To ask my H to stop smoking Cannabis?

[cattygirl1]

I have asked him to stop or at least cut way back smoking cannabis as he smokes about 8 - 10 joints per day.

What im finding is I barely know him straight, in fact he is not a nice person at times straight, he is moody, sulky and so short tempered.

I pi**ed off skirting around his moods!

So am I to straight myself?

There is no blame attached to you for getting with this guy when you were young, or staying with him in the past due to low self esteem and feeling you can do no better.

But now you are aware of who he is, and your responsibility for your child you MUST be the proactive one and leave this relationship. As someone has said yo thread, social services wod hold you just as accountable as him, do you want the possibility of having your DD taken off you? You are not adequately protecting her. The only way you can is to leave him, sorry. Your DD will be far less damaged from not seeing her Dad everyday than living with a grumpy stoner.

Please do the right thing. Why wait?

Ltb

OP this will only get harder the longer you leave it. I know you don't want to break up your family unit but it isn't a healthy and functioning family unit is it? You're all living under the tyranny of his addiction and by staying with him you're enabling his addiction to continue and normalising harmful drug use to your daughter.

You are stronger than you think and you're the only one with the power to do something about it. The short term sadness doesn't outweigh the long term benefit to you both of being free to live your lives without this cloud (literally and metaphorically!) hanging over you.

You can be strong and do this and kids are much more resilient than you think. She will be fine, and so much better off in the long run.

Please please LTB (also my first!)

I'm not really against cannabis. I'm not even against parents smoking cannabis, within reason and away from their children. But 8-10 joints a day is a shit of a lot of weed. And he's not even contemplating your suggestion of quitting. It's an outright no. Seriously, just leave him. It's very very rare I give that advice on MN but it's a psychological addiction that he has no desire to change and that will become the norm for your child if you stay.

There's no need to be scared to talk to him - any conversation you have had already. You know where he stands.

Now is time for action.

He has himself in a flap tonight, his dealer has been raided!!

I said well they can take it! Lets hope we don't get a knock on the door, he laughed & said dealing is different from smoking you know! Still illegal at the end of the day, he obviously sees no problem at all.

I find it quite difficult to read this thread as I can't help but think you could have been me. My ex was a heavy user, 100% he would have chosen the drug over me.

Thankfully I met my oh and found the strength to leave him before starting a family. Honestly get out now, for the sake of your child.

I feel for you op but at the same time I find it so frustrating that you would stay in a relationship in which someone would chose drugs over your child. You will never forgive yourself the day your dd realises what's going on or worse starts to take drugs. Stop normalising it for her sake as well as your own.

I hope you find the strength to leave, I really do as this is a very sad read

"Im scared to break up the family, she will miss him greatly, I know she will."
Would that be the ideal family, where all adults support and protect their offspring, preparing them for a balanced and happy adulthood themselves? Or would that be your current family, where one adult is a drain on resources, creates tension with mood swings and insists on maintaining an environment that endangers the child by predisposing them to future drug use? Or maybe you should think about your future family, where you raise your child in a safe and happy home, protected from an addict and the mind-fuck that he would bring to her life?

"Both his 2 older children also now smoke cannabis and also I suspect other drugs, I really don't want that for our child."
Then that's what you need to focus upon.

Maybe she would miss him. Maybe those feelings would diminish in time. Do you think he would miss her? Or would he always miss weed more? Is she his priority? She should be. She isn't.

Of course your DD would miss her dad. Small children love their parents unconditionally.

But that is not a good enough reason to make her live with him with things the way they are.

In the long term your DH's behaviour and addiction will have an impact on your DD. If he can't (or doesn't want) to change you will need to make the changes necessary for her to grow up in a safe environment.

It's a very difficult thing to do. It's scary. But the first step willprobably be the hardest and ultimately you will look back and wonder why you put up with it for so long.

Does your DH work?

Op, have you considered the fact that you and your DDs health is being affected by breathing in secondhand smoke? That in itself should be a good reason to leave.

He won't change. You need to get rid. ASAP!

As a smoker, I'm saying - he has a profound problem, and noone in my circles would judge you harshly for leaving him.

I know parents, single and otherwise, who blaze and they would call 8-10 joints a day and his dismissive attitude unacceptable.

"Both his 2 older children also now smoke cannabis and also I suspect other drugs, I really don't want that for our child."

And so will your daughter.

Get out. Get out, get out, get out.

He won't change, but you can bet your daughter will. She'll do it too. And before that she'll be teased at school for smelling of smoke, teachers will notice she smells of dope etc etc.

Please, just get out.

Your husband is most likely self medicating some kind of underlying mental health condition. I'm not a medical professional but people with mental health issues self medicate with cannabis all the time because, believe it or not, it does have some very interesting medicinal benefits -just look to America's medical marijuana revolution currently taking place for proof of this - your husband is also proof of this. This is also where the misconception that cannabis causes mental health issues comes from - it's not cannabis causing mental health issues, it is people who already have a mental health issue using cannabis to cope with the symptoms. Something like 80%+ of schizophrenics smoke tobacco because nicotine seems to help with the symptoms, but no one says tobacco causes schizophrenia.

I doubt your husband is really a bad person, he obviously doesn't like having mood swings which is why he is medicating (either knowingly or unknowingly). I also don't think the suggestion to just leave him are very helpful at all, something negative like that happneing to him mixed with his potential condition could be a bad recipe.

See if you can get him to describe his symptoms when he's sober and work it out from there. The ironic thing is if he is diagnosed with something you need to be careful about what drugs your doctor may prescribe because more than likely they will be far worse for you than cannabis. Although I don't think it'll be too long before medicinal cannabis will be legal in this country like it is in the US and other countries.

OP, you could be telling my story. I was basically married to a guy like this. When we met, I wasn't in the greatest place self esteem wise and minimised the issue to myself. As time went on I realised that weed was a bigger priority than me or paying for his child from a previous relationship. I told him it was his choice if he wanted to carry on smoking but I wanted more so if that was his choice we would be splitting up. Much weeping and wailing later he said he wanted to stop. Spent months going with him to drug counselling. We got married.
Literally 2 weeks later I found his stash. Confronted him and his response was "you've got the ring on now so there's nothing you can do about it".
I did though. Left the bastard and never looked back.
You and your child deserve better than to come second to weed. Trust me.

A good adult friend of mine had a father who smoked cannabis everyday. Very well to do family and was a great father to her and her two brothers. He died last year of lung cancer aged just 52.