Write
Five prompts. Each one is something he actually did in the journal, not an exercise someone invented. Use paper, your notes app, anything. None of this gets sent here and none of it asks for your email.
The goodbye letter
The journal opens with one. It’s the first thing he wrote: “Thank you and goodbye. Dear marijuana & the part of myself that was dependent on weed,”
Write it a letter. Not an angry one — he thanked it first, and that’s the part most people skip.
Start with what it did for you. It was there when you were sad, low, stressed. It gave you good times. Say so, honestly, because pretending it was all bad is a lie you’ll catch yourself in later.
Then say what it costs you now. Then say goodbye, if you mean it.
You don’t have to send it anywhere. It isn’t for anyone.
Dear my past self
He wrote this one months in, after the worst of it. It ends: “You’ve come so far. I LOVE YOU.”
Write to the version of you who started. Not to scold him — to thank him.
What did he put up with? What did he do right that you never gave him credit for? What was he carrying that nobody saw?
Most people find they’re kinder to their past self than to their present one. Notice that.
When you want to smoke
“Anytime you want to smoke or have cravings you should come write about it here. Get it out. The paper listens.”
This is the one that matters. Don’t save it for a good day.
When the craving comes: stop what you’re doing and write instead. Don’t smoke, write. Get it out.
It doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to be true tomorrow. Write what you actually want and what you’re actually scared of, right now, at whatever time it is.
Then go outside. Say hi to the sun. Let yourself rest.
What would 80-year-old you say?
He asked himself this, then wrote both sides of the conversation. It became the best thing in the journal.
Ask the question, then answer it in their voice. Both sides. Write it as a conversation.
“How do I quit?” — “You quit. You give it up. You let it go.”
“But what about the cravings? The pull?” — keep going. Let them answer.
The trick is that you already know what they’d say. Writing it down is just how you stop pretending you don’t.
The day 0 log
“I cant believe today went from day 3 to day 0.” It happens in this journal over and over, for fourteen months.
This isn’t a streak counter and it will never show you a number you lost.
When you land back on day 0 — and you will, he did constantly — write down what happened. Not to punish yourself. To have a record of the shape of it.
What time was it. What did you tell yourself. What was the excuse. His was: “it’s the weekend why not” — knowing damn well he was trying to quit.
After a while you’ll notice the excuse is the same one every time. That’s the useful part.