FCYU-Feature Story

My Battle to Quit
Rehab helped me give up weed...for a while

By Ashunte H.

I was 14 and living in my second group home when I first smoked a blunt of weed. I was outside on campus and it was a nice cool day. The sun was out and a breeze was blowing. It seemed like a good time to kick back and smoke a blunt with a friend. All my life I was always around people who smoked, so I didn’t think it was a problem.

When I took my first hit that moment felt like the best. A calming, mellow sensation that I’d never felt in my life made me feel good inside and out. I wanted to feel that way all the time.

After that, whenever I’d chill with my friends all we’d do was smoke weed, play video games and play basketball. Smoking helped me be accepted, and it also helped me deal with all the stress I was going through living away from my family.

A Way to Cope

After a while, all the weed I was smoking didn’t make me feel as good as it had at first, so I started smoking more. I’d get mad when I wanted to smoke but couldn’t.

Teachers and staff from my group home would come to me and tell me that I needed to stop, but I didn’t listen to them. I felt that they didn’t understand the stress and pain that I was going through, dealing with the death of my parents, being separated from my biological family and missing my long-lost sister.

I didn’t know how to do the things I wanted to do, like become a peaceful young child or find my family. So I did whatever I thought would help me. In the past I’d tried things like listening to music and writing poetry to keep my composure and get my head off of whatever got me upset. But smoking was even better.

My Good Friend Mary

Weed calmed me down and kept me from doing something that could have sent me to jail. It soothed my anger, and brought me to a level where I could slow down and think about what I was doing before I did it.

Marijuana (aka Mary) became my good friend. Mary was the only person I felt understood me. She took the time to listen to me when nobody else wanted to listen, and the only advice she gave was, “stay in connection with me.” And I did, I did for a long time. She was a reflection of the peaceful, more understanding side of me.

But after a while, I started to realize that Mary was becoming a real problem in my life. I’d gone from smoking one or two blunts a day to three or four a day. At times I would smoke more. It was getting me in trouble, because I was starting to slack on a lot of things like schoolwork or my curfew.

I started to lose interest in some of the things that I used to do like swimming, playing pool and trying to better my basketball skills. I was burning a big hole in my pocket from buying the weed, and people started to look at me funny, saying that they knew I could do better.

I knew I could, too, but I was caught in the middle trying to figure out what I wanted to do. The staff kept telling me that I should stop, but that was harder than it sounded.

Asking for Help

There were drug counselors working in my group home, so I went and spoke to one and requested to be put in an inpatient rehab. I thought that my drug counselor could send me somewhere so I could get help with my addiction.

I wanted to quit and I knew I needed to get away from everything that I’d been around that had started my addiction in the first place. I wanted to get some help before I hit rock bottom, before nobody cared anymore and they’d just let me waste my life away smoking weed.

It took almost a year before the drug counselor told me that they’d found a rehab that would accept me. It was in upstate New York and I’d be there for two months.

I said OK, but in the back of my mind I was thinking, “I don’t even want to go no more!” I was angry that it had taken them so long to find a place for me, and I started having doubts that it would help me.

Not Ready to Share

When I got there, I was skeptical, and I didn’t feel welcomed. In less than a week I already wanted to leave. They had me doing six groups a day, talking about stuff like what problems you started having at the time you were doing drugs and how you felt about everything.

I didn’t feel comfortable sharing personal information with people I didn’t know from a hole in the wall. I didn’t want to go into detail about my life and the things that caused me to smoke, like losing my family.

I had come to rehab because I was looking for strategic, practical steps to quit before it was too late. But the staff wanted to change your whole character, like they could do that in two months.

After a few weeks I’d gotten familiar with the program and at times I would share in some groups, when I felt comfortable. But I still didn’t do everything they wanted. I didn’t want to be looked at differently because of my experiences.

Uncomfortable Questions

The other people who shared had stories that were similar to mine, but I didn’t want their sympathy or those fake, “I understand the pain you’re going through,” statements. I didn’t think anyone could understand, and I wanted to avoid all of that before my anger took control.

The staff also gave us packets to fill out that I really didn’t like. The questions that they asked were very personal. They wanted you to record all the major things that are hard for you to share and tell them like it was no problem. I rushed through all of them just to get it over with.

They asked questions like, “Have you ever been molested or raped?” and, “How often do you masturbate?” There was another question that got me real pissed off and the question was: “Have you ever had sex with one of your family members?” I wanted to go to my counselor and shove that packet up her anus, but I regained my composure and brushed it off.

Making My Own Plan

Still, just being in a quiet, less populated place helped me get in touch with myself and deal with my smoking problem. I started thinking about everything I’ve been through, good or bad, and I drew my own blueprint for how I was going to rebuild my foundation.

The blueprint consisted of steps that I could take to keep myself in check. They were things like: quit cigarettes, still hang out with my friends but leave whenever they start smoking weed, and, most importantly, keep myself busy. It was an outline to keep me sober, and I had no doubts that it would work.

Before I knew it I was down to my last week. I was excited to finally leave. I couldn’t wait to tell people about my experience with the wilderness. And the first thing I wanted to do was play basketball.

Scared to Go Back

But then another feeling came to me, like my mind was trying to warn me about something. I paused in the middle of writing a poem and had something like a premonition. It played in my mind like this: I would get back to the group home (the place where I started smoking), go through a battle with myself and then lose and start smoking again.

That scared me, because I knew if I picked up the habit again I’d have a harder time recovering. I didn’t want to have to go through anything like this ever again.

Staff at the rehab center told me it’s bad to be around the same people, places and things, but they didn’t acknowledge that I had no choice but to go back to the group home. Facing my return was harder than going up there to the rehab.

I started to get more anxious as every day passed by, but the blueprint I’d made gave me courage. I took it one day at a time until the day I was heading back to my group home.

The Same Old Problems

At the group home, I started to do what I do best and that was to chill. But it was hard having to go back to the same place, see most of the same people and deal with the same things that I dealt with before rehab. I had to deal with people always bringing up things that I used to do, like the fights I used to have and how I used to flip out to the point that I had to get restrained by staff.

When I’d go outside to enjoy the weather, I always saw somebody smoking or drinking on the campus and that also made the process a whole lot harder. I’d leave one place where people were using drugs only to run into another crowd of people who were smoking, too.

At times I used to get mad because I felt like I couldn’t go outside without seeing or smelling someone smoking weed, and it wasn’t like I could walk off campus and go somewhere that was drug free.

Still, my blueprint was in full effect and I stood strong to it for three or four months. Then I relapsed.

I went to my best friend’s house and her brother asked me if I knew how to roll. I told him yeah and he asked me to roll his blunt. I thought, “What the heck, why not?” and rolled it for him.

Boy, was that the wrong move, because I ended up smoking with him. When he passed me the blunt I just took it without thinking and started smoking. When I realized what I was doing it was already too late. I had the weed in my system.

Ever since then, it’s been a back-and-forth thing with me smoking.

Still Struggling

I’ve been stressed about a lot of things. My ex-girlfriend is pregnant and she says the baby’s mine. To tell you the truth I didn’t want to keep it because I’m not ready to take care of a child, especially when I don’t have a job or a high school diploma. But she has all the control so I can’t get mad if she decides to have my child.

Even worse, I’ve been having flashbacks again about the death of my parents, which is part of what led me to smoke in the first place.

Sometimes the staff try to give me lectures about their own tough experiences, but I don’t want to hear what they went through. It would just get me stuck on how messed up my life is, and how I wish that it was never like that. I don’t want to dwell on my problems. I want to try to find ways to change and make things better.

When I went to rehab, I was looking for help to stop smoking weed so I could do better in life. When I’m in a peaceful area, like when I’m home with my stepmom, I feel very comfortable and no thoughts of smoking weed come to my head. Just like in rehab, I have my moments of clarity and keep a peaceful mindset.

But in the group home, those stresses I’m facing make it hard. I do try to talk about my problems, but so far that hasn’t helped. I hope I’ll be able to stop smoking before I do something I regret. But I think that until something changes, it’s going to be a struggle.