i have been dealing with an addiction to marijuana for about 20 years.
I am currently working with an analyst who specializes in treating addiction through psychotherapy.
I have been unable to stop smoking dope in the last several months and in the previous years, I was only able to when I stopped therapy and went to AA and stopped for 18 months.
In the past, I also tried therapy to help with this and therapy was so triggering that I kept on smoking. My therapist keeps telling me I am holding other people responsible for a change I need to make myself. He is right but knowing this doesn’t make me do anything differently. it almost makes me more hopeless because i can see it and i see how little i care that im doing it. i see how little regard i have for myself.

To make this all more interesting, my doctor recently told me that my lungs are compromised from years of smoking and I need to stop to prevent further damage. When I did not stop and came in for a follow up he simply said to me “look, youll be much better off if you stop. If you don’t, its not certain, but its highly likely you will die of lung disease. You already have asthma and youre in a high risk group.” This was 2 months ago. I still haven’t stopped. I am terrified.

So I tell my therapist that maybe I cant stop while in therapy and he says ok what will you do and I say I will go to AA. He says AA rarely works and ive shown that it doesn’t work for me because after that year and a half, I kept going to AA but it wasn’t working. I told him it didn’t work because therapy was driving me nuts. And he says youre passing the buck, its not therapies responsibility its yours.

Anyways, this feels like a big circle that wont end. Ill talk to him about this but im concerned if I trust him and try to solve this while in therapy, it wont work and ill end up getting lung disease and being truly screwed. And I have tried AA while in therapy and they are so at odds with each other, philopsphically that its hard to do both.