[XorNot]

Your hypothesis here though is full of complicating factors.

For example

>I stopped drinking heavily and using other drugs, i.e. marijuana

Like the primary change you made was to cut out using a whole bunch of drugs with known, significant neurological effects.

[random3]

I think the "and" is for "stopped (both) A and B"

[root_axis]

Yes, that's what they're pointing out. Changing multiple variables at once means you can't attribute changes to any one of those variables in particular.