so weed withdrawal sucks but this has been a really useful experience for me! it's really helped me grok more serious forms of addiction. under a readmore for discussions of craving, withdrawal, and drug use.
i'd never really understood before what people meant when they talked about physical addiction, because while i am aware of my addictive personality, all of my addictions are mental.
this may seem extremely obvious, but I genuinely never realized before that there's more to addiction than "I want to do this because it will make me feel good and I don't feel good right now." i didn't grok that there was more to it than "i'm craving this right now and if I give in the craving feeling will stop."
I knew things like the DTs and withdrawal existed, of course, I knew they killed you, but I always imagined they'd feel like...I don't know. Craving yourself to death.
can i even articulate this? it's so illuminating to feel how shitty my body feels, completely separate from the craving. the sense that i have created a little chemistry problem for my body wherein i have two illnesses, and i get to choose which one i experience depending on whether or not i ingest this chemical.
like at this exact moment, i have no craving for the mental or physical experience of being high. instead, i "want" to take weed with the desperation I'd feel at 3am with a migraine pawing for advil in an understocked downtown CVS. i did not understand that "craving" and "want" like that could be unlinked, that you could feel one or both at the same time, and that both would push back towards the drug at different rates.
basically, i'd always thought of addiction as one bright, bold line pulling you towards the thing you desired. i didn't realize how many tethers these things could tie onto you.
I live in the part of my city with the biggest drug problem, and I know a lot of my neighbors are losing their battles. I've always tried to be open-minded and curious about people's experiences, but there really always was a little part of me that thought "how could this have happened." that's gone now. i get how it happens.
