Turning the volume back up

I stopped smoking weed a few days ago. I want to write about it while it’s still raw, because the clean version you tell people later is always a little dishonest, sanded down into a tidy arc that skips the actual texture of the thing.

This isn't a sobriety story and it isn't a morality story. I quit because the thing I used to reach for to take the edge off was also taking the edge off everything else, and I missed the edge.

Not a vice, a volume knob

For a long time it was just there, low and constant, smoothing things out. And smoothing things out is exactly the problem, though it took me embarrassingly long to see it that way. It turned the volume down on the hard feelings, sure, the anxiety, the restlessness, the low hum of whatever I didn’t want to sit with. But a volume knob doesn’t discriminate. It also turned down the sharp ones, the present ones, the alive ones, the feelings that tell you you’re actually here in your own life instead of watching it through a soft filter.

I didn’t quit because weed is bad. I don’t think it’s bad, I have a complicated, mostly grateful relationship with a lot of substances and the things they’ve shown me, and I’m not interested in pretending otherwise to make a cleaner story. I quit because of what daily, habitual, reach-for-it-without-thinking use was doing specifically, which was keeping me at about 70% signal on everything, all the time. A permanent, gentle dimming I’d stopped noticing because it had become the baseline.

The frame that finally worked wasn’t willpower and it wasn’t quitting a bad habit, both of which made me defensive and neither of which moved me. It was: turn the volume back up. I want to feel things at full signal, even the uncomfortable ones. Especially the uncomfortable ones, because those are usually the ones with information in them, the ones pointing at something that needs to change.

The first few days are honest

Restless head. A weird vacancy where the ritual used to be, that specific hour, that specific motion, suddenly empty and asking to be filled. The body looking for the thing it had been trained to expect, and not finding it, and complaining.

And the chest. My chest has been clearing itself out these last few days, coughing up the receipts of years spent breathing smoke. It’s uncomfortable and it’s also, in a strange way, satisfying, the body filing a long-overdue complaint about the era it spent compromised, and slowly, grudgingly, forgiving me. Cardio is the apology I’m making, the trail runs where I’m panting like a rabid dog and walking half of it, lungs furious, doing it anyway. The discomfort there isn’t a sign it’s not working. It’s the body coming back online.

The discomfort isn’t a sign it’s not working. It’s the volume coming back up. I asked for this.

I’ll be honest about the harder part too, which is that the days are longer and emptier in a way I have to actively meet. The thing I reached for wasn’t just chemical, it was structural, a way to end the day, to transition, to give myself permission to stop. Without it I have to build those transitions consciously, and I don’t always do it gracefully. Some evenings I just feel the restlessness and don’t have anywhere to put it. That’s part of it too. The volume coming up includes the volume on boredom and restlessness and the low-grade discomfort of just being awake in your own life with nothing numbing the edges.

Why it’s on my personal site

Because the inner work and the outer work aren’t separate for me, and pretending they were would make this whole site a quiet lie. The same impulse that makes me want to build things that are true rather than merely impressive is the impulse that made me put the bong down. Show up present. Feel the signal, all of it. Build from there, from contact with reality instead of from behind a filter.

I don’t know how it goes. I’m a few days in, and a few days in is not a victory, it’s barely a beginning, and I’ve learned enough about my own quit-cycles with other things to hold any declaration loosely. There may be resets. There may be nights I choose otherwise. I’m not promising anyone a clean line, least of all myself.

But I know the direction I want, and the direction is up. I’d rather be a clear-headed person who occasionally aches than a comfortable one who’s slightly, permanently absent from his own life. I’ve done the comfortable-and-absent version for years. I’m curious, finally, what the other one feels like at full volume.