We breathed well. We chose late.
Yoga, pranayama, green food and a joint waiting at the end of the evening. Contradiction knew how to sit in lotus pose too.
I had studied yoga and practised pranayama. I could spend time observing my breathing and smoke afterwards. Both fitted into the same day, without one necessarily prompting me to question the other.
I was interested in the body, attention and ways of feeling better. I had learned things that helped me. Remembering them when the time to smoke arrived was another matter.
You can learn the way in and still keep taking the same way out.
The contradiction does not invalidate yoga. Nor does every helpful practice become an alibi. It simply reminds us of something less solemn: understanding something and acting on it in time are different jobs.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, part of our small counterculture mixed worlds with the confidence of somebody making a salad without checking the recipe: yoga from India, tofu, permaculture, green smoothies, music on cassette and a fairly artisanal relationship with cannabis. We cared for ourselves in ways that seemed unusual at the time. Sometimes, five minutes later, we smoked a joint with tobacco.
We saw no serious contradiction. We were flexible.
Many of those practices genuinely helped. Breathing could calm me. Moving my body felt good. Meditation opened some space. Cooking better changed the day. The mistake would have been to believe that a yoga mat issued a general certificate of clarity and renewed it automatically every night.
Mindfulness has a small distribution problem: it does not always reach every room in the house.
I could listen to my body for ninety minutes.
The habit only needed five seconds without supervision.
The advanced student of the previous day
For years I thought that because I paid close attention to my breathing, I also paid close attention to my decisions. They are not quite the same thing. The practice happened at a set time, in a place and with an intention. The joint appeared in another context: after work, before writing, after dinner, when the house had gone quiet.
Habits have little mystery: they learn places, times and the actions that come before them. You can spend the day convinced that tonight will be different and still get ready for the usual. No dark force defeated you. The living room opened the right file.
That is why traveling or breaking a routine can change how much you use. Not because an airport purifies the soul, but because pieces of the setting are missing. Then you return, leave the keys in their usual place and domestic memory takes over again.
Mindfulness helps some people notice the impulse sooner. For others, one brief practice does not change their use. The important words are brief and some.
No secret button hidden under the navel.
What the practice did not resolve
Seeking meaning, practising or caring for plants could have value in their own right. I enjoyed those things. The difficulty came when feeling that I was already looking after myself was enough to leave another question untouched.
“It connects me to myself.” That may be true.
“It helps me listen to myself.” That may be true too.
“That is why I need it every day at the same time”, even when I no longer know what I was listening to. That is where the sentence starts working overtime.
I taught breathing, and for a long time I organized parts of the day around cannabis. Both biographies were true: one offered tools and the other kept excellent time. People practise, work, care, doubt and get tired at ten. Sometimes all of it happens on the same Tuesday.
Comfortable breathing may help you spend a little time with less tension. Sometimes it lets you notice the urge before acting; sometimes it is not enough. If it does not change the moment, you can seek other support without turning it into a test of attention.
The useful question is not whether yoga cures the habit or the habit ruins yoga. It is much more ordinary: when the familiar hour arrives, does anything remain from the space you practised, or is the mat already rolled up and off duty?
For years I could hold my breath with some dignity. The difficult part was holding a decision until after dinner.
The breathing was present.
I was late.
A personal essay supported by research on habit, context, mindfulness and yoga. It does not present breathing, meditation or yoga as sufficient treatments for reducing cannabis use, nor use a null result to deny that some people benefit from broader, sustained practices.
Sources and editorial criteria
- Wood, Tam and Guerrero Witt, 2005: context change and habit disruption. The study examines how habitual behavior persists or weakens as environmental cues change. It supports looking at the domestic setting; it does not prove how one person’s cannabis use works.
- Bowen et al., 2014: trial of mindfulness-based relapse prevention. It found benefits in a treatment-seeking population after intensive care. It is not equivalent to one brief individual practice or to the general population of people who use cannabis.
- Lorenzetti et al., 2025: brief mindfulness intervention in adults with cannabis use disorder. The study found no significant reduction in frequency, quantity or craving compared with controls. It is included to avoid presenting mindfulness as a master key.
- Walia et al., 2021: systematic review of yoga and substance use. Findings were promising but sparse, heterogeneous and not focused on cannabis; the authors called for stronger trials.