#Trendy new way to quit drinking free#

It’s impossible to say how “successful” these cannabis users are, because their relationships with drugs and alcohol and their ultimate goals vary so widely. Hardcore 12-steppers and experts in the addiction treatment field tend to be skeptical of weed-aided alcohol abstention folks who’ve been disappointed in traditional methods for keeping clean, and brands with new products to peddle, tend to be more hopeful. When it comes to recovery, everyone has an opinion.

But I never dug the high I got from weed to begin with, so I approach this topic as a fairly neutral observer, equally skeptical of shortcuts to recovery and the universal applicability of the methods of Alcoholics Anonymous. With Minnesota’s current surprise experiment in THC legalization, the time seemed right to reach out to Minnesotans who were attempting different paths toward managing their relationship with mood-altering substances.Ī little biographical aside seems appropriate here: I’ve been sober for over 24 years, and 12-step work helped me quit drinking even though I’m no longer active in any program. But with the growth of cannabis legalization nationwide and the increased availability of THC-infused products on the market, celebrities and influencers have given the old method a trendy new brand name: “California sober.”Īs cannabis use has become more socially acceptable, and at least quasi-legal, definitions of sobriety and recovery are changing-even here in the Land of 10,000 Treatment Centers. Some have sworn the change saved their lives others have dismissed the practice as “marijuana maintenance,” a kind of sham sobriety. Substituting weed for booze is nothing new-for years, addicts and alcoholics have tried to kick their habits by substituting one high for another. Though Roy hasn’t had a drink for about three weeks now, his sobriety isn’t quite the kind endorsed in 12-step meetings or at treatment centers. “It does everything that alcohol claims to do without the hangover. But gummies offered a potential alternative to his alcohol dependency, as he saw it, and now, rather than drinking, he consumes “half a gummy just a couple times a week.” He’s happy with the change. “I didn’t like the smell on my clothes, and it gave me too much of a rush too soon,” he says. Weed had never been Roy’s drug of choice. Then came Minnesota’s recent backdoor legalization of THC products. “I went for treatment at the VA in 2018, stayed sober for about two years, then I got divorced and started drinking again.” During the early stages of the pandemic, he entered a relapse prevention program.

#Trendy new way to quit drinking free#

He entered the debilitating cycle of periodic sobriety followed by relapse from which so many problem drinkers have struggled to free themselves. “After my deployment ended, alcohol started taking over my life,” he says. When Roy got back from Iraq in 2007 after two years overseas, things changed. After all, he never even touched the stuff till he was 21.

“It was a fun, sneaky thing that I was taking part in,” recalls the south Minneapolis veteran, who hardly anticipated the role alcohol would later play in his life. Alcohol was hard to come by in Iraq, and that made the one night Roy and his buddies smuggled some booze onto the base a special occasion.