It’s Been One Year Since I Quit Cannabis. Now It’s Considered As MAGA.

Pictured Above: A joint from June 2022 | Credit: Tyra Watts

Exactly one year ago today, on Feb. 23, 2025, at 6:31 a.m., I downloaded the I Am Sober app on my phone and pledged to stay sober from smoking cannabis. 

I’m proud to say that I am one year sober, free of cannabis. 

The first time I smoked cannabis, marijuana, the devil’s lettuce, whatever you’d like to call it (there are a lot of codenames), was back in 2018. I had your typical first-time getting high experience, which included laughing uncontrollably and getting the “munchies,” caused by the active ingredient in cannabis, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), hitting the areas of the brain that are responsible for mood and influencing our appetite, according to a CNN article.

I smoked cannabis on and off with just my friends and sister, describing myself as a “social smoker,” one who smokes occasionally and often in groups. 

Then, three moments occurred that changed the way I treated cannabis:

1. My home state of New Jersey legalized marijuana on Feb. 21, 2021, after a majority vote was in favor of legalizing cannabis in November 2020.

2. The day I turned 21, which is the legal age to buy alcohol and cannabis in New Jersey.

3. The day I went to the dispensary for the first time with my sister. We bought various pre-rolls and THC gummies.

Those three moments led to my increase in cannabis consumption. At the time, I would smoke or eat my gummies on my days off from work and classes or on the weekends, which weren’t a lot of days.

By 2024, it would then be almost every night. 2024 was a whirlwind of a year for me because I was physically and mentally at my worst. 

For starters, I experienced an increase in weight gain due to the side effects caused by my Lexapro and Lamotrigine medications. The weight gain also coincided with my bad eating habits that resulted from having the munchies after smoking.

I relied on smoking cannabis as a form of relief when I was mentally depressed, stressed out, or needed to relax. While it provided temporary relief for those problems, it also caused cognitive issues. I couldn’t focus and became forgetful. Paired with my diagnosed ADHD (I was officially diagnosed in September 2022), it was a disaster.

Other personal, stressful events also occurred in 2024 that put me in an even deeper depression. I started to hate the person I became, and realizing this made me emotional. I was miserable, and my cannabis usage was at its worst.

I knew from that moment that I needed to change for myself.

I began taking my health seriously by working out, doing intermittent fasting, and cutting out as much junk food as I could (I still consume junk food from time to time, but not as frequently as before).

On Feb. 23rd, 2025, I decided to stop smoking cannabis. What made this commitment a reality wasn’t just the sobriety pledge I made on the I Am Sober app. It was the moment when I threw away all of my cannabis equipment: the tray that I used to roll on, the grinder, and RAW Rolling Papers. 

It was a very difficult yet freeing moment in my sobriety journey. However, I knew that there was a long road ahead of me, and believe me, it was tough. 

The first two weeks without cannabis were hard. It was a withdrawal experience for me. It felt weird that I wasn’t going outside and smoking. I was slightly irritable because my sleep schedule was all over the place due to working full-time again at Walmart. My dreams were also strange, and I had nightmares to the point where I would rather stay awake until my alarm goes off. 

I tried a few different methods to help ease my journey, with one of the most prominent being going back to church. However, as a Bisexual Black woman, it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t within me. I felt misaligned, so I stopped going. 

When I started journaling again, it was the amazing first step in my sobriety journey. I’ve always journaled on and off for many years, but in that moment, it was best to pick it back up. Currently, I start my day by journaling for 10 minutes, uninterrupted. Sometimes I have a question or two to guide me, and other times I start writing any unfiltered thoughts I have.

Each day became easier for me. Intermittent fasting and exercise have significantly improved my health, and I lost plenty of weight. Although I stopped intermittent fasting, I continued to exercise and eat healthily. I made a switch in my medications, as I am currently taking Vyvanse for my ADHD, and it has done wonders for my mental health. 

Most importantly, I became more motivated in content creation and journalism, making it my top priority. 

However, one’s sobriety journey isn’t always perfect. 

I had bad days, caused by stressful situations that occurred in my life, to the point where I was close to relapsing. I remember during my afternoon and evening walks, I would detour my usual routes and attempt to make my way to a local dispensary or convenience store to get a few pre-rolls. 

Despite that, I never ended up walking inside those places and getting any pre-rolls because whenever I feel that urge, I would use alternative methods to take that urge out of me, like stopping and acknowledging that urge, journaling, talk about it to my therapist of three years, listen to music, catch up on a TV show, watch a YouTube video from my favorite creators, or think about the progress I made so far, recognizing how long I lasted without cannabis and thinking about what would happen if I relapsed. 

That isn’t to say that if you’re on a sobriety journey and you relapse, you’re a bad person and you failed. 

Relapses happen, and it’s okay. You can always try again. 

It’s just that, for me personally, I didn’t want to mess up and ruin the efforts I made in my sobriety journey. 

I had already planned to celebrate my first anniversary of sobriety from cannabis and discuss it online ahead of time, but what really propelled me to do this was when I saw a post on X (formerly Twitter) two weeks ago from a user named Leah! (@leahmazzz) saying, “Quitting weed is right-wing idc,” which has garnered thousands of likes and reposts.

Another X user, Eris (@ERISTHEPLANET), quoted that post and stated, “This [is] why I started back [using weed].”

A third post on X that I saw from Curtti Magurtti (@CurttiMagurtti), a content creator I have followed for a few years, expressed his suspicion of people “mass-quitting” weed at the same time.

The more I saw people online equating quitting cannabis with being right-wing or MAGA-coded, the more curious I became.

As a journalist, I had to get to the bottom of this, and so I did. 

Under Leah!’s original X post, she linked an X post from Liz Wheeler, a Conservative political commentator, author, and podcast host. Wheeler’s post stated that marijuana must be banned because it is a dangerous drug that leads to psychosis, schizophrenia, and violence.

However, research states otherwise. 

Under Wheeler’s post, there was an X community note explaining that correlation is not causation, with a link to an article from The Lancet Psychiatry, stating that “bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, and mood disorder have all been correlated with cannabis use, and reported that psychosis has been correlated with heavy tobacco smoking, heavy alcohol use, stimulant misuse, and sedative misuse. We found no clear evidence for a causal relation between cannabis and psychosis.”

When looking at posts of online users with similar sentiments that quitting cannabis is right-wing or MAGA-coded, other users have expressed how those who quit cannabis and now are lecturing people on the dangers of cannabis are insufferable. 

It’s an interesting take.

It reminded me of when I was in the fifth grade, and my class had a White police officer, Officer John, who visited us once a month to talk to us about the dangers of drugs and how to reject peer pressure. Officer John was a part of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, primarily known as D.A.R.E. 

If you’re a Millennial or older Gen Z person, you definitely remember the infiltration of D.A.R.E. programs into schools across the United States and D.A.R.E’s mascot, Daren the Lion. 

For those who don’t know, D.A.R.E is an educational prevention program founded in 1983 by then-LAPD Police Chief Daryl Gates and the Los Angeles Unified School District. It is a series of classroom lessons led by police officers that teaches kids in grades K-12 on how to resist peer pressure and live drug and violence-free lives, according to D.A.R.E’s mission statement. 

Officer John was a laid-back police officer whom my classmates and I liked. I did think it was odd, however, that a cop would come to our school every month. 

In modern times, I thought back to a couple of years ago when I worked with two organizations, JustFactsNJ and theincorruptible.nj, on two separate paid ad campaigns focused on the health risks of cannabis and e-cigarette usage.

I admit, it was hypocritical for me to work on these campaigns when I was still smoking cannabis.

The chances that people will use my ad campaigns against me as a “gotcha” moment and see me as a D.A.R.E. officer are likely. However, as a barely paid Black digital content creator, it was my first time working on a paid ad campaign, two of them at that, which I couldn’t refuse because those opportunities are already hard to come by as is.

Even though I quit smoking cannabis, I’m not going to lecture anyone about the dangers of cannabis because, as adults, you can make your own informed decisions.

If you are a cannabis user reading this post or watching my YouTube video breaking down my cannabis sobriety journey, I’m not judging you. 

If you smoke cannabis for whatever reason, that’s fine.

If you feel satisfied with smoking cannabis and have zero plans on stopping, that’s also fine. 

Sharing my sobriety journey is for anyone interested in learning, those who are struggling on their sobriety journey (whether it is cannabis, alcohol, etc.), or those who are thinking about starting their own sobriety journey.

If you’re starting your sobriety journey via quitting cannabis, I want to tell you that you’re not right-wing or MAGA for doing so.

Starting your sobriety journey is the first, difficult step that takes courage, and doing so means that you’re ready to change yourself for the better and that you’re doing it for you.