How Should I Confront A Friend About His Smoking?

marijuana
communication
#1

My college friend Franklin is always smoking marijuana and I want advice on how to confront him in a better manner about my concern. He smokes multiple times a day and I believe it is getting in the way of him having a productive life. Franklin is incredibly smart, attended a fantastic college, and is a great writer. However, despite this, he has only had one real job in his life and I feel his marijuana use is holding him back from realizing his whole potential. It almost seems that he lacks self confidence in how to move forward with life and falls back on smoking as a crutch.**

I’ve tried to address his smoking before, but he always dismisses my arguments because I’ve personally never smoked and he believes it doesn’t have an adverse impact on health or functioning. His family is also accepting of his smoking as well as many of our mutual friends, but I know he’d be better off not smoking.**

Do you have any tips on how I should address my concerns since he has dismissed them before?**

#2

This is a tough situation because there are several people I know who use marijuana several times throughout the day and it does not affect them negatively. Meanwhile, there are people whose marijuana use negatively impacts them in so many ways. I noticed you said his family is accepting of his smoking— keep in mind that they may feel this way because they are not aware of how it might get in the way of your friend being productive throughout the day. On the other hand, you’ve had a candid glimpse into his everyday life.

If your attempts to confront him have been met with some animosity, that’s pretty typical. It can seem like the right thing to do to confront the person with our upset emotions, perhaps with the goal of getting them to realize that we are truly worried about them so they’ll stop their addiction. It’s hard to know what is the best way to confront this type of situation.

I’d start off by having a more neutral conversation about his marijuana usage. Perhaps you can ask questions like:

  1. How does smoking marijuana make you feel?
  2. Do you feel that smoking allows you to feel more in control of your day/allows you to be more productive?
  3. Do you feel like you’d be better off without it?

These questions are neutral and open-ended, allowing the person to open up about his or her experience instead of closing themselves in and becoming defensive. Try these questions and let me know how things turn out!

#3

@aquestioningsoul Your friend Franklin is a lucky guy to have a friend/ally who cares. Thank you for being that person to him.

I think it’s absolutely fair for you to express your concerns to your friend. We all need allies to remind us of our value when it’s lost on us.

That said, it’s important for us to recognize our own motivations for wanting another person to change. What is the outcome that you want? (Is it that Franklin stops smoking entirely? Is it that Franklin stays sober when he’s around you? Or something else?) And then, why is it important for you to have that outcome?

No need to answer these questions here - unless, of course, you want! This community is always happy to be a sounding board!

It might also be interesting to learn about Franklin’s motivations for using marijuana in the first place. @ashleykm3 offered some good questions like, How does marijuana make you feel? What benefits does it give you?