California Sober
Sober Isn’t Boring If You Smoke Weed
The Undiscussed Reason Weed Helps Me “Stay Stopped”
OVER THE YEARS, my AA and NA sponsors often told me to learn a new lesson from each relapse, an exercise I had to perform frequently. My last relapse was my longest, after my most prolonged period of sobriety, and the lesson was that I need to smoke weed to “stay stopped” from drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.
In November 2009, at age 44, after hitting rock bottom and a .386 blood-alcohol level, I went to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I felt comfortable because the Third Tradition was: “The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.” I had a desire to stop drinking but not stop smoking weed. I quickly found out that most people in AA had different understandings, so I attempted to be totally “clean and sober.”
I tried for nine years to stop drinking and stay stopped from 2009 through 2018. During this period, I tried to maintain being “clean and sober,” as the people in NA and AA call it, free from alcohol and weed. Last two years, I drank so often I considered it one long relapse. I had many single weeks (too many to count), many single months (again), and a few half years. Many people in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings said that despite AA being about alcohol, I had to abstain from the “marijuana maintenance program” because it would surely lead me to relapse. They said I would not be “sober” if I smoked the Devil’s Lettuce! People also said that when they smoked weed, their sponsor made them “take a white chip” again, a source of trauma to newcomers that is entirely unnecessary.
In Narcotics Anonymous, people in that Fellowship told me that marijuana was one of many “mind and mood-altering” chemicals from which I must entirely abstain. Because of hostility to my prescribed psychiatric medications (and the unmedicated mentally ill people who were hostile), I left NA and stayed with AA after that.
The day I walked out of NA for good, I called my sponsor, went up to my apartment, changed clothes, went out to a nice restaurant, and had a filet mignon with two glasses of red wine. I did not get drunk that night. “Why did I relapse this time?” I asked myself. I did everything right. I prayed, went to a meeting, read from the literature, talked with other addicts, and then I promptly went out.
The NA solution at that point is to say something like I must be doing something wrong with my program. But after seven years of trying, I had just about tried everything. What was it that drove me out? Boredom. I got into this whole drinking and drugging business because I was also an adrenaline junky, and I lived a fascinating life. How was I supposed to go from that life to one where I was paranoid of “people, places and things,” something made up in rehabs.
None of my friends in NA had enough money or were into the same music as I was that they would come along to a concert with me. Or check out Tel Aviv pride. Instead, my friends in NA advised me to “stay away” because I might drink or smoke weed in those environments. My life became what many people in NA’s lives become: work, meetings, work, meetings, watch TV, lather, rinse, repeat.
It was during this last relapse that I experimented with the concept of harm reduction. As it sounds, the goal of harm reduction is not abstinence for abstinence’s sake. It made sense to me because, despite repeated relapses, I had spent a lot more days not drinking than drinking over the previous seven years. So, I tried Moderation Management. I tried the “Sinclair Method,” spending thirty dollars a pill for acamprosate, a drug that is supposed to force you to drink moderately, which was a failure on me. I tried individual and group therapy. I had graduated from several rehabs. Ultimately, I was back to being fall on my face drunk, literally. I cracked teeth on the curb.
I dragged my ass back to AA and quickly got a sponsor. Three months later, I relapsed, but “only” for a couple of weeks. I got another 90 days under my belt when Florida’s medical marijuana law went into effect. I had taken my psychiatric diagnoses over to the marijuana doctor and got a “recommendation” that I use about 250 mg of THC a day. I got my first vape pen legally, and I was thrilled. It was to treat my PTSD and anxiety. I have been able to use it for that, which itself reduces the urge to drink.
More importantly, I have learned that vaping concentrates stops the urge to start drinking again. It helps me “stay stopped” from drinking like nothing else ever did. Contrary to the warnings of my old friends from AA, weed has not led me to relapse. On the contrary, weed helps me stay sober, “California Sober.”
