If your only problem is smoking a few too many bowls per day — you’re doing great, and I love you. You’ve avoided becoming addicted to many more dangerous things -Huge Lung

Hey, Huge Lung (Andrei Edell) here with more of a personal message. Cannabis can be a part of a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle, but there are risks. By focussing on positivity, wellness, and building good habits — those risks are mitigated, and cannabis enhances life

The Flowerpatch staff has always taken addition and wellness very seriously. We want to make sure that whatever platform you give us, we use to empower people and make their lives more enjoyable — and not worse. My worldview is to spread love, positivity, and fun. Cannabis is an amazing gift of nature with uncountable benefits, certainly approved for use! (by me, at least, haha)

For a long while, I’ve been a member of https://reddit.com/r/petioles — a discussion forum for cannabis moderation. People have a wide range of strategies, including timed locks, apps, pillboxes. People take breaks, or practice reduction. For many people there, cannabis literally saved their lives — by being a better alternative to their previous stress management strategies

However, I think the spot where people suffer the most is when they want really badly to change their lives, but feel like they aren’t capable. They start focussing on all the things they’re doing wrong, instead of the things that they’re doing right! The essence of my post is to focus on building the positive, instead of destroying the negative:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Petioles/comments/p8yka1/just_a_reminder_if_your_only_addiction_is_smoking/

Addiction is a core function of humans — we are often addicted to sex, porn, love, drugs, tv, games, food, adrenaline, fun, etc. These are things that trigger your dopamine / chemicals, and help you reduce stress. This is actually critical to do, since stress is so pervasive, and SO DEADLY

The problem, of course, is that we get fixated on the things that make us feel good. We make our schedules around them. We live our lives jumping from one addiction to the next, trying to make a continuous “fun time”. We compromise our health and goals in favor of short term stress reduction. If you pull away from one dopamine trigger, you may get sucked more into another one. We spend our whole day worrying about if we are de-stressing correctly, which is hilariously ironic

How does one win at this game, in general?

• It requires a spiritual path, though I won’t point to any particular one. Preferably one that includes some exercise and health focus
• It requires restructuring your life to have less stress in it to begin with, and more sense of purpose. I like to refer to the Ikagai+Zuzunaga diagram for a precise definition of purpose/fulfillment, and how to feel it — actually a very simple to understand concept, check it out:

• And finally, it requires re-interpreting which things are fun (= good), and which are work (= bad). I think a fulfilled person really blurs those lines, where they feel like work is fun, and in line with their life purpose. They don’t feel any aversion to work, and they’re not particularly stressed out by doing it

Anyway, so that’s why I say that actually… Being a little bit of a daily weed smoker might be the healthier option. The real sources and mechanics of addiction are very complex, and require many years to untangle

I suggest: if you think you’re really struggling with weed, start tracking how much you smoke. Just keep a no judgement tally, to get a hold on it. I once used marbles and jars for counting, pretty easy. Then, start putting all your energy into growing the positive things in your life. Enhance your diet. Go get some walks in. Progress your career / life purpose. Find some new super hobbies like music to dive into. What I’m saying is that it’s easier to focus on growing the positive, rather than destroying the negative. Allow your positive habits to “crowd out” the negative ones — without beating yourself up for having “negative habits”

Anyways, that’s just how it worked for me. Find what works for you 🙏❤️