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I have a very clear memory of sitting my uncle down at our dining-room table when I was probably 7 years old. I\u2019d learned the dangers of smoking<\/a> at school and, with my DARE coloring book in hand, I told him why he should quit smoking. I crossed my tiny arms, furrowed my tiny brow, and said matter-of-factly, \u201cSmoking could give you cancer \u2014 you could die.\u201d He took a deep breath, his cheeks reddened, and he said quietly, \u201cI know, Courtney. I know.\u201d And shortly after, he quit for good. Three and a half blessedly healthy decades followed until this summer he was diagnosed with lung cancer. I inhaled sharply when I got the text from my dad.<\/p>\n As a kid, quitting seemed so simple, so obvious. If he knew about the health risks, why would he not stop right away? What I know now is that he\u2019d likely tried countless times before my lecture. The guilt that he hadn\u2019t yet probably plagued his every puff. These days, I\u2019m familiar with the rumination and struggle, because for me, quitting cannabis has felt like climbing Everest \u2014 an epic journey that I\u2019m not sure I can actually finish. I keep hiking up to base camp and then turning back around.<\/p>\n At first, weed didn\u2019t seem like something you could even be addicted to \u2014 in fact, when I first started, that was the conventional wisdom \u2014 but after 25 years of Cheech & Chong\u2013ing my way through life, I\u2019m now acutely aware of cannabis\u2019s addictive nature<\/a>, and increasingly, so are scientists. Newer research indicates that it\u2019s more addictive than previously thought, particularly the modern potency<\/a>, and isn\u2019t without its adverse effects<\/a>, including elevated heart-attack and stroke risk.<\/p>\n Cardiovascular disease is the opposite of chill, but the way a couple puffs can melt my stress away seems at odds with that knowledge. How could something that feels so damn good be so bad for me? I\u2019m a pathologically ambitious person with mild hypochondriasis \u2014 I want it and I want to be free of it in equal measure. I\u2019ve lost count of how many times I tried to quit while writing this essay. Twice I drove to the dispensary and turned back around only to return later that night or the next morning. If only I had a niece or nephew or any other small children in my life to convince me to quit with help from a coloring book.<\/p>\n I started smoking weed the summer I was 16.<\/a> I wanted to try it before going back to school in September. A friend tracked some down, and we spent a sweaty summer day holding smoke in our lungs for as long as possible. At first I was disappointed that nothing was happening, but once it finally hit me, I was hooked. I quickly fell in love with the dazy, blissful high that took the edge off any worries. Instead of giving me munchies, it quieted my food noise as I was grappling with binge-eating. Weed made even the most mundane aspects of life sparkle; I remember getting high with my best friend at lunch on the day of a high-school assembly and giggling through the afternoon of otherwise boring activities. That\u2019s when I realized weed wasn\u2019t just for after school; it made everything more fun. By midway through senior year, I was doing it pretty much every day.<\/p>\n In my early 20s, I moved from the Midwest to L.A. and got my medical-marijuana card. I told the doctor it was for anxiety and insomnia, which wasn\u2019t entirely untrue. But it was more than just social lubrication and a sleeping aid; it was part of the creative process with my screenwriting partner. There didn\u2019t seem to be any downside.<\/p>\n About five years later, when I started to work from home in the early 2010s for a variety of day jobs and freelance writing, there was nothing holding me back from being perpetually stoned. The only thing that gave me pause, if my ashtray were any indication of what could be making its way inside, was what it was doing to my body. But I still felt young and invincible, and Googling the health risks of marijauna even ten years ago was inconclusive. I found studies that said it slowed cell division, triggered programmed cell death, and induced cell-cycle arrest, especially in cancer cells \u2014 that seemed like a good thing.<\/p>\n Still, my hypochondria wouldn\u2019t let me forget that smoking marijuana wasn\u2019t doing my lungs any favors. After a big bong rip, I would watch my best friend cough so hard her face turned red; I had my own hacks and wheezes. Plus, there was the dependency aspect. Why was it so difficult to take a day off, even when I wasn\u2019t feeling well? I was sad to admit that my penchant for getting high at every opportunity was beginning to feel like a crutch. A really fun and effective one, but a crutch nonetheless.<\/p>\n In 2018, I started half-heartedly quitting, but it never stuck. It didn\u2019t help that so many of my friends still enjoyed weed, including my writing partner. It was so baked into our brainstorming process, it felt like a betrayal to shake my head when she passed me a pipe \u2014 like I was shutting down a good idea. In the years since, I\u2019ve tried to quit cold turkey a thousand times.<\/p>\n Then the pandemic rearranged all my usual routines, which was an opportunity to create new ones, but the stress and uncertainty were also vice accelerants. I began drinking more and getting nonstop weed delivery. By September 2021, I was frustrated enough to download a sobriety-tracker app, and I spent the fall quitting on and off. I would go without pot for a day, four days, a week or two max before inevitably returning to my old tricks.<\/p>\n A couple months later, I spent a weekend participating in ayahuasca ceremonies after getting a referral from a friend. My intention on the second night was to let go of the chemical dependencies in my life, namely marijuana. At one point, a member of the shaman crew referred to cannabis as the joker: fun and playful, but it\u2019s greedy, always tricking you into thinking you need more. In my memory, I quit for months afterward, but when I checked my sobriety tracker, my streak lasted only eight days.<\/p>\n A year and a half later, I heard about F\u00dcM on podcast ads and bought one of its little wooden pipes for \u201csmoking\u201d flavored air in hopes that my cannabis use was merely an oral fixation, but it gave me no satisfaction and was soon abandoned in a drawer in favor of actual weed. Shortly after, I discovered Allen Carr\u2019s Easy Way to Stop Smoking through an episode of This American Life<\/a>. Countless celebrities have credited their quitting success to this book, so I was feeling optimistic. And what\u2019s awesome about the Easy Way method is that you don\u2019t have to stop smoking until the end \u2014 except I finished the book and took what was supposed to be my last hit off the bong and kept going back for more. I tried listening to the book again and taking my \u201clast\u201d puff when I got to the end. But I felt drawn to the bong like a magnet. I was devastated to discover that the Easy Way did not live up to its name, at least not for me.<\/p>\n Another year of on-and-off attempts went by before my husband gently suggested hypnosis, which had helped him stop smoking cigarettes. In late spring 2024, I drove to Santa Monica and told the hypnotist how badly I wanted to quit. Before lying on his recliner, I looked at him with wide, hopeful eyes like he was a magician, capable of a death-defying trick where he sawed me in half and removed my desire for marijuana. I tried to clear my mind as he whispered in a soft, French-accented baritone, \u201cThe decision is already made. No more toxins. No more threats. No more doubts. No more what-ifs in the back of your mind.\u201d The next day, he sent me a recording, and I listened to it a few times. In less than a week, I was back to the bong.<\/p>\n Throughout it all, I would self-flagellate endlessly. Why was I so dumb that I was wasting money on marijuana and ineffective attempts at quitting? It felt hopeless. The only thing that made me feel better was getting high.<\/p>\n Then early this past December, during my morning scroll, I came across an Instagram Reel that reminded me exactly how serious the health impacts are<\/a>. In it, Dr. Jeremy London, a cardiothoracic surgeon who popped up on my feed to give me waking nightmares, said, \u201cI have operated on multiple patients over the years that smoke marijuana regularly. And I can tell you that their lungs are totally blackened. It looks like they\u2019ve worked in a coal mine, and they\u2019ve got such severe blockages that I have to do bypass surgery.\u201d I grimaced, yet still lit up a joint before breakfast.<\/p>\n Desperate for expert intervention, I contacted psychiatrist and neuroscientist Judson Brewer for some firsthand wisdom from his TED Talk<\/a> \u201cA Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit.\u201d I wanted to know why thinking about the long-term health implications hadn\u2019t been effective in getting me to quit. He told me that people tend to discount future effects due to something called delayed discounting. \u201cSo cognitively we can say, \u2018Oh yeah, I shouldn\u2019t smoke cannabis,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cBut our feeling body is much stronger than our thinking brain.\u201d And, unfortunately, my feeling body likes to be high.<\/p>\n Part of the problem is that cannabis isn\u2019t actively interfering with my life. Ten years ago, I quit Adderall \u2014 a drug I wasn\u2019t prescribed but had relied on since college to work overtime, stay skinny, and still have time to party. Weaning myself off it was excruciating, but it also felt essential because the negative side effects were stacking up. Adderall made me more socially awkward. It messed up my digestive tract, my relationships, and, occasionally, my career. Quitting felt necessary. Almost a relief.<\/p>\n Cannabis, by contrast, improves my life in a lot of ways. It\u2019s soothing. It adds sparkle. I\u2019m super functional. I\u2019ve never had a bad experience, and I probably never would.<\/p>\n With Adderall, I was able to quit cold turkey. That makes it sound so simple when it was anything but. Preceded by pages upon pages of frustrated diary entries, I was sick of my eyes twitching whenever I was in the vicinity of fluorescent lights. I was sick of shoddy eye contact. I was sick of my erratic sleep schedule and waking up sweaty. I was sick of being that version of myself. My boyfriends didn\u2019t like the Adderall version of me, either. A few months after I quit, I met the man who would become my husband. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a coincidence. I\u2019m sure we\u2019d have broken up by now if I were still on uppers. Weed wasn\u2019t a problem for him, though. In fact, sometimes when I\u2019m stressed, he teases that I should probably get high.<\/p>\n The only person who\u2019s going to force me to quit is me, and it\u2019s tough because while I\u2019m tired of this habit, I\u2019m still completely charmed by it. Should I be getting high in the middle of the day as a middle-age woman? Probably not. The problem is it\u2019s so damn fun. Part of me wants to be a wizened old stoner like Willie Nelson.<\/p>\n Now that I\u2019m in my early 40s, I\u2019m more concerned than ever about the consequences of continuing \u2014 for my own health, yes, but even more so as I prepare to embark on an IVF journey. I don\u2019t want to be a stoner mom<\/a>, and I certainly wouldn\u2019t want to be a stoner pregnant person<\/a>. Though there haven\u2019t been immediate consequences, I need to do an egg retrieval this year if we want a realistic shot at a baby. So I turned to data oracle Emily Oster, who offered a few reassurances over Zoom. Cannabis, she said, isn\u2019t thought to be teratogenic, meaning the concerns aren\u2019t about birth defects so much as pregnancy complications. At the preconception stage, the main risk is getting pregnant at all, and while there\u2019s some evidence cannabis affects fertility, the male factor likely matters more. The pregnancy risks that are associated \u2014 preterm birth, NICU admission, low birth weight \u2014 are elevated only a few percentage points.<\/p>\n Still, Oster\u2019s top line was clear: \u201cCaution is warranted, because we know relatively little\u201d \u2014 so \u201ctry to cut down.\u201d<\/p>\n For a second opinion, I reached out to my favorite IVF podcaster, Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh<\/a>, a fertility specialist with a California-based practice where cannabis use is common. She advises patients to stop two to three months before starting an IVF cycle. Given my age, she said, cannabis is a double whammy. \u201cThe way age damages eggs is by making embryos chromosomally abnormal \u2014 and that\u2019s exactly what marijuana does.\u201d If I want the best chance at a normal embryo from a very expensive procedure, the advice is simple: stop.<\/p>\n To that end, I\u2019ve been leaning into the strategy I picked up from Judson Brewer, the psychiatrist and neuroscientist. What Brewer and his team have found actually works is fostering a curious awareness around the way the substance is a hindrance. The idea is this: Being attentive to what you don\u2019t like about the habit leads to disenchantment. He warned that it\u2019s counterintuitive, and he\u2019s right because weed has always been a source of enchantment for me. When I implemented this mindfulness, it was impossible to ignore that the last third of the joint makes my mouth taste like ash. Half-smoked joints and dirty lighters make my purse disgusting. It\u2019s also a little weird that I went to the dispensary on Christmas Eve. Not to mention, I hate the way it drains the extra cash out of my bank account.<\/p>\n Weeks of half-hearted quitting, relapsing, and curious awareness had inched me toward disenchantment. I was yearning to start the New Year with a fresh sense of possibility. Though I\u2019d tried it before to no avail, perhaps I could tap into the power of a fresh start<\/a>. So on New Year\u2019s Eve, I walked across the street to the park and smoked my last (?) joint. It started off delicious. The high was delectable. But I noticed when it got gross and didn\u2019t even want to smoke it all the way down to the stub. I wanted to go out on the good part. I noticed myself coughing a dozen times as I floated back home.<\/p>\n So far, I\u2019ve been weed-free for 44 days. I think it\u2019s my longest streak since my early 20s. I want to go the whole year \u2026 and hopefully beyond. Maybe it will be like breaking up with a toxic yet intoxicating lover. For a long time, it feels like you\u2019ll never be able to leave them. But one day, you kiss them good-bye, and that\u2019s it. Then you wonder what took you so long.<\/p>\n Stay in touch.<\/p>\n Get the Cut newsletter delivered daily<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n