Writing not smoking

Sobriety: A writer's way home

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  • Day 34 – No Fun Anymore

    I started this blog to replace smoking with writing, but lately night falls and I just mope.
    Depressed, wrapped up in my own fog, trying not to be so hard on myself.

    Before sobriety, most of this year was spent adapting to a place that never felt like home.
    Work was harder to find than I imagined, and Brasil got so expensive.
    I don’t care for the Americanised hustle that runs through this city. Capitalism and racism were bad enough where I grew up – here, everyone seems out for themselves. My savings stretched for a while, but now I’m broke and pregnant, which adds a different kind of weight.

    The man I thought was my soulmate feels like a stranger.
    My relationship with my parents is strained.
    My closest people are scattered across hemispheres.
    I’ve made beautiful friends here – that’s my gift – but I’m tired. Burnt out. Craving the familiar breeze of home.

    Knocked up and sober, what a ride.
    In two weeks I’ll fly home to my parents. For now I’m staying with my grandma, counting down the days.

    I’m writing instead of smoking, but I’m not thriving. Sobriety isn’t a relief; it’s a new responsibility.
    Addicts are used to working triple time – pretending we’re fine, hiding what we use, burying what hurts.

    I’ve been making it to MA meetings twice a week. I share, I listen, I love my fellowship. But when it comes to working the steps with my sponsor, I hit resistance.
    I tell myself it’s because I don’t have the physical workbook yet. Or because I’m nauseous, tired, overwhelmed.
    The truth is, I’m still avoiding the real labour – facing whatever lives underneath the need to numb.

    This is what I texted my sponsor today:

    “I shared my frustration with the steps. I realised it’s because I don’t want to admit I’m powerless over weed. I still have that hang-up. Right now I feel powerless to everything – my baby, my ex, my parents, my own bullshit, my past and my future. I feel on the edge of giving up before I’ve really begun, because part of me can’t imagine being free from weed. It’s been part of my identity, part of the world around me. To be free of it feels like becoming someone I don’t yet know nor trust. Even though I couldn’t trust myself in addiction, I want to trust myself in recovery. I want to stop running from my feelings.”

    Today I don’t give up.
    I accept that I’m powerless over my addiction.
    It shouldn’t be so hard to exist – but it is, and that’s me right now.

    Tomorrow, I’ll start Step One.

  • Day 29 – Writing My Will

    The symptoms of withdrawal mix uneasily with pregnancy: night sweats, mood swings, that familiar sense of dread, four-hour sleep cycles, fatigue, weight gain, food aversions.

    Tonight my mum told me I should write a will before my due date, in case I die in childbirth and need to relocate custody. She’s paranoid, but she’s right. She’s usually right.

    I’m 27. Aside from addiction, I’m healthy. I’ve spent my twenties moving – dancing, hiking, diving, running, eating mostly whole foods. Even after years of smoking and the long-forgotten nights of binge drinking, my vitals have stayed solid. Still, thinking about mortality feels strange. I’m trying to get used to that discomfort.

    I’ve shifted from active addict to survivor. Every day I try to fill the hours with light: friends, dance, walks, coconut water, simple to-do lists. Yet part of me still feels trapped in my ex’s shadow, having quiet conversations with my own demons. I’m learning to accept them, to see where I am powerless, and to surrender to the desert heat again and again.

    Am I depressed, or is this just what pregnant withdrawal feels like?

    Today I started working with a sponsor. She’s a mother, full of warmth and grit. I trust her guidance, and I want to honour that by doing the work with sincerity and focus. Still, I feel daunted by how far I have to go.

    It’s a big-girl-boots day. My baby is nearing the size of a banana slice inside me. I don’t feel ready for any of it. I want to nap, to cry, to give up on every task I’ve started. But I can’t. So I won’t.

    When the time comes to write my will, I’ll make a list. My parents will hold financial and custodial responsibility. My best friend and her husband – steady, kind, and grounded – will raise my child if needed. She has the kind of values any kid would be lucky to absorb: she shines, she holds her boundaries, she knows her worth. I want my baby to learn that.

    The father will have a clause: he may share custody if he passes regular drug tests, earns a reliable income, and remains independent from the family that hurt him.

    I can’t believe I’m writing this.

    In twenty-nine days of sobriety, I’ve stared fear straight in the face. My love for this tiny grape of a child is already boundless — she’s both a pain in my side and a glimmer of hope.

    So I take that fear, and I offer love.

  • Day 26 – Single Motherhood

    It’s 4:37 a.m., and the psychiatrist neighbour I’m suing for malpractice and verbal abuse has just arrived home blind drunk. She’s crying her eyes out on my doorstep.

    The other night she did the same thing. I woke to the sound of a woman hysterically sobbing outside but couldn’t pinpoint where it came from. I chalked it up to pregnancy insomnia — my new late-night confidante — and went back to bed.

    She has a drug problem, just like I do.

    When I was still using and we were beginning to blur the lines between patient and friend, she’d offer me beers at 11 a.m. and, come evening, ask me to roll her joints to help her sleep. I watched her down six pints of espresso during my intake interview, and in the months since, I’ve seen her pop Ritalin, quetiapine, and a rotating cocktail of antipsychotics like candy.

    She’s what many would call a total mess — but I believe I met her to learn something.

    At 44, she’s built an impressive career for someone who’s been teetering since childhood. Like me, she was impulsive, boisterous, always chasing numbness through substances or sex. A single mother at 17. Then again at 27, the same age I am now, her wealthy father bankrolled her through private university, postgraduate studies, and eventually, her psychotherapy practice.

    Brazil is a land of contradictions: abundant, alive, and full of potential — yet straining under corruption, inequality, and climate fatigue. The síndrome de vira-lata (the self-deprecating “mutt complex”) runs deep, a psychological hangover from three centuries of Portuguese colonisation and a nation built on slavery. Though abolition supposedly came in 1888, the echoes still ring through today’s meagre minimum wage and the language we use — like empregada, “the employed one,” a polite euphemism for domestic servitude.

    Brazilian men are often allowed to be dirtbags, even celebrated for it. The jeitinho (the “special way of doing things”) is the country’s social lubricant, a dance of charm and shortcuts. Sincerity is almost gauche; transparency, a rookie move. To survive, Brazilian women must learn to play the same game.

    All legal disputes and personal grievances aside, this woman is just another survivor of that system — a suit by day, a spiral by night.

    On the street, she looks like she has everything: marble floors, an Italian-Brazilian surname, old-money inheritance. Yet she’s here, in my crumbling apartment block, probably drunk on 51 cachaça and prensado spliffs — the cheap, mould-pressed weed that circulates through Brazil’s underbelly.

    I don’t write this to gossip. I write it because I feel for her. Because she’s broken in ways I recognise within myself if I ever turn back to substances. Because I know that if I opened that door, I might get pulled back into her tornado — legally, emotionally, even physically. So instead, I watched from the peephole and called the mental health team, sending a welfare request.

    Sometimes compassion looks like distance.

    I wish her healing. I wish myself the same. To think we bonded so seamlessly just months ago shows how thin the line is between recreation and rock bottom.

    And maybe that’s the lesson.

    As I step into single motherhood, I can already sense that my strength will be measured not by how much I take on, but by what I choose not to. I don’t need to rescue people to prove my worth anymore. I don’t need to lose myself in other people’s chaos to feel alive.

    Sobriety has taught me that love isn’t measured in sacrifice, but in stability — the quiet, grounded kind.

    My neighbour is 44 and still fighting the same demons I nearly let devour me at 27 and the years leading up to my pregnancy. I take that as a warning and a blessing.

    I’m free to walk another path. And tonight, as the fan hums overhead and the dry air presses against my skin, I silently thank the universe for this reminder.

    For the baby inside me.
    For the chance to break the cycle.
    For the courage to stay sober, just for today.

  • Day 24 – Waiting for Rain

    It’s tough out here. The rainy season is overdue by weeks, and I spend most of my days lying under the fan, naked, waiting for night to fall.

    Today I am grateful to be sober – though I’ll admit, I still crave something to take the edge off. In place of green, wine, or cigarettes, I’ve been snacking: oranges, passionfruit, peta, coconut biscuits, endless fruit teas.

    A good friend took me out to indulge those cravings today, and we feasted on the full menu: crunchy bruschetta, açaí with banana, tapioca balls dipped in chilli jam – all washed down with a tall glass of peppermint, ginger, and passionfruit juice.

    We spent more than I’d usually feel comfortable with, but I realised something. Because I’m not smoking weed anymore, or impulsively ordering takeout, this beautiful spread actually worked out cheaper than my stoner days.

    So far, I’ve found no downside to quitting. Not one. The trade-offs are all wins: confidence, mental clarity, social energy, and money saved. The real test will come after the baby is born, I suppose.

    But without an enabling father figure around, and with a big move home to a remote, grounded place far from city temptations — I feel confident I won’t go back down that dark road again.

    These days, I’m enjoying the challenge of facing hard things head-on instead of band-aiding my way through pain. I’m enjoying sitting with my stoner cousins and realising I’m bored of their joint chatter – another reason to stay off the stuff that made me boring, too. I’m enjoying talking to strangers more. I’m enjoying existing in my own flesh again.

    Even nauseous, hormonal, bloated – I still feel a million bucks compared to twenty-four days ago, when I was seven joints deep and begging for sobriety.

    To my unborn baby: thank you. You’ll never quite understand the depths of how much you’ve saved me. But if you ever do, I promise — I’ll be there to support you every step of the way.

  • Smoke-Free Twenty Three Days

    Today I attended my first MA meeting for addict mothers — and it filled my cup.

    One concern that surfaced was how I’ll stay clean once my body is no longer a vehicle for a life beyond my own. I can already sense that to stay connected to my higher power, I’ll need to outsmart my addict brain — to keep tricking it into surrender.

    Mentally, I’m doing better than ever (all things considered). But insomnia still reigns. I sleep three, maybe four hours a night before waking for good. Yesterday, instead of doom-scrolling at 4 a.m., I used the time to plan my future. Thanks, sobriety.

    Lately, I’ve been thinking about what restarting my life will look like once the baby’s born.

    I don’t even have a bump yet — but as an addict who’s chased dopamine highs and external validation since the dawn of time, I know it’s overdue that I carve steady, sober pathways forward. The most grounded idea I’ve had is to go back to school and retrain.

    I want to teach — specifically, to work with neurodivergent children, disabled students, and gifted-but-challenged youth. I want to specialise in early intervention care practice.

    It makes sense. Teaching demands stability. It keeps me accountable — I can’t exactly get high and show up for class. In this field, there are routine drug checks. Built-in boundaries. And beyond that, it’s a career that could provide a good salary, a sustainable schedule, and alignment with my child’s school life. I’d have to be in a dark place — for myself and for my child — to throw that away for a quick hit.

    In MA (and really, all the Anonymous fellowships), we use tokens that say “Just for today.” It’s about showing up — even if tomorrow you slip, even if tomorrow is uncertain. Today is the only day we can act on.

    So yes, maybe I’m thinking far ahead. But that’s part of recovery too — learning to hold hope without getting lost in it.

    I’m excited about my future. Less sceptical. Less dopamine-driven.

    Today I spent most of my time distracting myself from nausea, breast pain, and exhaustion by moving — working out, dancing, stretching. I imagine tomorrow will be similar. Who knows.

    What I do know is this: I’ll be writing, not smoking.

  • 21 days clean: opening up again

    It’s been three weeks since I put out the spliffs for good – and despite this being one of the hardest periods of my life, I’m finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

    In the past 21 days, I’ve started to see my environment for what it really is: years of numbing loneliness and self-hatred, masked by smoke and codependence on men who never truly deserved my time.

    There’s a hole inside me that this baby is gently filling, a space marijuana had kept me from ever facing.

    When I kicked out my partner – the father of this child – I said I couldn’t have become sober or left him without her. I have a feeling she’s a girl, though I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong about men, about love, about what safety feels like. My nervous system has been clouded over for as long as I can remember, and I’ve ignored a million red flags in the name of “hope.”

    When hope walked out the door and called me psycho, a ghostly yet comforting silence filled me. As if the bees had come to a halt and my blood poured a steady rhythm for the first time.

    But I don’t want to keep saying I don’t know why I do this. I do know: I want to be loved. Desperately. I have so much love to give – sometimes to a fault.

    I’m lucky, though. I have some of the best friendships anyone could ask for. I’m good at helping people open up, at seeing what makes them shine, at connecting the unconnectable. I’ve always known how to build community.

    Romance, though, that’s been my undoing. Every time. But it’s not too late to break the pattern. The only way out is through healing.

    I can’t fuck it away, sleep it away, smoke it away, or drink it away anymore. My baby’s due in spring, and she’ll need a mum who can face hard things head-on, not hide from them.

    I’ve never been more willing. I’ve never been more firm in my resistance to shallow intimacy – not out of bitterness, but out of clarity. The chase for dopamine in a lover’s eyes, touch, or words doesn’t bring me hope anymore.

    Over the past three days, I’ve noticed something wild: my ability to meet people, to create genuine friendships, has tripled. Sobriety and singledom – once terrifying – now feel like a kind of freedom I never saw coming.

    My sister says she hopes I’ll find a partner to support me, but for the first time in my life, I feel ready to stand alone. I don’t feel like hiding. I just don’t want to give what isn’t mine to give.

    This body isn’t fully mine right now; it feels borrowed. But as long as I keep creating, and listening, I’ll be led where I’m meant to go.

    Three weeks ago I quit smoking. Today, I am learning to breathe again.

  • Eighteen Days of Pacing, to a Full Stop

    Today, I put my foot down. I asked my boyfriend to move out of my apartment. I packed up everything that belonged to him and placed it neatly by the door for him to collect in the morning.

    I am done.

    Of course, we’ll still need to co-parent. I won’t stand in the way of him showing up for his child – if he puts in the effort, gets a job, and proves he’s capable. But right now, I’m finally putting my boundaries in place.

    It’s something I thought I’d mastered but clearly hadn’t. Once again, I was caught in the loop of love addiction.

    And I can’t even blame him fully. I’m the one who worked five jobs to save the cash to get here. I’m the one who paid eight months’ rent in advance to secure a flat and asked him to “pay rent” through food and cleaning. I’m the one who signed my name on every contract to finance our so-called “perfect” relationship container, all in the naïve hope he would value me the way I valued him. But people are not our expectations. Love and respect cannot be bought. I’ve always known that, but today I learned it the hard way – like a bucket of cold water to the face.

    For years, I muddied my own waters with substance abuse. He’ll say I’m scapegoating weed to justify cruelty. But whatever the “truth” is, I feel clearer than ever. I carried an unemployed 31-year-old man for nearly two years while he bunked uni and spent my money on weed, popcorn, and groceries that rotted in the fridge before being touched.

    I’ve broken up with him what feels like fifteen times this week alone. Each time, he discounted my words: “you’re hormonal,” “you’re impulsive,” “you don’t know what you’re thinking.” Mansplaining at its worst – from a man who parrots feminist lectures back at me as though he himself were a repressed woman.

    What gave me strength today was coffee with a friend, the child of divorced parents. She laid out a framework: “If he can’t accept your no’s, if he keeps talking when you ask for silence, if he circles back to old arguments – you don’t have to dump him, but you must respond with love. If his response is petulance, let him be petulant and go look after yourself.”

    The final straw came when he chose to play devil’s advocate for a professional refusing to refund me – money she had spent on a cinema-screen TV and a brand-new oven she had the cheek to ask for help in unpacking. He argued she was a struggling psychologist who didn’t need more stress. I argued I was a pregnant single mother, needing every penny back to rent a place for us to live. Services unprovided = malpractice.

    And boy, he was petulant. I asked him plainly: could he keep the peace, as he’d promised, for the remainder of my time here? Or would it be better if I packed up his things and created space? I needed calm for the sake of my pregnancy. He needed distance from my bluntness.

    There are so many good things I could list about the father of my child. I’ll write those down tomorrow, after I’ve cried myself to sleep. For tonight, I am tired. So tired. Bone-tired.

    But I take accountability: I let this all happen. I walked in with no suspicions. Naïve, at best.

    For now, I am sober, pregnant, and finished with all men. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll feel capable of stringing my thoughts into something gentler. But tonight, this is enough.

  • A Fortnight of Sleepless Nights

    It’s been two weeks since I quit weed – and immediately found out I was pregnant.

    I’m in Brazil for another six weeks, relying on an excellent but overcrowded public health system. I’m still waiting for blood tests and ultrasounds to confirm the details, but my doctor’s mental maths puts me at nearly eleven weeks. A strawberry-sized baby, tucked inside me.

    I already feel like a mum – dysfunctional, terrified, tear-streaked. I’m trying to pick up the pieces of my life, career, and relationships as if the house is cluttered with triplets, clay pots, and ketchup finger-paintings. There’s a compass somewhere in my gut pointing me forward, even if the strawberry hasn’t yet handed over the coordinates. We talk all the time. Today I felt flutters.

    But alongside the excitement comes a deep depression as I wait for the withdrawals from my chemical coping streams to burn off.

    My partner might not be present at the birth. We’re both stoners, broke, asset-less. He’s trying to quit in solidarity but he’s on his own journey – one I can’t control or direct anymore. It breaks my heart to feel like I’m pulling baby from daddy, but until he understands the grind it takes to steer a ship, I can’t risk another irresponsible path. Not with a child in the middle.

    I’m an addict. I’m flawed. I’m scared. But this child deserves the chances I wasted.

    I know I can’t blame the plant for my failures, but I can name addiction in their creation. Last year I fell head over heels for an enabler; this year I’m face-planting into reality. He didn’t force me to smoke, didn’t flinch when I did. But my addict brain scapegoats and takes no prisoners.

    My mind still strays into “if onlys”:
    If only I’d stayed clean in February.
    If only I’d told Mum I was an addict at uni.
    If only I’d stuck it out in journalism.
    If only I’d kept promises.
    If only I’d said no.

    I’ve imagined having my baby here, but every nest I picture is clouded by a green haze I can’t break alone. So I’m going back to my parents’ home at the end of the world.

    Nobody talks about how hard it is for mums to switch from everything to nothing in one day.

  • Eleven Days Clean of Green

    Not just green – literally everything illegal, everything deemed harmful to the tiny life growing inside me.

    This past week I’ve heard voices in my head, thrown tantrums, sweated through sheets, considered ending it all, and felt a crushing regret for feeding my addiction over eleven years. I’ve seen exactly how selfish I’ve been. And yes, I know hormones are amplifying the withdrawals, but losing my ability to smoke – to numb out for “just another four hours” – has left me spiraling.

    It feels like I’ve swapped my happy-go-lucky user identity for a psychotic body double: paranoid that every move I make could end in disaster for my baby, for me, for everything. I’m controlling, suffocating, crying hysterically the moment I feel challenged. The OBGYN team following my pregnancy deemed me an urgent psychiatric case – but in SUS, Brazil’s public health system, “urgent” still puts you 227th in line.

    This probably isn’t the inspirational testimonial you want to read if you’re thinking about quitting green for good. But this is what it actually looks like – an ugly, unglamorous process I’m choosing to trust as the shedding before a great bloom.

    Here’s the strange gift inside the chaos: I can smell bullshit from a mile away now – my own included. Every impulse, every subtle manipulation, every boundary I tried to erase – it’s all tangible again. And while I feel deeply depressed about the person I’ve become, I also feel… equipped. Or at least willing. Being “ready” doesn’t mean waving a magic wand and changing overnight. It means accepting the things I cannot change and finding the courage to confront the things I can.

    Writing this blog is humiliating, but I’m determined to keep going.

    As a teenager, I found catharsis writing romanticized poetry about my substance abuse. The TV show Skins made rebellion look poetic, and I wanted to outdo its fiction – “impress” people with my total lack of self-respect and disregard for the law. In honesty, I still break some laws here (so do the government and military police), but the fantasy of destruction isn’t as seductive anymore.

    Back then, I called myself a radical feminist for doing what I wanted, silencing men’s opinions, pouring gasoline on my own fire. I thought it was power. I thought it was self-respect. Now I’d give anything to go back and show that girl what true respect looks like.

    Today’s reflection is less of a victory lap and more of a whine – in the absence of a wine.

  • Day 9: Addict, Mother, Mathematician

    It’s been over a week now since I quit, and the nighttime urge to smoke has finally passed. Still, I miss the habit. The ritual. The bedroom comfort of it all.

    Pregnant women are treated as evil if they dare admit their cravings – whether for a cigarette, a drink, or something stronger. Do I care? No. If I don’t talk about it with some form of accountability, I’ll just end up using again, and likely far uglier than before.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m a marijuana addict. I’ve dabbled in most substances, had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, and cigarettes – though disgusting in so many ways – always had me in a chokehold.

    In 2020, I smoked my last cigarette and “upgraded” to disposable vapes (the biggest mistake of my twenties). By early 2024, I was chain-smoking tobacco again. My teeth yellowed and shifted, my singing voice disappeared, and the money I wasted could have changed my life.

    Now that I’m sober, I can actually do the maths.

    I bought a vape a day for four years – about £29,200. I smoked tobacco on and off from 2014 until late 2025. A pouch a fortnight for roughly six years comes to £17,520. Add filters, lighters, papers, roach cards… I’ve burned through over £50,000 on nicotine alone. And that doesn’t even include weed.

    Seeing those numbers makes me sick. I could have paid off my student loans or put a deposit on a house in London. Instead, I paid for my own slow destruction.

    What I’m learning from MA meetings is that quitting isn’t enough. Recovery means radical ownership of the addict’s mind – light and dark. I can’t undo the past. I’ll need to make amends to people I’ve hurt. And I’ll need to parent myself before I can parent my child.

    Today, I am an addict. I will be until the day I die. But I have a choice: I can shame myself to sleep, or I can accept who I am, look forward, and give my inner child – both the spiritual and the literal one growing inside me – the care and clean slate we both deserve.

    I’m not perfect. I’m trying. Day 9.