Drug Use & Dullness

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This topic contains 3 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by  masticatingbeast 7 years, 7 months ago.

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  • #578

    Hello all,

    I am a 29 year old male that has been smoking weed off and on for around 12 years. It brings me great joy, and pain. For the past few years, I’ve oscillated between intense periods of usage vs. intense periods of abstinence. With the recent publication of The Mind Illuminated, I’ve been better able to understand the effect of the high on my mind, and why I keep going back to it, despite knowledge of what it’s doing and has done. To be specific, the high seems to induce an intense awareness, with a near complete inability to sustain attention. A false mindfulness. The day after, my brain feels very dull, and focusing is challenging, and the temptation is to get high, as it creates that false mindfulness again, and the problem seems solved. However, this short-term solution to the long term problem only makes things worse. The dullness, or dissatisfaction I’m escaping, is now made worse by the heightened feeling of dullness after the drug high.

    With my increased interest in meditation and the ability to work through some stages, I now seem at a place to finally work through this addiction. When I’m not smoking, I’m capable of sustaining my attention of the breath at the nose very well, and have progressed to Stage 5 where this stable subtle dullness, I now realize, has been the root cause for much of my drug use. I feel dull, or not as clear as I might be in peak experiences, say during a good workout or dancing, and I want to get high to feel “awake.” An aversion to this dullness seems characteristic of most of my mindless behaviours, be it smart phone/internet addiction, laziness, or disbelief in my own abilities. I no longer fall asleep during meditation, so the dullness isn’t progressive anymore, but this near constant state of dullness creates a myriad of problems I’d like to solve using meditation. There seems to be a reliance on peak experiences – be it drug use, or exercise addiction (usually some form of intense exercise every day to change my brain state) – to escape this dullness.

    After a few recent weeks of heavy marijuana use (during which still managed to meditate 45min twice a day), I see the effects of this drug on me better than ever. I can feel this “fog” or “dullness” in my brain, and see how a lot of the anxiety or impatience during a longer meditation session is in reaction to this feeling. That’s good. However, it’s often such a gross distraction I’m unable to focus on the breath at the nose. My question is, should I treat this dullness (a result of a combination of factors, including drug use) as a gross distraction, and control the frame of intent by observing it and its effects, or should I begin some Stage 5 practice as well in attempt to heighten the clarity and power of my peripheral awareness? Should I see this as purification of the mind, in stage 4, or working through stable subtle dullness? Furthermore, through meditation, it seems as if I’ll get to a real mindfulness where I’m able to stabilize my attention AND enhance peripheral awareness, whereas with weed, I only get lost in peripheral awareness, with no focus. My final question is: will I eventually get to the same states of mind I feel when I’m high? I presume it will be even better, but it’s nice to have something to work towards, as it will give me incentive to stop smoking weed and trust I’ll get to that place, or someplace better, eventually…marijuana has been very important to me in developing as an artist, but now it’s a crutch I long to abandon, and yearn to perform sober…

    Thank you for your thoughts and attention,
    Dave Millett

    #582

    Blake Barton
    Keymaster

    It sounds like you have a pretty good understanding of your relationship to marijuana.

    It is curious that you consider being high as being “awake”. Culadasa feels that intoxicants, and mindless activities produce states of dullness. However, dullness is often pleasant, so that is why we seek those experiences. It makes me think that there is some dullness in your marijuana experience, because you are unable to sustain attention. A truly vivid experience is the optimal interaction between attention and awareness.

    Meditation can produce mental states that are more pleasant and satisfying than marijuana and other drugs. It does not have nearly as many side effects as intoxicants. However, meditation can have its own side effects, and it takes more time and effort. You might take a look at the chapters on Stages 8-10 to see what may be possible. If you grasp at the meditation experiences, then they are not likely to happen. When we notice that we are seeking a particular experience in meditation, we can simply let the desire go, and return attention to the breath.

    Doing these practices can develop strong mindfulness which can really help with addictive behavior.

    I hope this information is helpful, and I wish you the best of luck working with this issue.

    Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher in Training

    #606

    Hi Dave

    Thanks for being so open about this issue. I appreciate your questions but want to take a different approach. First, have you gone a meditation retreat? If not, I think you might want to. It would be great if you could go on one with Culadasa, but that may not be feasible. I would suggest going on a 10 day vipassana retreat, Goenka style http://www.dhara.dhamma.org/. I don’t practice in this tradition anymore, but I found the retreat really helped me kick an addiction to aderall years ago. The second thing I’d do is look up Shinzen Young. He’s a great teacher and he’s also very open about his years of smoking weed. Here’s a video where he gives an account of his addiction and kicking it via the same sweeping method done on Goenka vipassana retreat I mentioned above, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N7A5kAESTQ. I might even reach out to him, send him an email outlining what you’ve stated here, see what he says.

    I’m happy to answer your other questions, but let’s start here.

    Be well
    Matthew

    #1419

    Thanks for the replies.

    I am pleased to say I am going on retreat with Culadasa as part of the eSangha group. The stable dullness is still an issue for me, and I believe it is related to low dopamine as a result of drug abuse. I’m not sure how long it will take for my brain to reboot, but I have been one month sober and it is better than day 1, that’s for sure.

    I am going to email Shinzen Young. It is encouraging to note people so accomplished experienced the same thing. I suppose the personal is always universal.

    Thanks for your honesty. Sorry for the late reply, but I was back in the drug-induced haze for a few months there.

    This gives me hope!

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