Unlike with cigarettes, I never made a conscious effort to quit weed. I just sort of stopped. It wasn’t until recently that I realized the reason I did was that I was basically getting high without it.
Here’s the thing about getting high: it boils down to the creation of pleasurable sensations in your mind through the release of certain brain chemicals and the suppression of certain others. What I’ve come to realize after years of daily meditation is that those same sensations can actually be recreated through concentrated effort.
What we don’t realize when we are high is that our minds are capable of experiencing these sensations all the time, we just don’t give it space to do so, and thus never practice enough to get to the levels of focus, weightlessness, etc. that weed triggers.
How I Do It
Assuming there are no major traumas or life events going on, I’m usually able to get a relaxed state while sitting in a quiet place with my eyes closed. From there, I can reach similar feelings of euphoria and rapid insight by:
Recalling the sensations of the desired experience I’m trying to achieve (in this case, getting high)
Allowing my body to react the same way I would during that experience (smiling, breathing deeply, noticing my surroundings, feeling the warmth of the sun or the cool breeze, etc.)
Repeat 1 and 2 until you’re there.
After doing this for a while, I noticed that I could experience the sensations of being high outside of my meditation practice. A deep breath followed by a slow exhale done in the manner I used to do when taking a hit, opening my eyes wide as if my pupils were dilating, and suddenly I was at the same level of profound calm and awareness.
That’s it, the rest is just FAQ/Troubleshooting.
Why I Smoked
But boy do I understand why weed is hard to drop. The easiest part about quitting cigarettes is recognizing that it’s terrible for you and you actually want to live.
Cannabis is a bit tougher. It kills time more than it does health. And unlike the barely-noticeable sensations of inhaling nicotine after you’ve had a few cigarettes, weed definitely affects your brain activity.
Weed never made me more fun to talk to at parties or better at my job as a creative. Although I definitely thought it did for a while, and that was the problem. Despite the fact that people close to me kept telling me that they liked my non-weed ideas better than my weed ones, I persisted because weed makes your thoughts feel profound.
In our spirituality-starved secular world, profundity is in short supply. I suspect it’s the reason why so many of us toke. It triggers many of the same responses in my brain that appear in the accounts of people having religious experiences. Loss of time, weightlessness, a connection with everything around you. At high doses, you forget yourself and return to childlike wonder, experience a sixth sense, and even feel undifferentiated from the universe. There’s also an explosion of insights about whatever it is you’re choosing to focus on.
Why I quit
So if there’s a shortcut available, why do it the hard way? Because like all technologies, reliance stunts our own innate abilities. Because it’s actually not that hard. And because the easy way often comes with nasty consequences.
Marijuana is an enhancer. In highly concentrated doses like hash, it becomes a mild psychedelic. But despite what activists have been touting for the last 10 years in the lead-up to legalization, it definitely has side effects and it definitely causes hangovers. From personal experience, despite relegating it to the weekends, there would be days after a trip where I didn’t feel fully myself. Couldn’t think clearly. Wasn’t sleeping right. Reacted to life more irritably because I was mildly disoriented during that time. And studies now show that weed might permanently rewire your brain in ways that diminish your ability to concentrate or think logically.
The worst part is that it’s all avoidable.
How It’s Different
This doesn’t mean I would be able to hold that high if something urgent came up and made me forget what I was doing. Then again, you actually want that. Nobody wants to be paranoid and cotton-mouthed during an emergency or stuck having to give a presentation while still stoned. Switching states of mind were always extremely hard for me while under the influence. Not anymore.
What I Do When It’s Not Working
There are also a number of tricks you can employ to get you there if you find you need an extra boost.
Listening to a podcast or lecture on life’s deeper meanings by the likes of Alan Watts or Ram Dass, seems to help. As do some of Deng Ming-Dao’s more contemplative books. So do more traditional meditation techniques like feeling the sensations of your breath on your upper lip, counting your breaths, or labeling interrupting thoughts that pop up as you’re meditating and letting them go. There’s also a severe-sounding Zen one I quite like that involves picturing cutting off your own head or committing Seppuku in a playful way. That one always gets me floating right off into space. If you’d like a list of some of the works that helped me attain some control over my own mind, just let me know.
Why I meditate
I’m not sure if the ability to get high at will counts as a “power” that spiritually ascended people supposedly gain. It’s certainly not why I do it. Being able to get high without actually getting high has been a huge boon to my family. Despite how this article might come across, I’m not hippie enough to want my son around cannabis at least until his mind is developed enough to be able to use it without long-term consequences.
Meditation, also, was never about recreating hedonic sensations. It’s about taking time to mentally practice being a better person. Sometimes that means stepping back to look at what’s going on with my life, and sometimes it’s been about working through unhealthy thoughts or emotions. The stated goal—even during times when I wasn’t really feeling it—was about becoming someone who could appreciate life with all its responsibilities, tragedies, joys, and wonders.
With marijuana, I felt like I was onto something for a long time. Ultimately, the cost to my short-term memory and the lingering side effects made me realize weren’t worth it. Especially when the answer I was looking for—a profound appreciation of life—turned out to be inside me all along.
That last sentence may sound like a terrible cliche, but like most cliches, this one works if you’re willing to approach it earnestly.
Disclaimer
Of course, this isn’t about people who truly need cannabis for medical reasons. If that’s the case, meditating might not be fast enough to help. But the majority of people who tell me that they want to kick their addiction to weed don’t fall into that category.
"Especially when the answer I was looking for—a profound appreciation of life—turned out to be inside me all along." Hope more people realize this!