An admission...I have over 10 years of sobriety from alcohol, but relapsed briefly on marijuana edibles for a few weeks. They legalized marijuana for recreational use last year & I got curious. I found myself getting high from morning until night within days. It became like a treadmill...I couldn't maintain a high that was satisfying & my mental health began to suffer.

With alcohol, the old "one's too many and a hundred ain't enough" knowledge is burned into my brain. I still attend AA (on Zoom these days), and remember the blackouts & everything I "gave away" due to my drinking. The thought of a drink doesn't appeal to me at all, but marijuana (after all these years) sounded innocent enough. It took that weed relapse to remind me that addiction is addiction. Although my relapse only lasted a few weeks, that brief encounter reminded me of what slavery to substances feels like. I was planning my days around getting high. I beat myself up for quite a while after that relapse, but now try to use it as a tool to remember what things were like when I was abusing multiple substances years ago. In AA's Big Book, the Promises say that one "will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it." My reminder was valuable.