I stopped smoking pot 8 weeks ago after smoking it for all my adult life.
I was always freaking out whenever I had to do anything with numbers like taxes or whatever. The anxiety was always there and I couldn't cypher anything. I would get scared that I was loosing my mind and that would make it worse. I would back off of the pot a little and it would help a little. When I started to cut back, I noticed when I smoked on the weekend it effected my job performance until about Wednesday or Thursday into the week. I finally had to admit that maybe other people can smoke it up and manage but I can't.
I was very antsy at the beginning and couldn't concentrate. I still feel a little like that, and sometime can't figure out what I should do during the time I spent stoned. I have noticed that I did my taxes this year and didn't freak out for the first time in many years!! I am also dealing with a law suit and am going through with the paper work hassle which I would have postponed forever or tried to do stoned and freaking out. I am working a 12 step program and just remembering to give this all up to a higher power that I am sure can manage the life of a straight women a lot easier than of a stoned one. Thanks
Hey Lanabo, you sure brought back some memories. During the later stages of my using career, I lost the ability to do math, and I was CPA fer cry'n out loud! It was really pathetic. Sure, I had a calculator and could grind through the math like a rat treading on a wheel, but I lost all of my higher levels of mathmatical conceptual thinking toward the end.
Like you, I went on the weekend maintance program for a while and it was a long time before I could acknowlege that it was still dramatically impacting my higher cognitive functions throughout the work week. Of course, over time, I started finding more and more reasons to take a hit or two or have a few drinks during the week.
The worst part was that I could never remember where I had left my keys. I remember one time after a concert in the park, I thought I had lost my keys and searched and searched for them and was about to give up when a friend pointed out to me that they were in my hands--sheesh!
Like you, I pursued a 12 Step program and gained more than I ever thought possible. I arrived desperate to get off the dope, and found an entirely new paradigm for living, and it has had an incredibly positive impact on every facet of my life.
It has been a few 24 hours now, and one of the things I enjoy doing is playing poker. I will probably never retire on my winnings, but I really enjoy the competition and intellectual stimulation: essentially, to win at the game you have to be an odds and probablitly generator as the cards are dealt and people are betting at you. I enjoy that kind of mathmatical stimulation these days. Apparently a lot of people who play poker must smoke pot because many of them are not very good at this process, bless their hearts. Doing math as a hobby indicates that I have come quite a distance since my using days.
I hope you will hang around and share your ESH with others. There is no shortage of folks who are struggling to get clean.
All the best,
August
Like you, I went on the weekend maintance program for a while and it was a long time before I could acknowlege that it was still dramatically impacting my higher cognitive functions throughout the work week. Of course, over time, I started finding more and more reasons to take a hit or two or have a few drinks during the week.
The worst part was that I could never remember where I had left my keys. I remember one time after a concert in the park, I thought I had lost my keys and searched and searched for them and was about to give up when a friend pointed out to me that they were in my hands--sheesh!
Like you, I pursued a 12 Step program and gained more than I ever thought possible. I arrived desperate to get off the dope, and found an entirely new paradigm for living, and it has had an incredibly positive impact on every facet of my life.
It has been a few 24 hours now, and one of the things I enjoy doing is playing poker. I will probably never retire on my winnings, but I really enjoy the competition and intellectual stimulation: essentially, to win at the game you have to be an odds and probablitly generator as the cards are dealt and people are betting at you. I enjoy that kind of mathmatical stimulation these days. Apparently a lot of people who play poker must smoke pot because many of them are not very good at this process, bless their hearts. Doing math as a hobby indicates that I have come quite a distance since my using days.
I hope you will hang around and share your ESH with others. There is no shortage of folks who are struggling to get clean.
All the best,
August
Thanks for the Welcome August! It good to know that serenity and poker playing abilities return to those of us who persevere. It good to know that I wasn't the only one to have issues with math! It has never come easy to me even straight! I just got home from a meeting. It seemed the words on the pages I was reading, I was reading for the first time!! What beauty is "Clarity of Thought!!!" I used to go to the meetings stoned for about 2 years. They were Ala non so I didn't think pot counted. Was I ever wrong. Pot is so subtle in so many ways. It was my way to hang on to being counter culture and cool. It was really only hanging on to being slow and loosing things!!! I still can't find my remote to the television that has been missing since before I got straight.
Thanks again for your support!!
Thanks again for your support!!
