The honest audit

I smoked nightly for the better part of nine years. If you'd asked me at year four, I'd have said "a couple of joints a week". The number I would have said out loud to a doctor or a partner was always smaller than the number that was actually true. Not by a little. By half.

That's the thing about weed. It's the most rounded-down habit on the male shelf.

This module is the honest audit. Frequency, units, role.

How much, actually

Pick the last seven days. Total it honestly across whatever format you use:

• Joints (or cones, or bongs, or pipes)
• Vape pen sessions, by length not by "session"
• Edibles, by milligrams of THC, not by "I had a gummy"
• Dab rigs, by hits

Now write the weekly number on the page. Multiply it by 52. That's your annual number.

If you're a daily smoker telling yourself you're "a couple a week", the gap between those two numbers is roughly 350 joints a year.

What it actually costs you

Money first. A $25 eighth that lasts you a week is $1,300 a year. A $40 disposable vape pen every ten days is $1,460. A daily $15 pre-roll habit is $5,475.

Then time. If you smoke from 9pm to 11pm five nights a week, that's ten hours of stoned time per week. Five hundred and twenty hours a year.

Then attention. The 9pm joint isn't just the joint. It's the joint plus the rest of the evening, in a slightly fogged version, where the book you wanted to read isn't read, the conversation you were meant to have is shorter.

What role does it actually play

The honest answer is rarely "I just enjoy it". The honest answer is usually one of five things:

• Sleep. You can't fall asleep without it.
• Anxiety. You use it to take the edge off.
• Boredom. Evenings have a shape that includes weed.
• Social lubricant. You smoke before parties, family dinners, sex.
• The reward at the end. It's the punctuation mark on a hard day.

Write down which one is the dominant role. Not the polite one. The real one.

The questions to write down

Three questions, on a page nobody else will see:

1. How much did I actually use in the last seven days?
2. What is it costing me a year, in dollars, hours and attention?
3. Which of the five roles is the one I'd struggle to replace?

The audit isn't about shame. It's about removing the rounding-down so the next ninety days have a starting line you can actually see.

Count once. Count truthfully. Don't count again until day thirty.