and time for you to take a puff of yourself, inhale and enjoy the incredible high that you truly are. We use drugs of all sorts to experience something “more.” What could possibly be more than you? Nothing, it’s impossible.

The problem is that people rarely have had the experience of themselves. They only experience all the judgments that have been imposed on them throughout their entire lives. How young are we when we begin to hear from our parents how everything we do is wrong? We learn very early that there is little value in being ourselves, so we decide to try and be what we are supposed to be, even though that’s always changing depending on who, where, what, and how.

I remember the first time I got high. I was going through a bad break-up with my girlfriend, and I was miserable. I was defining myself as the “big stud football player” that everyone loved. For my own girlfriend to not want me and choose someone else instead, completely destroyed my image of myself that I mistakenly believed was me.

When I got on the “J,” all the judgments of who or what I was supposed to be disappeared, and all that was left was me. Wow! I was hooked. No matter what was taking place on the outside, no matter what people expected of me or who they expected me to be, I could always escape it and commune with Mary J. Of course at the time I had no idea what was going on. I thought weed was a drug that got me high. I was functioning from a lie, functioning from judgment. Judgment that I was bad and weed was good, so it made me better. I was creating my life and reality from a limitation.

My life isn’t what it’s supposed to be so I must create something better by smoking.

What would it have looked like if I knew what I know now? If I knew that all I had to do was choose me instead of the titles and roles, and the need to define myself as this or that. I would be high all day every day without the need to project and give the greatness of me to a plant.

Don’t get me wrong; she’s a beautiful plant and I will be grateful to her forever for facilitating me into more awareness. A true contribution aims to give us more of us. Are you allowing your vices and guilty pleasures to be a contribution, or are you using them to create a slow and painful death? Every time we do judgment (as good OR bad) we are killing ourselves by invalidating the awesomeness of us. Like we could possibly be anything but incredible. It’s amazing what is available to us once we choose ourselves.

All the stories of what people will do to “score” their drug of choice. What if we were willing to do all those things to “score” ourselves? When we think smoking or whatever is the source for our happiness, peace, or clarity, it’s a huge lie and serves to lock into place the bigger lie that we aren’t happiness and peace and clarity embodied. It makes all those things impossible to be.

When you have the balls to put those things down and experience YOU, what you’ll get back is the joy of being you, no matter what you are doing. You create the space to be JOY embodied no matter what you are doing (even smoking). You see, most people smoke from judgment, so they aren’t even able to enjoy it. They have to deal with the judgment about it, whether it’s coming from their parents, boyfriend, girlfriend, friends or society. When you function as you, you do you and don’t care what anyone thinks. You lose the world and gain yourself.

How does it get any better than that?

In other instances, the obstruction in front of us could be there as an opportunity for personal or professional growth. In fact, that is exactly how I view the addiction to marijuana. I have been very clear that in terms of chemical addictions, marijuana is “low on the totem pole”, so to speak. Marijuana addicts are never caught stealing to obtain their drug, on average they easily maintain steady jobs, and in most cases, lead somewhat normal lives.

So, what’s the big deal? Although there are many answers to that question, the one most appropriate for this article is because you are not living your life to its fullest potential. That may seem like a somewhat innocuous and insignificant statement, but take a moment to think about it. Of all the millions upon millions of opportunities and decisions throughout your life, approaching them behind a cloud of smoke, can be very limiting to your growth as an individual.

It is the small incremental steps throughout life that take us to where we are intended to be. Any addiction, will eventually begin taking those steps for you eventually diminishing your true destiny of becoming that person you know you could have become. That, in my opinion, is worse than any crime you can commit to maintain a drug addiction. That is why I wrote The Secret Addiction.

A multitude of people will attempt to quit marijuana today. Unfortunately, many of them will encounter this endeavor with a fighters mindset. This type of attitude could possibly be a path to failure. To merely wrestle against your habits can be very difficult and frustrating, and eventually exhausting to the point you surrender.

Dr. Larry Markson, author of Talking to Yourself is not Crazy, recently wrote an article that eloquently stated, ” Struggle and strife can find no foothold when confronted with mildness because conflict can only exist when fed by two opposing forces”. I have found this statement to be very accurate during my many failed attempts to quit smoking marijuana.

Letting go of our fighters mentality to begin approaching this, and other areas of your life, with a more gentle nature will increase your chances of succeeding. This is truly one of those obstacles in life that has been laid before you as an opportunity for tremendous growth.

Dr. Markson ended by saying, “Gentleness must be practiced, as we are inadvertently encouraged to act competitive in certain phases of our lives. At first, your established habits may make being truly gentle challenging. Yet after a time, if you commit to consciously applying gentleness to all areas of your life, you will find that you begin to act gently habitually. Your patterns of thought and behavior become ever more peaceful and you will discover that you encounter far less impassable resistance on your individual journey.”

The following post was written by Rand Teed, B.A., B.Ed. Rand has been working with teens for over 35 years and for the past 15 years has been helping them understand how substance use can get in the way of having the life they want. He is an Internationally Certified Prevention Specialist.  Rand is the developer of the Drug Class program which has been offered in many Regina High Schools for several years and is the writer and host of the Award Winning Drug Class TV Series.(Gemini Award Best Direction in A Youth Series 2008). http://drugclass.ca/

Smoking marijuana affects peoples’ impulsivity, attention, memory, cognition and decision-making abilities. That’s been scientifically proven. Recent research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center draws on the findings of previously published studies to further understanding about how marijuana affects the brains of chronic users, with specific focus on how the drug affects the decision-making process. These findings are important because they demonstrate a potential, negative side effect of chronic marijuana use. “Understanding how marijuana influences the perception of what is ‘negative’ may help explain continued marijuana use and aid in the development of effective strategies for treatment therapies,” said lead author Michael J. Wesley, Ph.D., department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Wake Forest Baptist. “Published data suggests that marijuana use is increasing, both recreationally and medicinally. However, the misperception that it’s harmless is also rising. It’s imperative that we begin analyzing the effects of long term, heavy marijuana use.”

Published by “Psychiatry Research” in the January 2011 issue, Wesley’s study was supported with grants from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). Wesley and his co-researchers on the study are attending the annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD) this week in Florida. Wesley presented preliminary findings from the study last year at the conference and expects that his study and others similar to it will be a topic of discussion this year.

NIDA reported last December that regular marijuana use is on the rise among teenagers, citing an increase of more than 10 percent in students in 8th, 10th and 12th grade. In addition, NIDA’s 2010 Monitoring the Future study surveyed 46,482 students in 396 public and private schools across 48 states and corroborated the results of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, also released last year.

In the study, researchers observed that marijuana users performed poorly on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which is a complex decision-making task in which participants make choices under ambiguous conditions and win or lose money based on their choices. The IGT goal is to use the feedback of the wins and losses to guide future choices towards safe options that result in winning more and losing less. The early phase of the IGT is particularly important because early exposure to wins and losses aid the development of decision-making strategies that are exploited in later phases of the task.

Sixteen chronic marijuana users and 16 controls, or non users, performed a modified IGT in an MRI scanner. Performance was tracked and functional brain activity in response to early wins and losses was examined. Researchers were looking to see if poor performance of marijuana users was related to differences in brain activity while evaluating the positive and negative information conveyed by wins and losses during the early, strategy development phase of the IGT. For the control group, after multiple exposures to early large monetary losses, they began to choose safer, less negative options on the task. In contrast, the marijuana users generally failed to alter their selection patterns and continued to make disadvantageous choices throughout the task. The researchers found that this was because marijuana users were less sensitive to the negative feedback during strategy development.

“The marijuana users appear to have a blunted response to losing. They don’t figure out a strategy to avoid monetary losses and this is associated with a decreased functional brain response to the early, negative information that guides the other group to safer choices,” Wesley said.

“The bottom line is that it looks like they don’t care as much if they lose.”

Source: Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

The emotional attachment we have to marijuana is part of the problem. This is perfectly normal. Most people still have an unhealthy attachment to pot when quitting. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be making the attempt to quit. It was when I quit ignoring, and then ultimately fighting, these random thoughts I was having about marijuana that it got easier and more comfortable.

Let me explain. Thoughts about pot are very natural when you are trying to quit. How can it not be? It has been a huge part of your life for quite some time. However, most people make the mistake of ignoring the thoughts as they happen. In fact, they really aren’t that bad, at first, because we are still riding on the emotional resolve to quit. And then comes the next thought…and then the next…and so on.

At the beginning, one little thought, by itself, isn’t enough to convince anyone to start smoking again. And these are really easy to ignore. However, after ignoring hundreds of these thoughts, they begin to accumulate, causing us to begin to fight or struggle with them. Once the fighting begins, you place so much energy into the thoughts that they come more rapidly, eventually smothering us to the point that, by the time you realize it, there is bong magically attached to your mouth. That makes me uncomfortable even thinking about it!

But, what if we didn’t ignore or fight with these thoughts, and instead took the time to analyze them when they appear? Taking the time to recognize the lie behind what your “other-self” is telling you to do and remembering your “reasons
for quitting,” allows you to discard the thought when it arrives. In fact, I would stay as emotionally unattached while analyzing these thoughts. Analyze them as the “non-smoker” and not the “pot-smoker.” You are two different people.

Our reasons for quitting are always valid, but we have a tendency to forget them when we begin to get uncomfortable with our decision. To help with this, I would create a card that had all of your reasons for quitting and carry that with you. When the thoughts arrive, review the card to help remind you of your “why.” We are currently creating a template for the Secret Addiction website for people to use, but an index card would be perfect. Use both sides if necessary.

The point about all of this is to make sure the thoughts and cravings you experience do not take overtake you. Either way, whether you struggle or not, the thoughts eventually begin to dissipate. But little techniques, such as this, make it more comfortable and can increase your success of winning.

One day when the eagle was scratching in the barnyard with all the other chickens, a big storm came upon the farm. While all the animals began to tremble and look for cover, the eagle felt a stirring that it had never known. Its powerful wings spread and lifted the eagle easily up to the top of the barn. A feeling of confidence and power came over the young eagle and it knew instantly that it was not meant to just survive like all the other animals. It was destined to fly and soar above the storms and seek its own world where most feared to go. As the eagle rose above the barnyard and circled the farm for the last time, there was no sadness in its goodbye! There was only joy and anticipation in the knowledge that from here on there would be no limitations. 

You are that eagle! You were raised in an environment that taught you limitations that accentuated your errors and made fun of you when you stumbled. Yet, always within your heart there has been something telling you that you are meant to be better….that you were destined to fly and soar above the storms of life.

You are hereby notified that it is your destiny and you can claim it anytime you wish. This is not an idle statement meant to encourage you beyond your capabilities. It is the truth about “WHO YOU ARE!”  You can spread your wings and fly, surmounting any obstacle, especially marijuana addiction.

Your decision to stop smoking marijuana is a personal choice made BY YOU for various reasons. Underlying every one of our reasons, however, is the desire to be a better version of ourselves. This should never be ridiculed by others, particularly by those who would rather remain chickens.

You are a winning person! Your capacity is unlimited, your identity is perfect for who you are right now, and I support you in your quest to become the best person possible.

Some people may suggest that your “why” and your emotions are essentially the same thing, or that they are dependent upon each other. That’s not true. Emotions, or goals, to quit will only carry you so far. In regards to marijuana recovery, abstinence based only on emotion will eventually wane. I am not saying that emotions or goal setting is not important. You really need to have these as part of your plan. But forgetting your “why” is absolutely disastrous.

People who smoke marijuana regularly have their reasons, and the ones who want to quit have theirs. However, the main obstacle most people have when quitting cannabis is remembering why they chose to stop living the life of a “pot-head,” especially during the difficult times. Many times, we cleverly convince ourselves that if we go back to smoking, things will somehow be different, or that we will manage our use more wisely. Try to avoid that lie to yourself. You will ALWAYS go back to the way you were eventually.

That’s why I recommend writing these down and keeping them close by. When the urge to smoke arrives, instead of brushing aside your reasons for quitting and rationalizing your desire for “just one little toke,” reminding yourself of why you have decided to make this change in your life is invaluable to your success. In the book, I have created a Daily Task in which you can list all of your reasons for quitting. List everything. It doesn’t matter how small or big the reason. Write it down! We are currently creating a template on The Secret Addiction website for you to use as well.

I encourage you to really evaluate your “whys” in other areas of your life as well. These may be connected to the reasons why you smoke marijuana like you do. Whether it is the ways in which you manage your finances, choose jobs, partners, value yourself, etc. The stories you keep telling yourself and others need to be evaluated for their truth and validity. We all have a story to tell. We just need to figure out why we are telling it, or living it.