You might have unknowingly internalized your mother’s beliefs and feelings of disgust, towards the behavior. It makes sense if smoking is associated with rejection if that was the reaction you received from your parents — instead of curiosity and communication. So I think the major problem is in the relationship between oneself, one’s past and one’s relationship with parents, or lack of - the cannabis, kinda becomes a moderator to assist one in dealing with the intense feelings that can accompany a person living in a dysfunctional environment. We also have a tendency to internalize that environment.

So if you’ve been met with a lot of shame, you might have a tendency to blame yourself our others. What was once external, has become internal. If you have an unhealthy internal world, I can see why cannabis can bring light to that darkness and make you aware of the shame (that is always there) but our minds think that it’s the cannabis that triggers it, because we makes the association that we only feel the shame when smoking, when it in fact, it presents to us a inner view into our the internal structure of our lives that is always there.

Let’s say, you get totally dissociated when smoking, I think it’s fair to assume that you also have a tendency to do so when you don’t smoke — but the smoking, made it evident to you, that you do this. You can stop smoking, but you’ll still dissociate, probably unconsciously, through procrastination and daydreaming. Basically, acceptable dissociation, but dissociation none the less. I think we need to be a lot more curious and aware about our internal worlds, and cannabis can give us a look into that.