First of all, let me start of by saying that I understand some people might find some things I said or I'm going to say offensive. For that I apologize. Secondly, even though the title suggests such, this is NOT an advice but just my own thoughts. I know from personal experiences that people like me can't take advices. It's not that we don't want to, it's just that we psychologically just cannot. We see the rational and understand the consequences but even then whatever words we hear just do not touch our hearts. I know this because I've lived it. I've seen people live it.

I digress, but like I said this is not an advice to someone who wants to quit or is at least trying to, but I truly hope that my words can help you no matter who minimal the impact is. What I want to say is people like me who're trying to quit often tend look for some sort of distraction, replacement, passion or whatever helps take your mind off. A driving force. For some it can be a sport or a hobby, and for others it could be their responsibilities like their familial ties or their work, or whatever it is that helps you. And that's good. I'm not trying to say such motivations are bad, in fact, like I said, they're good. But what's bad is when you go so deep into them that at one point rather than motivation they become your new method of escapism. That completely beats the point of it. It become unhealthy. That's when the colors in our life start to fade and become grey.

Like Einstein said, when you keep repeating that same process over and over again, hoping for a different result, you become insane. I can attest to this speaking from my own person experience. At one point (maybe even now), every morning of mine started with me saying "If not for myself do it for my family". That's what my motivation was. Initially, I was very positive and determined, but alas I failed. Even with my family in mind, I kept going back on the commitments and promises I made to myself. At the start it was fine and I kept telling myself completely stopping in one instance is not feasible and that what I was "doing" was taking small gratifications and convincing myself that eventually I would no longer need those small gratifications.

All of this, coupled with my self-realization, filled me with such self-loathing and disappointment in myself that only I know. I had not broken promises made to others. I broke promises made to myself. It was simply unacceptable to me. Because of this, every time I met my family it started reminding me of the distress I caused for myself. I went from having my family in my heart to avoidance whenever possible. And even realizing that took me a long time.

So after putting myself through such self mental abuse, I realized I genuinely needed change. Change not in my motivation or mindset cause all that will bring someone like me is the same frustrating loop. What I needed was a new way to approach life. If I wanted to quit, just tell myself "I quit" and that's it. I know that sounds incomprehensible after all I've talked about needing a replacement. But to me that was enlightenment, and it surprisingly made sense to me for some reason. I thought if I wanted to quit, I shouldn't expect for something else to fill the gap. I should just let the gap stay because that gap is the reminder of the part of my life I destroyed. It reminded me of all the errors I made. I also realized that previously I wasn't just trying to quit. I was trying to forget.

Now, I'm writing this post just 17 days clean. Not long but it's the longest I've gone in what seems like a very long time. And the reason I writing this is because today I came extremely close to breaking that. I was with a couple friends and even had rolled a joint. But I didn't. I actually managed to not. Something I couldn't do before. So that's why I'm writing this. As a reminder to myself and self-satisfaction