I accomplished moderation

Hi r/trees!

I was an extremely heavy smoker for about 5 years. During quarantine and working from home I was smoking almost every hour! It was out of control. I developed CHS and got sicker than I’ve ever been (lost nearly 15 lbs and 2 ER visits) and had to quit cold turkey.

Originally I planned to quit forever and joined r/leaves (which was very helpful) and another sober app to track the days. The thing is, the idea of never sparking up EVER again made me so sad. I didn’t want to quit forever like everyone talked about.

I was completely sober from weed for about 7 weeks. I had the intention of smoking again one day after my system was back to normal, just not as much as I was before. After a few drinks one weekend I decided to smoke again and it was great. Since that time, I decided that if I want to smoke it could only be on the weekends. Never during the week, since I knew I’d fall back into old habits.

This has actually helped my cravings more than anything. When I thought I could never smoke again, it was all I wanted to do. It felt like torture. Now that I have my rule of weekends only, I’m not thinking about it as much during the week. Some of the times I’ve smoked haven’t even been as great as I had built up in my head, which help my cravings too. I can’t believe I’ve actually been able to kick the addiction I had to sparking up all day every day. Moderation is key (for me!)

Just wanted to share in case others wanted to cut back but not stop completely. It is possible. For me it just took a complete clearing of my system first.