Every Time I Went Back: How Earl Rhodes Quit Smoking Weed

In brief

Earl Rhodes, a Londoner, tried many times to quit drinking, cigarettes and drugs, and went back every time. After a separation left him sad and listless, a book he found at a London exhibition in 1997 began the change that let him quit smoking weed.

Lots of times

Some habits don’t feel like a choice anymore. You promise yourself, you mean it, and a few days later you’re back where you started. If you know that loop, you’ll understand Earl’s.

“How many times had I tried to stop drinking, smoking and drugs?” he asked, years later, in a talk to other practitioners. “Well, I’ll tell you: lots of times and every time I went back.”

He was a Londoner in his thirties. He drank, he smoked cigarettes, and he smoked cannabis.

And there was the formal separation from his partner and their children. What it left him with, he says, was “apathy and sadness.”

He tried to do something about it. He signed up for Aikido and went to class every week, hoping to get fit and shake the feeling off. “The Aikido was OK,” he says, “but it didn’t fill a philosophical gap that I wanted to fill.”

He had been thinking about the meaning of life since he was young. The class gave him somewhere to go once a week. It didn’t answer the question.

If you’ve ever filled your week with something that keeps you busy but doesn’t reach the ache underneath — you know how that feels.

Seventy-five pages

In August 1997, six months after he started Aikido, Earl came across a Falun Dafa stand at an exhibition in London. He bought the book Zhuan Falun and an instruction video “almost automatically,” he says.

At home he started reading. “How fascinating. How marvellous,” he remembers. He read 75 pages and fell asleep.

The next day he went back to the stand, and the people there invited him to learn the exercises outside on the grass.

He had been a dancer as a child. The movements felt natural to him; the hand positions reminded him of ballet. As a boy he had thought there must be a way to stretch the whole body systematically, and the first exercise, he says, “seemed to fit the bill.”

But what stayed with him most was the people. They “seemed so honest, pleasant, trustworthy and calm.”

What was left at home

Earl stopped smoking cigarettes after about two weeks of practice. A month in, he stopped drinking.

Cannabis took longer: five months. His plan, he says, was honest enough. He would stop “once I had finished what I had stocked at home.”

But something had shifted. When he smoked and then sat down for the meditation, he noticed only “a bad taste and a burning sensation” on his tongue.

“I haven’t smoked since,” he says.

Drinking, he says, “seemed easy to stop.” Then he corrects himself — “I say it seemed easy” — and reminds his listeners how many times he had tried before and gone back.

If you’ve quit and gone back more times than you can count, the count isn’t the whole story. Sometimes the last attempt looks just like the others, until it doesn’t.

The change showed up in other places too. One day, as he rode his motorbike very slowly, a car reversed out of a side road towards him. He called out, but it kept coming and knocked him and the bike over. He landed on his knee with the engine still revving on top of him.

He climbed out and disengaged the gear. The driver got out, apologizing. “Don’t worry, never mind,” Earl told him, and rode on.

Another time, squeezed between a car and a van at over 60 kilometres an hour, he caught himself thinking, you’re not giving me enough room. Later he looked at that thought again and decided it wasn’t the attitude he wanted to have.

More and more, when something went wrong, he tried to look at himself first. “Some I think I have passed, others I think I haven’t passed yet,” he said of the daily tests. “So I try to look inside of myself to see where I can make improvements.”

He did not pretend to be finished. “Some of my mistakes are so disturbing it questions me,” he said, “but I’m determined to try.”

The man who once went back every time had found something he kept coming back to instead. Near the end of his talk he added a line for whoever was listening: “I hope you are too.”

What this story may hold for you

• Earl had tried “lots of times and every time I went back.” Perhaps a long record of trying isn’t proof you can’t — only proof of how much you want to.
• Cigarettes went in two weeks, drinking in a month, cannabis in five. You might give yourself the same patience: not everything has to go at once.
• His Aikido class kept him busy without reaching the sadness underneath. Sometimes what we need isn’t more activity, but an answer to a deeper question.
• When a car knocked him over, he said, “Don’t worry, never mind.” A changed life can show up in a moment like that, as much as in what you quit.
• A miracle might be the body healing, or the heart letting go, or finding meaning again — or any mix of these.

If you’ve ever felt trapped by drinking or drugs, Sterling Campbell’s story may speak to you too.

A free guide for when quitting never sticks

If this story touched something in you, there are more like it.

Our free guide, When Quitting Never Sticks, gathers four true stories of people who tried to quit drinking, smoking or drugs again and again, and what changed for them, with a gentle page on how to begin.

It’s free. One email with the guide, then a few short letters. Unsubscribe any time.

Questions readers ask

Q: How do I quit smoking weed when I keep going back?

Earl had gone back every time. What changed it for him was a daily practice of reading Zhuan Falun and doing the exercises, and even then cannabis took five months. If you are struggling with cannabis or any other drug, please also talk with a doctor or an addiction counselor near you; you don’t have to do this alone.

Q: How do you cope with the sadness after a separation?

After the formal separation from his partner and children, Earl felt “apathy and sadness.” A weekly Aikido class kept him busy, but it didn’t reach the deeper question he’d carried since childhood, about what life is for. For him, the change began with a book that spoke to that question, and calm people to learn from.

Q: Where does this story come from?

From Earl Rhodes’s own talk, “Falun Dafa Changed My Life,” an experience-sharing talk he gave to fellow practitioners when he was 36, archived among the experience articles at websites.umich.edu. The quotes are his own words.

A note on health

These stories share personal experiences and inner journeys. They cannot replace professional psychological or medical help, and please don’t stop or change any treatment because of a story. If you are in serious distress or crisis, please reach out to a qualified local counselor, doctor or crisis line.