DOSE:

repeated

smoked

Cannabis

(daily)

BODY WEIGHT:

170 lb

Weed: it’s both a gift and a curse from God. At least for me.

A brief history about myself: I am a pretty normal guy who just so happened to get involved with things that most people wouldn’t see fit for me. Besides weed, I’ve tried nitrous, ecstasy, shrooms, acid, salvia, and morning glory seeds. I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life and I’ve made it a personal promise to never try them. Among all these substances, weed has definitely been the most prominent in my life.

I tried weed the very first time when I was 15 years old, but I didn’t get high at all. Being that I had never smoked anything in my life, I had no idea how to inhale. A bit disappointed, but also a little relieved that I wasn’t going to freak out, I didn’t try smoking weed again until college.

During my freshman year in college, I tried smoking weed a handful of times, and I actually did get to experience what it meant to be “high”. However, it wasn’t as enjoyable as I had expected, and I didn’t try smoking again until my junior year in 2002. In the Fall of my junior year, an old high school friend used to come over to our apartment and hang out a lot. Every once in a while, he’d bring over a sack of shwag and smoke joints, blunts, or take hits from a little pipe. He’d offer me hits and I’d decline, generally making up excuses that I had things to do, or that it had been way too long since I had tried it.

Eventually, though, I did try it – and I liked it. I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t the weed that had made me feel the way I did, but it was my surroundings and the people I hung around. I could see that smoking weed could be extremely enjoyable if done at the right time and place, and it soon became a once-a-week or every other week ritual to smoke up and get blazed. Mind you, this was some pretty low grade weed and I was getting stoned out of my mind. Sometimes I would be so high that I would have to lie down on the couch and five minutes later forget that I was even in my apartment!

In November of 2002, I bought my first sack of weed – an ounce of some decent shwag. Now that I look back on it, that’s quite a bit of weed for a first-time buyer. The first night, we rolled 3 huge joints; one for me, one for my roommate, and one for my high-school friend. Every night, or every other night, my roommate and I would get blazed in his bathroom with a homemade bong and it was great fun. As a matter of fact, I was able to stretch that ounce of bud for a whole month. It’s amazing how much you can conserve when you are a newbie to smoking. But after all the weed was gone, I felt an emptiness inside me. I had come to discover that weed allowed me to escape my worries and problems. After a few days of sobriety, however, I was back to normal and the emptiness was gone.

About a month later, my other roommate began dealing, and I started smoking again. That was the beginning of the end for me. He would smoke me up for free, give me discounts, entice me with fully loaded bongs, etc. How was I going to say no? I began to smoke everyday with my roommates and friends, stay up late at night, blow off my girlfriend, sleep until noon, miss classes, and then repeat. This went on for about six months, and the weed blinded me from the effects it was having on me and others. I had broken up with my girlfriend of 3 years, limited my contacts and visits with my parents, and eventually became a hermit inside my apartment. I also began to experiment with other drugs like shrooms, nitrous, salvia, and ecstasy. Each drug seemed unique and great in its on way, and as long as I was smoking weed, I was happy. That is, until I got mono.

Getting mono was a huge eye-opener for me. I was miserable for about a month, battling not only the symptoms of being sick, but also the symptoms of light marijuana withdrawal. However, through my recovery, I got back together with my girlfriend and didn’t touch weed again for another 3 months. I wish I hadn’t touched it again.

The beginning of my senior year was full of new energy and wonder. I felt like I was awake and seeing things with a brighter and keener sense. I tried to distance myself from those who smoked weed, but it was kind of hard considering most people in my college do some sort of drug. Eventually, I tried smoking again, and I got blazed. This started a familiar domino-effect that led me to buying a quarter-pound of shwag for my own personal consumption. My roommate also began to smoke with me and realized there was profit to be made. He put down a grand for a quarter pound of kind bud and began dealing to me and some friends.

Once again, I was smoking everyday, all day. I also began to make the same mistakes I had made in the past. I started ignoring my girlfriend, ditching classes, calling out of work frequently, and spending astronomical amounts of money on weed. I stopped taking my panic disorder medication because I thought weed took care of the symptoms, when in actuality it only suppressed them. I began to hang around very shady people who were doing more serious drugs like coke, speed, and heroin, although I never partook in any of those substances. I also began to grow shrooms for profit, but ended up consuming more than selling.

Financial issues were starting to pile up on me. It got to the point where I had my credit cards maxed out and I was over drafting my checking account just so I could smoke weed to forget that I had money problems. I was an emotional and physical wreck. I couldn’t eat, I was depressed, and the thought of killing myself passed through my mind at least once a day. I didn’t want my parents or my girlfriend to know about my problems because I was afraid of how they might take it. Eventually my body couldn’t take the constant stress and I couldn’t keep down any food regardless if I smoked or not. I finally called my parents.

My parents were still unaware of my situation when they took me home, but the inability to smoke started to take its toll. Anyone who tells you that marijuana withdrawal is “mild” is fucking crazy. I had night sweats, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I was nauseous and dry-heaving, I couldn’t concentrate, I was tired, I was irritable, and extremely depressed. I would cry for no reason and start having panic attacks out of the blue. Needless to say, I was completely miserable, and it felt like I was battling Hell in my mind. I didn’t want to wish the kind of pain and suffering I was feeling on anyone. I also realized that if this was considered “mild”, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have cocaine or heroin withdrawal.

Finally, when my internal battles got too strong, I told my parents about EVERYTHING. And the funny thing was, they already knew. They weren’t the least bit surprised and told me that they had suspected that I had been doing drugs for a while. However, they didn’t realize that it had gotten to the point that it did, and wanted to help me through whatever struggles I faced. I was extremely relieved to know that my parents weren’t upset and that they were also there to support me. From that point on, I made it a promise to myself to never push away my problems or those who love me.

After about a month and a half I was back to normal. I moved out of my apartment and back in with my parents. I also applied for a job and cleaned up my act. However, after the second day on the job, I got called back to the office because I had failed my drug test. Because I had been smoking high-grade weed in large amounts, the THC was still in my system after 45 days. Again, I was devastated. It felt like every time I took one step forward, I’d get pushed back two more. I was beginning to get frustrated and upset with myself and the decisions I had made in the past. Time went on, though, and about another month later I got a job working as a computer technician at a large retail store. Things started looking up, I was starting to put a dent in my debt problems, and my relationships with people were going great. Yet, there was still an itch in the back of my mind that kept gnawing at me day after day. I wanted to smoke again. I wanted to remember what I had grown to love, even though I knew it could bring me back to the problems I’d worked so hard to get through.

As you may have already guessed, I tried smoking again – this time after more than four months of sobriety. And of course, once again, I got blazed. It brought back all the wonderful, familiar feelings I had once known weed to bring me. Soon, I was buying weed again and smoking it on a regular basis. However, instead of using it to escape my problems, I used it as an avenue to relax after a hard day’s work. Yet, even using it this way will eventually lead to abuse with me.

So, after three months of regular use, here I am. I have just gotten over food poisoning which pretty much made it so I couldn’t smoke, and those dreaded withdrawal symptoms have returned. Although not as severe as last time, they are still enough to remind me of the mental torture that I had to experience, and I don’t want to go through it again. I don’t have my normal appetite and I am definitely more anxious than usual, but all in all I feel as though I can get back to normal by the end of the week as long as I don’t smoke.

I know I shouldn’t smoke, but it is always there beckoning and screaming for me to take one more hit. I have tried to rationalize by saying, “it’s okay as long as you do it once a week”, but deep down inside I know my self-control, and it’s not much. I am addicted to weed psychologically as I’m sure are many others. I’ve still got a bowl I just bought and about an eighth of some really good bud, but I don’t know when the next time I am going to try it again, if ever. It’s so hard to say goodbye to something that I have a love-hate relationship with. I think weed will always be with me, and I’m really not sure if I am ever going to be able to get past its profound effects. I pray that one day I can move on so that weed doesn’t have the importance in my life as it does now.

In reflection, I cannot say that I totally regret my decisions, although there are definitely some that I would like to take back. I was able to learn about myself, I gained new perspectives, met different people, and had a lot of fun. But my $8,000 debt, the strains that it has put on my relationships and family, the legality of it, and so much more have definitely put into perspective that this is not what I should be doing. I know this. I can’t help but think how my life would be had I not tried weed. But since I can’t change the past, all I can do is take one step forward and hope that I don’t get pushed two steps back.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 36678
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 11, 2007	Views: 41,041
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Cannabis (1) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Health Problems (27), Depression (15), Relationships (44), Addiction & Habituation (10), Various (28)