Writing not smoking

Sobriety: A writer's way home

recent posts

  • 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.

  • One week clean

    Last night I dreamt and remembered it for the first time in years.

    In my slumber I studied Amy Winehouse’s vocal range and sang the Frank album beginning to end in her own way. I learnt that in order to sing like Amy one must reach a level of sadness and sincerity I’m not sure I could handle.

    Thank God/baby/higher power I am sober tonight.

    I’ve missed dreaming. The indulgence of night-long ruminations made up of nonsensical narratives always pulled away a second too soon by the time morning comes around. That’s the good stuff.

    Maybe it’s that longing we gain from a dream-filled REM sleep that accounts for the day-to-day motivation of a regular non-smoker?

    Progesterone is high. My skin is clear, mind’s still racing, boobs are growing, and my baby is rejecting weed cravings – the scent’s just changing for the greater good.

    So maybe the lesson is simple: I don’t need smoke to feel alive. I don’t need to chase a high when I’ve already got one growing inside me, rewiring my dreams, reshaping my body, sharpening my voice.

    Sobriety isn’t the absence of something anymore, it’s the presence of everything I used to sleep through.

  • 6 Days Sober & Expecting

    Today I didn’t smoke, but I really wanted to.

    I’ve not been managing to make it to meetings these past few days. I’m trying to keep my cortisol down through walks in the park, kale smoothies and meditation breaks. But the way the father of my child just doesn’t seem to think through basic organizational details and lets them fall on my fatigued shoulders, it’s truly got me tearing my hair out.

    He seemed regretful yesterday for his deceitful actions, but today believes I’m a monster for putting some boundaries in place as we prepare to co-parent. He takes a drag of a spliff and says I should be more grateful for him.

    Frustrated, sober, clear-headed, but not really.

    I have to be clear, there’s a life on the way counting on me for safety. Is this sober mind and relationship tension making me consider an abortion? Completely. But I’ve already fallen in love with my sesame seed.

    I’ve been told I’m infertile countless times due to PCOS, so fear getting rid of this child may be my last opportunity to be a mother. Frankly, as much as this baby is throwing a spanner in the works on my life path, it’s also saving me from another that I did not feel capable of doing alone.

    Day 6. I’m doing my best to hold both fear and love at once. How do you keep the two from breaking you?

  • The blur that was day 4 now 5

    2am asking ChatGPT for sleep aids response: “Have you heard of meditation and breath work?”

    I’m tempted to post a selfie on here just to showcase how knackered I am. My eye bags are green, the whites of my eyes all red, and if you poke me – I will break into hysterics.

    I couldn’t even bring myself to write yesterday. Up until about 8pm it was a good day, my extended family couldn’t be more pleased to hear about my pregnancy, grandma cried, my cousin who hates me hugged me close and my tia spoilt me rotten in the supermarket. She asked me – the pregnant (sober) stoner – to go ham and choose any food I like. So we got bananas, watermelon, caju, strawberries, canjíca, piñha, orange honey, pão de queijo, couve (kale), spinach, carrot juice, the fancy grapes and many many more things my brain can’t recall right now.

    Memory is shot – unsure if this is from weed/tobacco withdrawal, pregnancy hormones, or all three at once.

    Yesterday I kept busy eating tropical fruits, reading, writing and walking my neighbor’s dog in the park. I bounced between crying fits and giggle attacks from beginning to end, often without a trigger. Because of the overlap of the news and quitting vices, I really truly can’t put my finger on what is causing which array of mental disruption. I know that throughout the night I’m still not able to recall my dreams, but I am an active sleeper.

    On Thursday night I woke up once drenched in sweat, screaming for help, to be saved and run away from an unknown danger. Then I woke up in utter horror, again for no reason I can remember. But my favorite weirdness came when I woke in a burst of snot-laughing, abs clenching, eye-watering manic laughter. It’s probably the lessening THC letting my brain get some real REM sleep, but I like to imagine it’s my baby sesame seed laughing at the dreams I can’t currently bring to conscious recollection.

    What went “wrong” yesterday, as with most days this whacky week, was bed time.

    Passionfruit helps induce sleepiness so I’m wolfing it down in droves. Yesterday, Friday night, I finished off two cups of the heavenly fruit and tucked myself into bed, alone. Instant mistake was opening my laptop instead of my paper journal to write out what I learnt in the day, what I loved about myself, and what I was grateful for. Instead, what ensued was a series of messages I wish to have never accidentally seen left open on my screen. My partner had been using it for work and frankly proved a point that one must NEVER leave their messaging platforms logged in on other people’s computers, no matter how close.

    Now I’ve already mentioned I’m sensitive sober or using but now that I’m pregnant I’m a literal fire cannon waiting to be set off.

    To protect my own peace I simply won’t go in to the ins and outs of what I read on there, but I spit poison, fire and blood in all directions down the phone at him. I blocked various numbers and turned purple with rage. The only reason I slept at all after was due to the sheer exhaustion and mental exertion of 3 hours screaming “F**K YOU” and “I’m not a violent person but if I were I woulds”. Safe to say, I woke up today with another incurable migraine, and a deep sense of loneliness not felt since my teenage years when I used to hide in my bedroom, stealing and popping my older sister’s valium supply.

    Today was the hardest day yet to not smoke up. The only thing I feel that it holding me strong is this baby, and thank heavens this baby is looking after me in this way. It’s forcing me to really look at myself in the mirror and pay attention to both how easy and pointless it is to hide away in a blunt. My addict brain tells me this week has been so hellish, because I’ve been forced to clean up my act, and these incomputable dramas will only increase the longer I ignore the urge to smoke. But my baby hates it! Gold star!

    I’m rambling, and I know these words are boring, but I’m here still writing – not smoking.

    Biggest baby point of the week is noting that I can’t kiss my partner if he’s smoked anything 5 hours prior. My baby seedling’s given me a sensitive nose and the lightest whiff in a peck has me recoiling. My partner cried when I told him, but he’s using the baby’s rejection as further incentive to cut it out. I’m glad, because the way I raged today so very nearly led me to relapse.

    I thank and owe everything to my higher power, for granting me the courage to say no to the million voices screaming yes incessantly throughout what feels like the worst day of my life.

    But I won’t be too dramatic. After the tempest of tears passed, I made it to the end of today without smoking, and instead eating my weight in canjica. Will this sobriety journey equate to my new obesity era? Probably! Is it worth it to get out of the green haze that’s stolen years and opportunities from my life? Absolutely.

  • Day 3 – I’m going balmy

    Slept 6hrs, fell asleep crying hysterically, woke up anxious and spent all day bouncing between feelings of ecstasy and dread. Urge to smoke: 9/10.

    Not enough women are talking about how crazy it is to become entirely T total sober the second they realize they’re pregnant. And I will not sugar coat it and say it’s easy because I’m already head over heels in love with my baby sesame seed so every second of pain feels worth it. Not at all! I’m a marijuana addict, of course this feels pointless, painful and incredibly ill-timed. My addict brain wants nothing more than a joint or an edible or just 5 drops of CBD oil to calm the anxiety. But that’s just a feeling, a momentary sensation. It doesn’t actually have to be written in stone that a bad feeling requires an artificial dopamine hit. That’s just the addict brain talking, and they’re no genius.

    I feel like dirt! My parents responded the worst way possible to the news I am pregnant. I am stressed, have very little money in the bank and am only just starting a new job this week, that does not pay enough to cover my living costs immediately. I am itchy as hell. I enjoy smelling people’s joints burning in the bar below my apartment, and scratch incessantly at the nape of my neck while trying to fight the urge to ask for a puff. I’m nauseous, have a metallic taste in my mouth, sore boobs, a migraine I can’t take any pain medication for, and my sense of smell has changed. Some things smell disgusting that I used to love (like bubble gum, tobacco, sweetcorn, my favorite shampoo, etc.) and I’m craving something but can’t put my finger on what it is. All of this is temporary because it is a felt sensation that my addict brain is screaming to “soothe”. What would that do for me? Reinforce the anxiety-loop that feeds my addiction in the first place. Trigger > Feeling > Vice > Sedation > Withdrawal > Feeling > Vice > Endless cycle of self-imposed suffering.

    My partner (and father of the seedling within me) is tearing his eyes out by my side. Although I’ve been smoking stronger and better quality bud over the last 11 years than he’s had access to, the level of his addiction is only just becoming obvious now that he’s shared the same sentiment as I. “It’s not just me anymore”. There’s an incoming baby counting on us to look after it. We need to be present and emotionally resilient so we can provide it/him/her the same tools. But my partner made a good point, that weed was the best thing that ever happened to him in his life. As far as traumatic childhoods go my partner suffered far more than any child I believe should ever have to witness. So when weed found him at 15 and showed him what joyful feelings were possible on this planet, he genuinely created the feedback loop that’s kept him hooked for 17yrs. Breaking the cycle is no easy feat for a situation like his – but I’m proud and grateful he’s trying to follow me on this sobriety path.

    I told him he did not need to stop smoking for me, but would need to stop smoking around me and not leave anything around the house that I can find. Because I will smoke it if left alone too long with temptation. I love this baby seedling but I (the addict) also love turning the volume down on pain.

  • Re-jigging priorities – Day 2

    Sleep quality: Insomnia, mosquitos, plastic bed sheets, night sweats, intense frustration, racing thoughts and a million google searches.

    Well now that I’m pregnant it’s not just me. It’s me and my poppy-seed-sized child against the world. Smoking weed has always been a selfish act I took upon myself to escape responsibilities, procrastinate potential and stagnate in self-pity. Although I believe it’ll be easier to curb withdrawals now that I’m no longer centre-stage, I’m under no illusion that the journey ahead will be easy. Or even reliable. I will need to continue attending meetings, writing here and allow myself to feel it all. I am likely to be tempted to relapse every single day of my pregnancy and beyond – that is what addiction is.

    If you’ve read my previous posts you’ll already know me well enough to understand that I am, and have always been, a highly sensitive person. I’m an addict, an adult child of an alcoholic parent, a cancer moon, empath and just all-round lover of mush. Dramatic as hell! Endlessly impulsive, especially in my teen years and early 20’s. ChatGPT – my free therapist in place of radical acceptance – defined me as a “passionate phoenix meets cosmic caregiver”. Basically I’m a dreamer who cries a lot but also loves to dive in deep and white-knuckle arguments that “matter”. I burn through jobs and hobbies at the speed of light but am always willing to be born again and return stronger. Sure, timing could have been better, but this pregnancy is going to be the time to dive in deep and face the ugly parts. Before my child has to.

    I don’t want this to read a harping on and on about my faults. I want no pity nor saving. I find it cathartic typing this way, because I’m now writing through the lens of early motherhood. I want my child to know who I am, how wonky and worrisome I was and learn from me. I know my dad taught me how not to drink. Maybe I can teach my seedling how not to use marijuana. All parents likely say this, but I am pretty confident I know all the tricks. I feel sorry for my teens who think they’ll be sneaking out to any “nice guys’” houses. They don’t know my inner gasoline-slinging teenager is still very much alive, and about to be my closest confidante in the next adventure.

    I’m still not editing anything on here, just trying to create a writing structure and lower my cortisol levels to make way for new life and stay sober. Tomorrow I will think about the nitty gritty details and big conversations to come. I can’t wait to have a nap now, I need to call my parents to tell them the news in an hour and I have nothing in the tank to prepare for that.

    It’s currently 4.20pm here, thanks dad for gifting me such a dark sense of humour.

  • Writing, not smoking – Day 1

    Slept like a rock, woke up crying, avoided loved ones – hugged others.

    10:09am – Today’s post is written in parts throughout the day when I’m most inclined to roll up or go out to buy smoking materials. Although it’s not been a full 24hrs since my last regretful, shameful, not-worth-it-one-bit spliff; I’m just glad I have something to do with my hands right now.

    This morning I woke up early, had no dreams again, then cried when I remembered I was alive and trapped in an active addiction. Weed, cigarettes and even love are my drugs of choice. Coffee too, but I’m nowhere near ready to even consider saying goodbye to my beloved sunrise seductress. We’ve been through too much.

    So I peeled myself from the sheets and tearfully wrote my morning pages; lots of “blabla I hate myself, blabla woe is me, blabla I don’t know what to do’s”. He woke up to the sound of my tears and sniffles and smacks on the head, and he asked me to tell him what’s wrong. Defiant, avoidant, unwilling to enter yet another triggering emotional discussion – I dressed myself in silence and went to my favorite 7am dance class, hoping that a change of environment would shake away some of the cobwebs.

    Walking around with this much emotional weight honestly feels like I’m returning from warfare. I used to be hot, though I never knew it at the time. Now when I see my reflections and photos or even just feel my curls catch my lashes in the rim of my reading glasses – I see a worn out corpse. No amount of vitamin C serum or collagen tablets will unstitch the eyebags from my hollow cheekbones. Dance class followed the same theme – self-critique, apathy, lack of enthusiasm and a croaky lump in my throat from tears held back.

    My best friend (and teacher!) took me for coffee after and let me snot cry into her shoulder. I admit what I hate is that I sedated myself into a relationship decision I feel ill-equipped to decide upon while using. My gut is screaming but I can’t hear her over my anxiety belching. Is it impulsive to end a relationship before I’ve even worked on it? How long should two work on it before handing in their respective his and her towels?

    Last night I held his gorgeous face in my hands and cried and cried looking in to his eyes, begging to learn how to argue with him constructively. He’s helped me be a more patient, accepting, open-minded and tolerant person. He helped me end an abusive relationship and incentivizes me to be healthy through exercise, meditation and tropical meals overflowing with vitamins. He told me how much I helped him be a better person, more organized, more driven, more social. I’ve given him hope in a world where he lacked it all. These are facts that make me MAD when inclined to burn everything to the ground and run away.

    He tried to cheer me up by deep-cleaning the flat while I was at class. It worked, we hugged and I felt held, seen, supported. That was actually a task I was saving to do today instead of self-hatred, but now I can type and type and type.

    7 paragraphs and it’s not even lunch time. I’m going to go for a walk now to buy a bubble blower that I might use in place of a cigarette.

    10:55pm Never mind any of that, I took three tests earlier, and am pregnant.

  • Day 0.2 – Smoking, but still writing

    I’ll sleep “fine” tonight. Oddly enough, I hope tomorrow night I won’t.

    Already smoked again, it was all too much. I threw my rage, my anticipation of a lighter way of existing, my resentments, everything hidden below the surface – directly at him. 

    And he talked about the world ending. He asked who would even want to be sober to see all of that?

    So I stonewalled and snotcried and I promised my mum I wouldn’t smoke tonight. My best friend called me and made me laugh and smile and hold strong, only 5 more hours until bed time after all! And I’m so damn tired from last night’s insomnia. Missing just a j before sleep left me with night sweats, mosquitos made up and real, and a night spent watching videos of people who had overcome weed addiction. I felt strong in the fact I could follow suit.

    When I decided to go for a walk in the park at 6am, make a coffee at 7am during a NicA meeting and couscous during the 8am MA meeting – I was positive I had it in the bag, just for today. I even made it out to see a friend who’s never used and never wants to. We sunbathed in the park and talked for hours, planned art exhibitions and book ideas. Took photos and shared sushi with a bottle of hibiscus kombucha. Laughed at the Angolan chickens that roam the park nearby. Fatigued, yes, but I felt so damn good.

    Until a high pressure situation occurred. Are we going to break up? Can I date someone who’s not ready to accept my needs to ditch green? How much longer can I put up with a feeling of inadequacy self-created and externally triggered?

    Coming to terms with the fact I am an ugly addict means coming to terms with the fact I’m probably not best suited to choosing my path forward, under the influence that is. 

    I smoked up, cried more, felt like I’d died all over again. I suggested we break up, let me find out who I am, and maybe down the line when I’m regulated and maybe he’s changed his mind on a few things – we could try again. 

    We talked and talked and talked, and now I’m going to try and be patient. Start again, name the rage I throw against him in the process, take responsibility for my emotions – or at least try to – in his presence, without smoke. If it’s impossible, I can close the box on us.

    So here I am writing and smoking, letting strangers on the internet know I am spineless. Not editing anything, especially not before I make it even 24hrs out of this hole.

    So long as I continue to create and listen, I will be led. I am allowed to nurture my artist.