"Fall seven times stand up eight."
Japanese Proverb
"Dutch policy on drugs over the last twenty years...can be considered to have been successful."
Drugs Policy in the Netherlands: Continuity and Change, 1995
"Moral indignation permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue."
Erich Fromm
Are you Dependent?
If you're a regular cannabis user it is important to keep asking
yourself whether the drug still works for you. It is very easy to
slip into repetitive behaviour and it is very easy to miss those
signs that tell us when we're doing too much.
So to care of ourselves we need to regularly make sure the benefits
we get from cannabis outweigh the harm of doing it. The process
is pretty straightforward and need only take about twenty minutes.
- List all the things you like about cannabis
Such as:
- It's relaxing
- Helps me to unwind after work
- Helps me sleep
- Helps me get boring chores done
- Improves sex
- Problems don't bother me so much when I smoke
- Helps ease painful feelings like depression, anxiety, grief
or anger
- Relieves pain
- I like feeling different from "straight" people
- Laugh and find things funny
- Have interesting ideas or feel creative
- Enjoy smoking with my partner
- Like the feeling in my body
- Enjoy the ritual of preparing the cannabis and smoking it
- A lot of people I know smoke – it's just what we do
- Add your own
- List all the things you don't like about cannabis
Such as:
- It's expensive
- It's illegal – problems with the law or risk of getting
caught
- Causes conflict with other people
- Dealing with dealers
- Paranoid thoughts
- Hard to remember things or think clearly
- It's stopped being fun
- Debt
- I worry about my health
- Find it hard to get other stuff done
- Worry about how it's affecting my kids
- Feel bad about myself
- Feel tired a lot of the time
- Have to hide it from other people
- Do stupid things when I'm stoned
- Makes it hard to work or get a job or study
- How much I eat when I get the munchies
- It's getting too repetitive
- My tolerance is too high – it takes heaps more now
to get me stoned
- Add your own
- See which list is stronger
- Repeat every six months or so
If you're having probelms cutting down or quitting
Marijuana Anonymous has:
