This is a thread for ILXors ON THE WAGON (and for the Wagon Curious)

When I was 18 the head shop sold catnip cigarettes (I think they were supposed to get you 'high' but we just thought it was a funny thing). 12 hour headache city.

Non-alcoholic beer definitely helps for me. There's a ritualistic aspect to my drinking, I get home after a day's work and sitting down with a drink is a signal that the working day is over. Having a NA beer kind of helps with that.

Same here. I don't drink very much anyway - but I had to cut down on drinking after a concussion (which I got while sober!).

After a while, the rush of pulling a cold beer of the fridge after work was the same for me, whether it was alcholic or not, so I started sticking to non-alcoholic more often.

I quit cigarette smoking cold turkey in early 2006 and never really looked back, not interested anymore at all

Occasionally will hit the spliff (weed & norwegian shag) at band practice, that's about it

I do have an old pipe that I used to like to take on camping trips a few years ago, but I haven't even seen pipe tobacco in drug stores in several years and I don't care enough to go to an actual tobacconist

if you guys start talking about how wonderful smoking is i might have to skedaddle!

catnip cig talk is fine by me though. when was the last time someone had a clove cigarette?

i could never smoke cigars because i couldn't stop myself from inhaling.

i knew i had to go the edible route with weed after i quit smoking. too much nostalgia for tobacco.

vaping just made me want the real thing too.

big fan of breathing mindfully here. breathing is how we access god imho. did you know the most efficient way to deliver oxygen to your bloodstream is to breathe through your nose? i want to tell everyone about all of this but no one gives a fuck lmao. maybe i'm turning into a pseudo-spiritual crank but no i don't go to church and never will thank you very much.

re smoking, i'm romantically involved with someone who's abroad for a few weeks. he's been smoking cigs in video chats (do as the locals do). thank god it's been over 4 years since i had my last cig. i have literally no cravings now. i don't bat an eye watching him. i just feel a little concerned. the real reason i finally quit smoking was because i wasn't getting enough oxygen. big cause of me feeling depressed. i had asthma as a kid. things you learn or suspect that aren't in the dsm.

My weed intake was already significant but went up when I stopped drinking. I stopped drinking cuz I was trying to find what was triggering my migraines, and that is apparently one of them. They only started after having Covid. Weird.

I don’t really enjoy NA beer but I bet if I looked hard enough I’d find one I liked. I just drink a 12 of seltzer every two days. Sometimes I like a tart lemonade.

In terms of taste, NA beers have improved massively over the past few years.

I have never successfully smoked a cigarette or cigar. Just can't fricking do it.

Pipe tobacco was a moderately fun affectation when I was an English major on the East Coast wearing a tweed sportcoat with elbow patches. (Not even kidding here, I literally did precisely those things. Walking cliché, 1992 me.)

Even for weed I prefer edibles.

cigs never did much for me, thank god. make me cough a lot too and it's hard to get the smell out of your clothes. but I love the ritual of smoking, or at least taking a break from a noisy, busy atmosphere to chill outside for a few minutes and have more intimate conversations. eventually I realized it ain't that weird to go outside to hang out and just not smoke.

I mean in general I guess I'm lucky I didn't have that addiction gene. or maybe I do but it's not as strong as some others have it. in my early 20's pretty much everyone I knew drank a ton, smoked cigs and weed. which eventually led to harder drugs, up until one guy discovered this thing called "fentanyl" and promptly overdosed on it. he also happened to be the plug for a lot of us so most of the group just had to quit cold turkey. not that getting high was all that fun anymore when one of your best friends dies. some people struggled really hard with it and came out the other hand as totally different people, for better or worse (I mean, obviously it's "for better", but a couple of them just won't have anything to do with anyone else in that group anymore, which is sad). and then for some of us it was just like, eh, whatever. I like weed because you're still present, you can still do stuff and you still feel pain and all that, it just bothers you much less. the Percs I was taking just papered over everything. it was nice but you felt like you lost control of yourself somewhat and I didn't like that feeling.

It has suddenly occurred to me that I could likely make my own hop water pretty easily. I used to make beer so I have all the equipment, just boil some water, add hops, let cool, and bottle. I may even have some 20-30 year old hop pellets around.

when was the last time someone had a clove cigarette?

Lol as I was reading through this and M mentioned the catnip cigs I thought of cloves. When I was a freshman in college going to the smoke shop and buying cloves felt so cool. Leave me alone, I was 17. ;) There were so many rumors around them too. Do they actually cut your lungs? Who knows! They did taste amazing. That I remember.

Get a free vial of patchouli oil with every purchase of cloves

and some incense.

there seems to be something of an arms race happening here - every can at the bodega is a double-blasted IPA clocking in at close to 10% ABV, i think there's one at like 13-14%. i think of them as new 40s.

I feel your pain, brother. There are exactly two non-double IPA cans I can buy at the bodegas, Lagunitas and Deschutes Fresh Squeezed, everything else is 8% or more. And forget about a 19.2 lager or pilsner! So not gonna happen.

clove cigarettes are mostly tobacco anyway, they don't really count as a substitute

This is a thread for ILXors OFF THE WAGON (and for the Off the Wagon Curious)

^does this deserve its own thread or should I just use it as a subtitle in next year’s at the bar thread

Lol I was never suggesting cloves as a tobacco alternative just to be clear.

could never get cloves here, but I was in NYC for my 26th birthday and met a girl on the way back from a club in alphabet city who gave me a box of Djarums and I thought they were fucking delicious. I bought a packet of some other brand and they were awful though, it was just that brand I liked maybe

Dajarums where the gold standard. I don't think I ever got any others. That said, I prob bought them less than 10 times in my life but, yes, those are the good ones.

I just realised I should not be on this thread lol

I realized something that I neglected to mention upthread re: not drinking. One of the last pre-pandemic events I went to in 2019 was the memorial service for my ex-mother-in-law (I was married 2008-2009). She had a pretty high-end career and upper-class lifestyle but once she retired she made up for lost time and hit the bottles harder than most broke punkers I've seen. In ten years, she was dead from total liver collapse.

Every time I smoked a clove I was too drunk to remember it... but I definitely knew the next day.

Trip report, I was able to control my intake to a surprising and satisfying degree Friday and yesterday, happy about that

Small steps that feel good are good amirite

Yes indeed : )

I'm 17 days into a mini-wagon. Not a big boozer, particularly, but have had a few weekend benders of late. I've been low-grade ill, so not really felt the full benefit; even still, the clarity and *readiness* on weekend mornings is a revelation.

Good for you, hope it goes well ❤️

The weekend morning thing is amazing, truly.

zzz

Thanks for the good wishes gyac.

My mini-wagon is now 5 weeks. If I thought I could get through Christmas without it, I'd 100% continue. Not missing it in the slightest.

Because I don't know where else to post it: I recently listened to Scatman John's first album for the first time, and was nonplussed when it contained a song ("Take Your Time") that any AA would recognize as being very obviously about AA.

Favorite AA song: Vic Chesnutt, “Stupid Preoccupations”

Anyone have experience with Refuge Recovery? I’ve been listening to the podcasts which are kinda like guided meditations and a nice alternative to AA dogma.

a little, that mirrors my take. I have a book on it but never went to a meeting.

I went to some Refuge meetings c.2017-2019 and I liked it well enough. The one near me was a very small (probably <5 people on average) weekly meditation meeting at a zen center out in the country, but when I visited Asheville there were groups with 30 people meeting every day and taking meetings into treatment facilities and stuff.

Unfortunately, not long after that, the Refuge Recovery community split in two for reasons that were not entirely clear to me -- I remember hearing at the time that it had something to do with the founder/author of their book sounding off on social media & wading into public controversies, but never tried to confirm it. All I know is I woke up one morning and half the meetings on the website were gone. I worried they had closed their doors for good, but it turns out most of them formed a new fellowship calling itself Recovery Dharma.

The People's Recovery Front vs. the People's Front of Recovery.

the founder Noah Levine was also accused of some sexual malfeasance of some sort or another, not sure if that had anything to do with this schism you describe

Yeah, that's right. I dunno why I thought it was social media posts, my brain must have been busy that day.

I think (I hope) the org that continued under the name Refuge Recovery no longer has Levine in any kind of leadership position today

...nope I am very wrong about that

He can always blame it on booze

feeling super relieved right now

an addict in my life went to a recovery group for the first time recently

they had a lot of anxiety about it. last time they went to a group they were in a different city that didn't have a lot of queer-focused recovery groups. even though there are plenty of queer-focused recovery groups around here, they were pretty hesitant

turned out a good friend of mine was there. it just helps to know you're not alone, y'know?

Big time

Also helps not to use the word “addict” imo

Like I would be quite displeased if someone referred to me as “a cancer in my life”

my bad, i'm new to all this language... you're right that it's essentializing, i don't see them that way

tbf "addict" but is a term i've heard frequently self-applied within the recovery community

I went to some Lifering meetings, way more mellow and less performative than AA ime but maybe that was just my group. Also learned about wood turning.

Ime the important thing is just to have “fellow travelers” to go through the shit with, not necessarily following some recipe