Benefits of quitting cannabis

- weight loss.  I've been overweight for most of my adult life, I could do without a drug that makes the problem worse.

- Better sleep.  I like sleep and I like dreaming.  It will be good to get more of both.

- Better concentration.  Last year I discovered an interest in German philosophy, I spent a while studying it.  As I am smoking I can't remember much of it now, and I don't have the concentration to try.

- A Job.  It would be good to have some money coming in.  I could clear some debts and replace some of the bits that have fallen off my car.

- Doing things other than watching TV.  There's so many things that I could do with my time that are far better than sitting and watching TV.  Of course, many of these alternatives cost money, but that will be provided by the previous benefit.

Clearer lungs - maybe it's just because I'm older, but after 10 years my lungs hurt - I was developing a cough - amazing how much better all of that is after only 10 days.  

Transparency - not having to hide it from friends, family, co-workers, always worrying if the smell or my behavior

was giving it away.  

- I'm so looking foward to not being constantly bored with my life.  The way I am living now, the most exciting thing I do with most days is take a walk down to the supermarket,  this 'thrill' is sometimes enhanced by the discovery of something tasty, close to the sell-by date, and cheap in the discount section.

- I hope for some happiness.  It seems I have been bloody miserable for most of my adult life.  I know that life isn't all delirious joy and no one is happy all the time, but honestly, it doesn't seem too much to ask to have a least a short period of relative happiness, rather than just a few hours or a day or two at most.

I was greatly shocked when I got my marks back after finishing uni, it was the first time in a long time I have found myself unable to suppress my smile.  I hope for more of these times.

- I look forward to waking up in the morning and having a constructive thing to do, something I have been looking forward to, something I have chosen for myself, something I haven't been cornered into doing.

- I'm looking forward to finding out what's going on with my health problems.  Two of my most debilitating and troublesome health problems that have plagued me for at least ten years might actually be fixed at last.

Words cannot express what this would mean, to be free of these things that have brought me down for so long.  Yet I will not kow this until I have been clean for a while.

- I'm looking foward to facing my problems without getting all hysterical or incoherent, without getting others to sort them out. 

- I'm looking forward to being percieved as an independent, competent person, and not a f@*k up.

Maybe, with time and effort, I might even get a little bit of love in my life.  And, if I'm brutally honest, it would be nice to get laid a bit more often.

The arrival of a bill in the post reminds me of something else.  I'm really looking forward to clearing debts.

Because of doing a degree, because it took four rather than three years, because I wasn't able or did not want to work much during that time and because of frequent lapses in budgeting, I now owe around £25,000.

Fortunately the bulk of that is in student loans, which I do not pay interest on, don't have to make minmum payments and won't have to pay back until I am earning a half decent wage.

Some of the others are costing only low fixed interest, but still, with what little I have I barely make the minimum payments, and this can't last.  In six months at the most I will no longer be able to make the minimum payments.

So I need to get motivated and get work.