nobody warns you this but addiction happens without you noticing and one of the first things that it attacks is your ability to care. if you find yourself using recreational drugs every day, stop and take one day a week sober. if you struggle with this or if you don’t see the point of the exercise, you are likely already addicted and you need help.
nobody ever taught me the warning signs for drug addiction, only that “it costs lots of money and destroys your life!!!1” which is not helpful if you can’t recognize a developing addiction in yourself.
so here’s some things to watch out for with recreational drug use:
- planning your day around drugs e.g “i’ll give myself an extra half hour before heading out so i can get high first”
- rapidly switching emotions around drugs. you love them but you hate that you love them so much. you hate the way you feel on them but you hate being sober. feeling guilty after using even when you didn’t give a crap beforehand.
- caring less about spending money. if you are budgeting for drugs like they are food, you are likely prioritizing them more than is healthy.
- getting high to do household chores and other unpleasant things because it would suck less and be more bearable on drugs
- feeling anxious or restless while sober, not knowing what to do with oneself, feeling lost or ungrounded.
- thinking about doing drugs constantly even while sober. maybe it’s the first thing you think of when you wake up. maybe when you’re bored or otherwise have free time, drugs are one of the first things you can think of to occupy yourself with.
- going to work or school while under the influence, especially if it happens regularly and if you’re seeing your performance suffer as a result.
- the idea of taking a ‘tolerance break’ sounds good to you until it’s actually break time, at which point you can come up with 20 very reasonable sounding points to explain why it wouldn’t benefit you actually and you should just keep doing drugs regardless.
- even if you succeed at quitting the drug, you keep your dealer’s number on your phone “just in case”
- you pretend to be sober when you aren’t. you worry about other people noticing how much time you spend high. you make efforts to hide your drug use or minimize how much other people think you’re using. you’re scared of other people’s judgement if they were to find out.
- you have mood swings laced with self-hatred, regret, financial worries, and guilt. these mood swings are then very quickly wiped away by feelings of “but it doesn’t matter, i can do what i want, and clearly i’m doing just fine while using drugs frequently”. news flash, if you are rapidly switching between feeling numb-ok and hating yourself more than anything because of your drug use, you are mentally ill.
yes this applies to weed. weed is a drug and you can get addicted to it like any other substance. addiction is not the same as physical dependence; it is psychological and it can happen to anyone. you are not immune to addiction.
Many of these also apply to process addictions such as Gambling Addiction.