How to Stop Smoking Weed

I stopped smoking weed and drinking and doing coke and all that shit about nine years ago, but that’s cause I was a degenerate drug addicted fuckhole and sought serious help. But it dawned on me that not everyone that is searching for a weed substitute and looking for a way for how to stop smoking weed is a drug-addicted fuckhole like I was. Not everyone smokes weed then downs a bottle of scotch only to scramble for a bag of cocaine at 3AM. So, for the mildly addicted, I have a suggestion for how to stop smoking weed if it’s simply a habit you’d like to crush. 

My solution? Tea.

How to Stop Smoking Weed: Drink Tea

Tea is just like weed. The culture of weed is one of the things that was the hardest to leave. The pipes, the strains, the festivals, the weedhead chicks, the friends, the communal aspects of it; all of it comes hand-in-hand with weed, and I wasn’t sure how to find a suitable replacement. I was always around weed during my twenties; it was my life. It was how I made my living and I smoked it all day, talked about it all day, and made such a big deal of it… all day. I used to fly from NYC to Colorado every few weeks and mail myself pounds of various strains and then retail it out to Manhattanites of all sorts during the day. Not only that, but the trips to Colorado were full of skiing and cooking and wonderful mountain views. It was all I had. 

Not only that, but there’s a certain splendor to opening a fluffy bag of Northern Lights and examining the intricacies of that particular strain and dissecting it to find the differences between another strain like Silver Haze or Sweet Island Skunk or any of the other millions of varieties of weed I used to care so deeply about. But here’s the thing: If you want to know how to stop smoking weed, you need a weed substitute that will give you that same love for a plant. Tea is that plant. I became even more obsessed with tea than I ever was with weed once I discovered all there was to learn about tea.

For starters…

There are so many similarities between the two. Weed comes from a plant: Marijuana. Tea comes from a plant: Camellia Sinensis. In fact, tea is even more complex than weed because there are three different types of marijuana plants, whereas there is only ONE tea plant, and it is able to produce just as many different strains as cannabis. So, weed is kinda basic compared to tea tbh…

And it’s not like wine either where there are many different grapes. Coffee is more similar given the beans all come from one bush, but you cannot put coffee beans into a clear pot and watch the tea leaves grow into a beautiful flower of flavor and enjoy it with friends. 

The Perfect Weed Substitute & the social aspects of tea and weed

The social aspect of weed is one of the first habits I had to find a substitute for. Coffee (and I’m a huge coffee fan as well) or a beverage like wine simply don’t provide the experience tea or weed provides, because the primer of coffee or wine is quite quick. You don’t do much to get ready to drink wine or drink a cup of coffee. But the period of getting ready to smoke weed or prepare a pot of tea are very similar, which is why they share communal characteristics in a familial way. Really, this is a great way to stop smoking weed naturally because you’re still getting yourself to where you want to be, just through a different method. Often weed gave me a way to create the social situations I was craving; an excuse to hang out. Tea does the same. There are plenty of different ways to prepare a pot of tea which you can discuss with your friends, decide on the type of tea everyone wants to drink, and which type of tea pot you want to use. Tea pots are important because weed accessories are another huge collector’s item hobby that needs to be replaced.

Tea Accessories and Weed Accessories

The teapots are just like pipes. Tea-ware and weed-ware are very similar. You can spend hundreds of dollars on tea accessories in the same exact fashion you can spend hundreds of dollars on weed accessories. Take Yi Xing pots for example: 

Yi Xing pots are teapots made with a porous clay that absorb the flavor of the tea. What you want to do is buy a specific Yi Xing pot for each of your favorite types of teas and only drink one type of tea per Yi Xing pot. Over the years, the porousness of the clay of each pot will fill with the flavor of the type of tea you assigned to it and the taste will become more robust than ever. It definitely beats simply making a pot of your favorite tea in any other type of tea pot. You’ll have just as many tea pots as you had pipes and other accessories you bought for ingesting and smoking weed in different ways.

And there are right and wrong methods to do things with tea just like there are right and wrong ways to roll a great joint. For instance, you must fill the pot with hot water then pour it out before putting the tea leaves in the pot. If you fail to do this, the pot temperature will absorb some of the water temperature and reduce the heat of the water, and that can’t happen (especially with black teas) because you need to steep the tea with boiling water. That’s just one example.

But what about the actual effects that you smoke weed for?

Here’s How to Stop Smoking Weed Naturally

Find another consumption you can become obsessed with AND that provides similar effects. Yeah, tea affects you too. I didn’t just smoke weed for the communal and cultural aspects, but for the effects as well. Tea can replace weed if you’re pairing your mood with the right tea carefully (just like with weed); another reason tea makes the perfect weed substitute. I spend time looking for the perfect strain of tea for the morning to give me that morning burst of energy and creativity I need to write and meditate and sketch out ideas. In the afternoon I have a strain (a few really) that give me that afternoon burst of energy after I eat. In the evening I switch to a green tea to make sure I can stay awake to watch my favorite shows and spend time with my family or whatever I need to do. In the nighttime I switch again from tea to herbals and drink a cup of chamomile or lavender to help bring me down from the caffeine and sleep well at night.

And let’s not forget about the taste! The taste of weed is a massive spectrum, but no different than tea. I would argue that tea is more flavorful than weed by a longshot. And although the scent of weed is very pungent, there are ways to open up the scent of tea leaves in a very similar way to smell the differences. For instance, try breathing into the tea with your breath (it will open the pores of the tea or it does something to make it smell its FULL smell) and then breathe it all in to smell the full scent and appreciate the differences of each of your strains.

See, finding great tea is just like finding great weed. Seeing a beautiful tea leaf is just as breathtaking as a beautiful nug of weed. When you put the leaf in the teapot, it’s rolled and withered. But after the pot is empty and the tea is flowing through your soul, take the leaves out of the pot and you’ll see them transform into beautiful foliage. 

When you see weed… And when you see tea…

When you see the golden leaves of a well-grown black tea from the Yunnan Province of China, it’s no different than examining the fluffy orange hairs on the weed from Maui, Hawaii. When you examine a white tea from Taiwan next to an aged Indian black tea, it’s as if it’s a totally different drink! And just like weed, the strains never stop. You can always try something new. You can easily become a connoisseur and get really into your shit, just like weed. 

And the best part? 

It’s good for you all around. Tea is a wonderful source of antioxidants and an impressive conversation starter. You sound and look more elegant and adult (no offense), inviting someone over for a pot of tea than you do asking if someone wants to smoke a blunt. The entire habit of smoking weed can be completely replaced with drinking tea.

The moral of the story is, tea is one of the best ways for how to stop smoking weed. It gives you everything weed gives you, and more.

Now here’s a story about selling drugs in NYC.