Want to smoke...

My expertise might be quite the opposite, but I feel you so I'll try. Em... How about some booze? If you drink two beers fast enough might do the trick, or a glass of scotch or whatever alcoholic beverage of your taste. A friend of mine used to do some weird kind of breathing in order to get high and it worked for a couple of seconds. Once he fainted actually. What an idiot. A cute one though. I used to have a fling on him. Some of my characters are based on him. This is irrelevant though... Okay! How about wearing your headphones (if you have), putting your favorite music and drinking something that might boost you up a little? Is this a good suggestion? A bad one? Huh?

Cheers!

Why not try the hike without the smoke? You may awaken perspectives you haven't yet seen.

Believe me I know -- or rather knew -- the lure of weed and similar substances, and how tempting they can be. Even now, when it's been 30 years since I last smoked, I still sometimes vaguely want to try it again. But not enough to go through the hassle of getting some, and the risk of falling back into that web. Or to overlook the possibility of doing some lasting damage to the physical brain.

Truth be told, I know and sometimes appreciate, the perspectives and transient good feelings pot offers. I also know -- from personal experience -- that the further you get from them in time, the less you will be tempted.

But I learned that from life. Maybe you haven't come far enough in life give it up.

I guess I've been blessed. I get really bad anxiety from weed, and even contact highs bother me. The edibles might have been laced but one bad experience of being in a "time loop" and that was it for me; I'll take one puff of any strain, or one baby inhale on a bong or something, and I spend two hours in a state of high anxiety.

I have a feeling that there may have actually been shrooms in those brownies. It was in early high-school and I ended up getting us all busted because I had a horrific trip. My buddy's parents had to calm me down, I threw up in their living room, his dad put on some live blues music on the TV and just chatted with me and chilled me out. I remember saying I talked to God and he told me why I was blind in one eye. I can't remember it exactly, but the reason was something like a reminder to always look for what I can't see. To find the missing piece in things, or to see without seeing.

A good balance against being an aesthete and quite shallow when it comes to attraction. Anyway, fear obviously isn't going to stop you.

I find myself returning to various snippets of Alan Watts. This is one of them: once you get the call, hang up the phone. I hung up the phone on coke when I thought I watched my friend overdose on it in front of me. And I'll be honest: my selfish preservation kicked in, and that experience showed me just what kind of person I was. I thought I was going to die next. I thought it might have been laced; it's easy enough to overdose on coke cut with fentanyl, let alone when you're dangerously allergic to fentanyl like myself. I could already see the headlines flashing before my eyes: 5 high-school graduates found dead in basement from laced coke.

To this day I don't know if I nearly left my friend's basement to get the Narcan I had in my car, or if I was going to abandon them. All I know is I came back and found that he'd blacked out momentarily, but was otherwise fine. Then I had to ride out the first panic attack of my life for the next 6 hours.

Sometimes it can be easy. Other times it's hard to resist calling the number back. Or picking up when it calls again. Even if you slip up, quit again. I'm three months free from nicotine. It would've been 6 or 7 if I hadn't slipped up again, but hey, it's better than having simply given up after one relapse. It's made me realize all of the stress and anxieties I was suppressing with drugs. I have to face that now, and become stronger.

I hope to get to a point like a couple other forumers on here where I can enjoy a cigar on holiday. Like two, max three over a year. Where it's *my choice* and I'm in control. Maybe you can get to that point with weed. But first you've got to master quitting.

If it has a pull on you, then it's a bigger reason not to let that pull draw you in. You said in my blog that you once had a bad experience smoking, what if you get even worse? Is it worth risking your life? Sure, you could claim that you can better handle such an experience once you've had it, but you can't be sure of that.

You say that your mental faculties have improved since you stopped, don't undo that achievement!

Keep straight, someone suggested booze, I suggest clarity, it can be wonderful once you've mastered it!

If nothing else, think about those close to you if you have some. If you don't have anyone close to you, then think about yourself, you are worth a good life. Sure I don't know you, I don't know my neighbour either and I wish her good health every time I see her.

So, good health to you, and don't let the urge overcome you!