Hi wanderlust, I use to smoke weed and it pretty much made me paranoid, this was before I was taking meds. So it wasn't worth doing because of the way it felt.

The weed addiction is mostly a psychological addiction. Smoking weed procures a feeling, and it's this feeling that we associated terms like "good, relaxing, fun, peace, bliss, etc." to. We excuse it as no big deal at first that can exists for years or a lifetime. Once we've romanced the drug and made it part of our daily routine, it becomes part of us. Breaking this form of thinking habit takes work (yuck).

When we try to break routine, our brain goes haywire telling us that something is wrong, we forgot to do something, we are out of programmed balance. Our brains love routine, it doesn't want to think all the time over menial tasks. Take tying your shoe for instance, after a few times of intense concentration at first, it caught on and we do it subconsciencely for the rest of our life.

We've trained our minds to feel high. Let's say at 5 pm everyday I smoked after work. I can go all day just fine, but after 5 pm if I didn't smoke, my brain will get edgy because something wasn't done. Somethings not right, somethings suppose to be happening....the alarm clock went off. Not only that, I'm suppose to feel a certain way at this time, this needs to be fixed NOW! I'm mentally craving to satisfy that neglected part of my routine. We addicts have obsessive minds. This obsession can be stronger then we can handle. My brain won't be satisfied and will obsess on it until I perform the neglected routine. This is mostly mental withdrawls, not physical.

It takes 30 days to make or break a habit.

We have to now re-train our brain. We have all these positives tied to smoking (feels good, fun, peace, bliss, etc...) that needs to be downplayed. I put myself through this. I started associating words like it's gross, dirty, chore some, addiction, habit, chains, slavery, etc to it, removing the glam aspect. I then tell myself that I don't need it to do my day, that I'm being silly thinking that I can't live without it. I've adopted the thinking that it was a hindrance, getting in my way of making better money. I was able to learn and wrk more efficiently.

Since it takes time to de-program this habit, I'd excuse myself and do something different like dishes, take a walk or whatever it takes to step out away from the actual smoking action, especially at first. If I'm sitting there while it's being smoked, my obsession is going to kick in and I'm not going to beat it because it's all brain mind control.

I have found that after the first 3 days of breaking a habit, the obsession starts to wane exponentially. The first 2 days are hard.

It's not a good idea to substitute a drug for a drug, because all we are doing is transferring the association of "good, bliss, relaxing, fun..." from substance to substance. When it came to drinking alcohol, I subbed canned ice tea for beer to still feel like I'm "drinking" which slowly faded away because it didn't produce a high effect.

After awhile when my mind is not obsessed with smoking, it wouldn't bother me none as long as I didn't entertain romancing it again, trying to fall back in love with the drug like missing it. Out of mind out of sight.

Getting into a support group like NA isn't a bad idea. These groups actually cater to the obsession side of addiction, and also surrounds you with people like you trying to beat the mind's mental games.

Of course, when we have a "hole" we're trying to fill, it can largely be due to that are meds aren't tweaked right, yet. I didn't really lose my need to drink/drug till my stabilizers were increased to therapeutic levels. If there is past trauma, it needs to be dealt with.

As far as your boyfriend is concerned, just don't be around him when he's smoking. But note, if I was sitting there first and he walked in to get high, he can take it outside or to the bedroom, but in reality, is that really going to happen? I'd just remove myself. I've discovered that as long as the actual smoking is happening, it's easily doable. A lot of the time if I can just smell it, I'm not really caring about smoking it.

I hope this helps you some. It's hard to change how we exist, but it can be done successfully.