2 months--no drugs or alcohol

I would totally come up there but I’m gonna be in Florida that week.

What part of Canada?

Calgary.

Well good for you for sticking it out man. It may get even better as time passes and you begin to forget the psychological aspect of the addiction.

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Yeah, caffeine doesn’t do much for my depression one way or the other; it never really has. I will say that my anxiety levels are far more tolerable, but I have a history of terrible anxiety. I also notice my mood is more stable. That’s not to say my mood is great, but less peaks and valleys if that makes sense.

Not even crack?

It makes perfect sense, stat.

Guess what I’m doing right now? Drinking coffee!

Guess what I’ll be doing tonight? Getting drunk!

That’s right, boys and girls, it’s been two months–two months and two days to be exact–since my last drunken, caffeinated, stoned binge. And I’m proud to say that I have not consumed a single drop or inhaled a single toke of drug saturated substances (actually, that’s not quite true–I did have some decaf–but more on that below).

So what are the results?

Well, last time we spoke was around this time last month, I said this:

At least in the last two weeks, this pattern has changed. I’m not sure why. It’s been a lot more steady. My sleep patterns have become what I’d call “normal”–that is, I generally get tired around 10:00-11:00 and I’m able to get a good night sleep–waking up at around 6 and feeling relatively refreshed. Throughout the day I have enough energy to get me through–still needing a bit of a nap in the afternoon, but like I said, not nearly as much or for as long as when I was drinking and caffeinating myself–and generally able to go home, get some chores done, spend some time with the kids, and go to bed at the same time. I wouldn’t say I’m overly energetic–nothing like the caffeine highs that would keep me up 'til 2:00/3:00 o’clock in the morning–but I’d say I’m as energetic as I need to be. And what else would I expect? I’ve given my body a chance to take care of its own sleep and wakeful cycles. It’ll manage them in just the right way–just the right amount of energy throughout the day, just the right amount of sleep throughout the night, getting tired just at the right time in the evening, and feeling refreshed from a good night’s sleep at the right time in the morning. This also explains some of the more erratic ups and downs I experienced earlier in this experiment: they say that caffeine is like a block shoved behind the breaks of your car–with a block there, you can’t apply the breaks, and so your brain just keeps buzzing, your bodily engines just keep churning the pistons–until you crash. But with my body taking over with its natural mechanism, there’s nothing blocking it from slowing down when it needs to and speeding up when it needs to. So yes, abstaining from caffeine has allowed my body to naturally boost up the energy levels, but in a controlled fashion, such that it can turn them down when it needs to–and that’s not always going to be at a consistent time of day. On some days I may need more sleep than usual–let’s say because I had to get up early that day, or I did a lot of physical labor that day, or because I was depressed–and on those days, my body will tone down the energy levels. Other days it won’t–I know that on the days where I couldn’t get to sleep at a regular hour were days when my mind was dwelling on something, something bothering me or I was stressed about something–and my body accommodated by keeping me up a little while longer so that I could work those issues through in my mind. The point is, with my body in control of my sleep/wake cycles, it can decide when to put on the breaks and when to step on the gas, whereas with caffeine, stepping on the breaks is just not an option until it has dissipated from my system.

But yeah, I don’t completely understand all the reasons for these ups and downs, but I suspect a huge part of it has to do with some emotional trials I’ve been going through (which tells me that my depression is not just drug induced). Some days I feel good, some days not. I’m a dweller. On bad days, I dwell over certain issues. This dwelling can go long into the night, and keeps me from sleeping. Other days, I’m feeling good, and this too can keep me up because, well, I feel good and I’m too excited to go to sleep. Another thing I have to take into consideration is that during the first month, I took a lot of time off work for the Christmas holidays–which means a lot more sleeping in and lazing around the house–which obviously does affect my sleep patterns and energy levels–not to mention the unhealthy eating from all the holiday junk food and irregular meals.

But like I said, for the past two weeks, I’ve been rather steady with my sleep patterns–not quite steady emotionally–but no ups and downs with how tired or wakeful I feel. One thing that I think factored into this was that about two to three weeks ago, I stopped drinking decaf. Before that, I thought, what the hell–I’m on a caffeine fast, might as well drink decaf as a substitute–until, out of curiosity, I decided to google the caffeine content of decaf only to find that there are significant traces of caffeine therein. Who would a’ thunk? Not nearly as much as a regular cup of coffee, of course, but sometimes more than tea. Shit! I thought to myself. I’ve always had my suspicions that my body is extra sensitive to even the slightest doses of chemicals I put into it, and though with this minor amount of caffeine, I’d never get a buzz, maybe my body was still reacting to it. So I decided to lay off the decaf–and about a week later, my energy and sleep patterns began to stabilize, and at a relatively high level (like I said, nothing like the caffeine buzz that would keep me up into the wee hours of the morning, but enough to feel good and to feel that I can take on the day). I think this correlation–abstaining from decaf and my sleep and energy levels stabilizing about a week later–is too isolated an incident to draw any conclusions, but it’s a possibility worth testing out again in the future.

So was it worth it? Of course. To learn some things about myself, sure it’s worth it. Would I do it again. Yes–that’s part of the plan. But based on these last few months, I’d want to repeat the exact same experiment. That is, even though I said in my OP, subsequent experiments like this would involved different combinations of the drugs–maybe abstaining from alcohol and caffeine but not psychedelics, or abstaining from all substances except alcohol–I think this one (in which I abstain from all substances period) needs to be repeated. This time, I’d want to go the full 2 months without decaf. I also want to see how I feel emotionally and spiritually. The drugs I do, and the psychedelics in particular, have always been a source of moral and spiritual inspiration for me, and I imagine a life without drugs would feel empty and meaningless. I have had feelings like this on occasion throughout the past 2 months, my self-esteem taking a toll in the process, but even without the drugs, there’s just too many factors involved to say definitively why I feel this way. Could just be the usually mood swings. I think everyone feels their lives are empty and meaningless when they sink into a depression–that’s just the nature of the beast–and as I said in another thread, my self-esteem tends to go all over the map anyway–so I can’t just yet pin these feelings all on a lack of drugs. But it’s true–on those Fridays, when I allow myself to get buzzed on the caffeine and then drunk and stoned at night, it leaves me with a kind of spiritual boost such that I feel temporarily rejuvenated. I wonder if I need the drugs for this.

So I want to try this again when there isn’t so much shit going on in my life that would seriously confound the experiment (I’m not telling you everything that’s been going on in my life over the past 2 months, and that’s on purpose, but suffice it to say that it’s been somewhat of an emotional roller coaster ride). And yes, I know that we can’t control for the emotional intrusions into our lives, and there’s always going to be emotional bombs that drop on us periodically throughout our lives–two months without emotional challenges to deal with? Yeah right! :laughing:–but these past few months have been especially trying. I’m aiming for the end of this upcoming summer, not so much because I’m just that good at forecasting when the emotional storms are going to hit and when I’m going to enjoy calmer emotional weather, but because I want to factor in body weight and exercise. You see, it’s a pattern with me that in the summer time, I bike to work–and it’s a good hour bike ride one way–and I also diet to lose weight. In the winter, I let myself go. I’ve got an almost insatiable appetite, so when I just give in to my desires to eat, I can get fat really quickly over the course of only a few months (well, not really fat, but I do develop a noticeable gut). So I get fat by the time spring hits, and skinny by the time fall hits. Right now, I’m fat. I want to try this out again when I’m skinny. This will test two things: 1) how my body weight affects my mood and sleep patterns, and 2) how exercise affects my mood and sleep patterns (btw, whoever it was who said exercise gives you more energy was full of shit–I’m exhausted on days when I bike to work and back, at least in the evenings, although it is true that for about an hour or two after the bike ride, the adrenaline is still in my system and I feel a bit more energized. But this is just common sense if you think about it–you work your body hard, you’re going to get tired. But to be fair, I do have to test this a bit more scientifically: is the exhaustion partly a result of the drugs, or can I pin it solely on exercise?). I think this experiment would fit nicely in the fall season. Why? Because it would be nice to split it up between a period during which I’m riding my bike, and a period during which I’ve retired my bike for the winter season due to snow fall (I will not ride my bike after the snow begins to fall). That way, I will have a bit of a period during which I’m not exercising yet I’m still skinny (will have to hold off on stopping my diet so I stay thin for the duration of the experiment–and even there, an even more nuanced factor is introduced: body weight vs. rate of food intake–they say that the body is naturally more energized when hungry–why? They say because it needs that energy in order to hunt for food–which is subtly different from being energize due to stickiness–so I think I’ll have to stay hungry for a bit).

Anyway, I’m going to report back in maybe a week or two and let you all know how I’m feeling then. I think this is important because it’s not just about recognizing how I feel during the drug fast, but also recognizing how I feel after the fast is over–and well after it is over (i.e. one or two weeks) so that the drugs have had a chance to return me into my prior state/pattern, the one I was in before the fasting. It just grounds the conclusions I can draw from this experience more reliable… so stay tuned.

Yours truly, Grumpy Cat:

Good for you,

It gets old watching drug dealers and abusers pretending moral superiority and health over actual health, sobriety. I despise the idea of drug use, especially marijuana and weed.

Thank you.

Well, don’t congratulate me just yet. I’ve watched myself do exactly the same thing–and under certain circumstance, still do the same thing–only thing is, I’m aware of it.

Marijuana and weed, eh? :laughing:

But that’s curious. Why that drug? I would think that’s one of the more innocuous drugs. Why not crack or heroin?

He’s desperate to bait me into talking to him so that he can blabber on and work his way into the feminine simulacra speak. It’s just attention seeking behavior. It’s because he wasn’t bright enough, or attractive enough to garner the attention he thought he deserved as a child.

When you see him, just validate him and tell him everything’s ok. That’s what he actually needs.

I believe the second part of that, but the first (baiting you specifically) might be a bit of paranoia on your part.

Nah man, just search the kts threads. They say that because I’m a drug dealer = x like every day. It’s why he so curiously chose weed to be against. I used to post pictures of weed. It’s all they’ve got. Fact is, they read about that a while back, and their information is dated. So it’s funny for more than one reason. It’s bad movement from premise to conclusion, and it’s a faulty premise. What can I say? They love me gib.

They all want to be ubermenches but they’re not, and they hate people who really are. Most of those cats work at shit slave jobs and have to take shit all the time and aren’t in control of their own lives or destinies at all. They hate me because I am, and because I disagree with their whole moral/political line. I prove them wrong. It burns them deep inside.

I’ll take your word for it. Sounds like you know him better than I do.

I figured he probably hates weed because it’s the most often cited drug for inducing hippy-style new-age philosophy, second only to LSD and mushrooms, which of course is not “real” philosophy according to insight’s professional opinion. Because, you know, drugs that make you come up with hippy style thoughts and such are far worse than dying of a heroin overdose.

(btw, not saying that you are such a hippy-style philosopher–I know you do weed, and I know you are a philosopher (you have a degree in it IIRC, making you an actual professional, correct?), but I never thought of you as a hippy or your philosophies as “new age”).

Sounds about right to me.

What is your obsession with crack man?

:laughing: I noticed that too.

Hello again, all.

Remember last time (if you ever read this thread at all, or remember it) how I talked about conducting this experiment again–two months, no drugs or alcohol? Well, that’s right, the time has come. The end of summer is close at hand, and I’d like to try this 2 month abstinence thing again while I can still ride my bike and while I’m dieting–plus the long term forecast doesn’t seem to show any signs of emotional turmoil on the horizon (if you recall, these were some of the variables I wanted to switch up for my next experiment).

So here goes: after today, I will abstain completely from all drugs and alcohol for two months–that’s mainly caffeine, alcohol, and cannabinoids (but of course, generalized to all substances whatsoever, but these three are my main challenges). So I hope to get the same much-appreciated support that everyone gave me last time. And I’m sure I will.

Do you feel depressed with the daily pressures of life yet being sober?

You will do fine gib, a bit of help maybe , try hanging out at places where you cant smoke or drink, a place that is pleasant. If we know we can’t do something then many times the desire quiets if we are doing something pleasant. Give it a couple of weeks doing that, it could help change your mindset.

Yes, it happens. During the first round, I sunk into a major depression through the last week of December and first week of January–and there was a lot of shit going on in my life at the time to explain it. So I know life can get me down even without the substances. This was about a week and a half after I started and I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t just withdrawal symptoms from the cannabinoids–maybe a combination of withdrawal plus life itself.

Thanks Kris, but I’m not too worried about falling off the horse. I can muster up an iron will if I really commit myself. But you’re right that being around other people does help. In fact, creating this thread was a strategy in itself–the more people you tell, the more able you’ll be to stick to your commitment. And you’re right, after about a couple weeks, it ain’t that hard at all (in fact, with caffeine in particular, all I need is 2 to 3 days).

Time to start drinking again.

What? For you or for me?