There are tips you can implement to help you beat marijuana addiction gradually. Deciding to stop the use of marijuana is an important decision, and it’s best you begin early enough. 

Marijuana addiction has adverse effects on your health that may be terminal in the long run. Hence, the need to start taking preventive measures already. If you continue this article to the end, you’ll discover vital information on how to overcome marijuana addiction.

10 Tips to Get Rid of Marijuana Addiction

Marijuana addiction isn’t only harmful to your health; it affects almost every area of your life, which makes it a “sweet poison.” The reason lots of individuals smoke marijuana is because of the short-term euphoria it provides.

The resultant euphoric effect of smoking marijuana includes a feeling of relaxation and excitement that makes it addictive. However, marijuana addiction can cause problems affecting your career, social life, and other personal relationships. 

Marijuana addiction is on the rise in Canada, and the government is taking appropriate steps to ensure that it’s reduced. But, sadly, marijuana addiction doesn’t affect just you; it also affects everyone around you and the nation at large. 

As an individual, it’s important to quit smoking marijuana so you can lead a healthier and better lifestyle. This blog contains several tips to help you beat marijuana addiction before it deteriorates into a worse situation. Have a look at the tips to stop marijuana addiction below. 

1. Don’t Quit Cold-Turkey

Quitting cold turkey means an abrupt and complete cessation from a drug to which one’s addicted. Stopping the use of marijuana can be difficult, and it’s not advisable to quit instantly due to the dangerous effects it carries.

Thinking about overcoming addiction to marijuana can be overwhelming. Therefore, a better approach is to entertain your marijuana addiction recovery as a process that may take a while to actualize.

A great tip that can help beat your marijuana addiction is to stay clean from marijuana each day, just for that day. It’ll make you more in control of your recovery, and the task will feel less challenging. Also, slowly reducing your use of marijuana increases your chance of recovery. 

To structure your recovery and keep track, you can set a quit date. Give yourself a realistic time limit of some weeks or a month to quit your use of marijuana. Have it in mind that choosing a far date can make it seem distant, that you may lose motivation early. 

Having a set plan is better than quitting cold turkey because you get to keep track of your recovery and help manage withdrawal symptoms better. One last tip is to set reminders on your mobile phone.  

2. Meditation and Mental Preparedness

Mental preparation is the act of preparing yourself mentally for a performance, and it’s a helpful tip that can help you beat your marijuana addiction. One way you can mentally prepare yourself when quitting the use of marijuana is by playing meditation and mindful exercises. 

Programming your mind by meditation and mindful exercises are effective in relieving anxiety and stress. It also augments your immune function and reduces blood pressure, which helps your body to align with your plan to stop marijuana addiction. 

Formulating a meditation practice helps people to discover peace and calm. To get a better result when trying to beat marijuana addiction, you need to be at peace with yourself. Meaning that you don’t need any form of distraction. 

When yur mind is unsettled, it may meddle with your ability to focus on your marijuana addiction recovery, and focus is one major element you need. Having a good meditation practice and mindful exercise will help you focus and quiet your mind in distressful times, such as quitting marijuana addiction. 

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3. Consciously Avoid Triggers

Triggers, in this case, relate to anything or anyone that ignites your want for marijuana. So, to beat marijuana addiction, you need to stay away from people who use marijuana. On the other hand, it’s no doubt that when you stay around people using marijuana, you’re most likely going to use it. 

You can also let other marijuana users around know that you’ve quit smoking or using it and that you don’t want to be tempted as such. Telling the marijuana users around about your decision to quit is a good idea, but a better option is to avoid them consciously tactically.  

Asides from the other marijuana users around, another trigger you may encounter is your smoking kit. If you’re trying to beat marijuana addiction, the best step is to dispose of your smoking kit. Keeping your smoking kit around may trigger you to smoke one day, which can turn to every day if you’re not careful. 

Avoiding the places you go to smoke marijuana is another trigger you need to avoid. Just perceiving the smell of marijuana can light up your desire to smoke again. It’s the reason you need to avoid the areas that spur your interest in smoking marijuana.

4. Eat Healthily

Eating healthily means following a healthy eating pattern that includes a variety of nutritious foods and drinks. Food affects the manner your brain functions. If your body isn’t producing enough brain chemicals (neurotransmitters) or if the chemicals aren’t in adequate proportions, you may start feeling anxious and irritable.

Lack of a healthy eating pattern when planning to beat marijuana addiction may cause you to suffer from the inability to sleep, anxiety, and food cravings. A tip to help you beat marijuana addiction is to eat healthy food that’ll balance your brain’s serotonin level. You need to eat meals like beans, potatoes, carrots, pasta, bread, and other meals that consist of vegetables. 

Eating lots of fruits alongside healthy meals when trying to beat marijuana addiction will help to keep you in good shape. If you eat healthily and satisfactorily when trying to beat marijuana, it’ll keep you in your best mood, and a happy mood reduces your likeliness to turn to marijuana for a mood booster. 

5. Get Professional Assistance

One tip that can help you beat marijuana addiction is to seek professional assistance from a therapist. Going for therapy is a great idea when you’re trying to form new habits and methods of coping without marijuana. 

A major quality of a good therapist is never to judge their client, and in this situation, that’s exactly what you need. A therapist understands that it’s normal to turn to substances like marijuana as a coping mechanism, and at the same time, understands that it’s not good for your health. 

A good therapist will help you walk your way to marijuana addiction recovery by exploring underlying issues that contribute to your marijuana use. The therapist may also help you address other issues in your relationship and life generally that may contribute to your marijuana addiction. 

There are several approaches the therapist may implement to help you stop marijuana addiction. But below are three approaches that may be particularly supportive. 

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

The CBT treatment approach will help you to recognize unpleasant or saddening emotions and thoughts. Then the therapist will guide you through the CBT approach and help you formulate different productive skills that’ll assist you in managing and addressing those unwanted thoughts and emotions.

For example, if you use marijuana when you’re weak, you’ve learned that it helps calm you down and reduce stress. You can’t feel calm if you don’t use marijuana because that’s the way your brain now functions, and it has gotten used to it. 

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) will teach you how to spot stress signals, dare your desire to use marijuana, and replace the bad habit with a more helpful one. The therapist will enable you to overcome marijuana addiction by facing it head-on. 

Contingency Management

The contingency management approach helps you reinforce marijuana quitting behaviours. It means that the therapist may set rewards for you when you don’t smoke. 

When you participate in a contingency management treatment plan for marijuana addiction, you may receive gifts like movie tickets or restaurant gift card vouchers for every negative test result. Humans generally love gifts, and gifts or rewards are an excellent way to encourage an individual to desist from smoking. 

Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET)

The motivational enhancement treatment approach has to do with the therapist asking general questions about the individual. From the answers to the questions, the therapist will know why the individual uses marijuana. Then the therapist will prioritize those reasons to have a clear-cut direction on what to attack and how. 

The MET treatment plan is a good first-step approach for treating marijuana addiction. It’s an effective approach because it becomes easier to combat its addiction when you know why you use marijuana. In addition, the MET treatment plan is supportive if you plan to quit marijuana use but aren’t sure exactly why. 

6. Make New Friends

When making an important decision like quitting marijuana addiction, you need to be around supportive people. The quality of people you have in your life at every point in time influences certain decisions you have to make. 

One major tip that can help you beat marijuana addiction is to surround yourself with people that’ll encourage you. Conversely, if you stay around people that are unsupportive of your addiction recovery, chances are you’ll rescind your decision to quit. 

A great place to meet people and make new friends that’ll support you is group therapy sessions. You can make friends that you both can keep track of your growth records. Since everyone is in the group for the same reason, it’s easier to connect. 

In group therapy sessions, when someone gets better, it motivates the others. So making new friends can motivate you to beat marijuana addiction.

7. Don’t Stay Idle, Get Busy

Idleness, they say, is the devil’s workshop, but it also catalyzes marijuana addiction. Having so much spare time and doing nothing with it naturally makes the body restless. The next thing to do for most idle people is to seek ways to relax and have fun, leading to the use of marijuana. 

To avoid using marijuana during your idle moment, try to engage yourself in productive activities. A tip you can implement to get rid of marijuana addiction is volunteering in charity programmes, playing video games, carefully listening to your pet(s), baking, or doing any other activity you enjoy. 

8. Exercise

Exercising isn’t just good for the body; it’s also good for the mind. When you exercise more often, you’ll experience the “natural euphoria” of endorphins, which plays a vital role in elevating your mind. 

Creating an exercise routine and following it religiously automatically structures your lifestyle to reduce your use of marijuana. A good exercise routine also helps to curb the risk of a possible relapse. 

9. Accountability

Being accountable for combating marijuana addiction is a helpful tip that can ensure your recovery. You can tell someone you trust that you really wish to stay away from pot and ask the person to keep you accountable. 

When you feel more responsible for your marijuana addiction recovery, it helps keep you on track. In addition, it’ll enable you to take more deliberate steps to treat marijuana addiction.

10. Understand that Withdrawal May Arise

It’s natural for people to experience withdrawal symptoms when trying to quit the use of marijuana. Withdrawal symptoms have to do with your body trying to adjust to the disruption of the marijuana effect in your body. 

In other words, your body reacts when you stop the regular intake of marijuana. Meaning that your body system can’t function properly without the consistent dosage of marijuana. So if you’re thinking of how to overcome marijuana addiction, you need first to understand that there’s a possibility of withdrawal symptoms.

Examples of withdrawal symptoms include headache, sweating, anxiety, irritability, and cravings. But bear in mind that these withdrawal symptoms reduce each day you don’t use marijuana.  

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Final Thoughts

Deciding to combat marijuana addiction is a major step in the recovery process. However, if you don’t take that personal decision to combat your marijuana addiction, recovery may take a little longer to materialize. 

However, in this article, you’ll discover the tips you can implement to help you beat marijuana addiction. These marijuana addiction overcoming tips can help you get better results in no distant time. But it’s always better to allow a professional to guide you through the marijuana addiction treatment. 

Here at Inspire Change Wellness Centre, we offer varied treatment programs to help you beat marijuana addiction. Get in touch with our addiction specialists today!