Living weed-free. AA works

Living weed-free. AA works

How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? Sober.Coffee regulars already know Mike R and Glenn H bring plenty of straight talk, but this chat on "living weed-free" turns the volume up a notch. The conversation starts with a laugh about bad-smelling weed and quickly gets serious about how younger generations may be swapping alcohol for marijuana.

Mike is blunt: if someone can “have half a beer,” they’re “on the wrong show.” This space is for people who know alcohol – and often other substances – are causing damage. From there, the pair dive into a hot topic: does AA work? Glenn’s answer is unfiltered.

For people who say it doesn’t, he isn’t sure “if I want to give them my select middle finger or if I want to reach out and give them a hug,” before landing on the belief that “AA’s way works” when someone actually commits to it. They use a gym membership analogy to show that a programme can’t work if it’s never properly used. The heart of the episode looks at what counts as sobriety.

Is AA really working if someone is still smoking weed every day? Mike doesn’t think so. He argues that daily weed, heavy Xanax use, or other mind-altering drugs aren’t part of “quality sobriety,” even if they come with a prescription. For him, the biggest gift of sobriety is clarity, and he’s honest about carefully managing prescribed pain medication after surgery to protect that clarity.

Along the way, they keep the humour flowing – from cinnamon jawbreakers to joking about becoming a “show about nothing” – while still landing a serious message: sobriety, in their eyes, means living free from all the stuff that blurs reality. If you’re wrestling with weed, pills, or doubts about AA, this conversation might be the honest mirror you didn’t know you needed. So, what does real sobriety look like for you?