How to be happy if I don’t smoke cannabis? This is one of the most difficult questions to answer when it is asked by someone who smokes weed regularly.
The person asking the question has been depressed for sometime and the only light at the end of their tunnel of sadness is – the weed, the drink, the drugs of their choice.
So persuading someone who is unhappy to stop doing the one thing that makes them happy is a particularly hard sell.
The reality of smoking weed
At least that’s how it seems. In reality it’s not like this. The reality is that people taking drugs and alcohol are not happy at all – even when they drink and take drugs.
The “high” associated with regular marijuana intake is not “happiness”. It is anesthesia.
Weed seemed like it made an enjoyable situation more enjoyable but it actually diminishes the infinite possibilities of life and makes you unhappy.
Because we are programmed to seek out food and consume. Our mind, when food is aplenty, tries to seek out brain-food and consume – assuming, incorrectly, that the consumption of weed will cause the end of unhappiness, in the same way as the consumption of food causes the end of hunger.
Happiness is illusive
Human beings can fly to the moon, create super-computers and do amazing things but they don’t know how to be happy. There are thousands of books including some of the most revered religious texts on the subject, and yet they won’t tell you the answer.
Happiness is something that happens unexpectedly while you’re doing something else After thousands of years of technological advances and improvements in education, learning and standard of living we are not even a little bit closer to understanding happiness.
How to be happy
So, the logical assumption is to stop looking for things outside ourselves to make ourselves happy.
If we have food, shelter and reasonable health, there is nothing in the “outside” that we actually need. Everything that matters is inside ourselves. Our thoughts and our feelings. And, more importantly, our awareness of our thoughts and feelings is all that we are and all that we have.
If you can concentrate your feelings on you, and strip away the layers of want and fear that the modern world has wrapped you in, you will find out more about what you are and what you need.
You may find that you actually need very little indeed as it is the wanting and needing that has made you unhappy in the first place.
Of course this is all easier said than done. Try telling someone who’s been smoking grass everyday for 15 years that she/he doesn’t need anything. The initial first few weeks after giving up can be the most depressing, boring and irritating moments in anyone’s life. That is why it is essential they look after their health, eat and drink properly, exercise and keep busy doing whatever hobbies they had before weed took them.
Simple meditations, relaxation techniques, and self-hypnosis can help immeasurably.