DOSE:

repeated

smoked

Cannabis

(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

130 lb

I’ve always been relatively lonely, but this brings my loneliness to an all-new low. I’m writing this in the comfort of my living room where I’ve spent the past month, recollecting the broken shards of my life. In my opinion, it’s always been an emotional mess, but it’s only the choices I’ve made and the things in my life that I have done to make it worse. This is addiction. It’s mild, and maybe that’s the kind which is most obscured in life, but now I can finally see it, and the affect its had on my life.

I’m a pretty smart young handsome guy, I’ll give me that, and maybe that’s the reason why I’ve been able to dodge my depression all my life. My parents are divorced, which is the root of my depression. They don’t agree on anything, and they are two completely different individuals who cannot agree on anything, and I’ve always been stuck in the middle of it. I inherited these two personalities from my parents that are opposite in polarity, harbored them in my psyche, and it drives me insane. Over the years, and more notably the ones in the last two years of my High School carrier, I was beginning to get a good handle on my depression, until I met Marry Jane, and she ruined everything. It’s not her fault really. It was my choice to bring her into my life. Marijuana was heavily used by all of my friends, and I chose not to use it for so many years. I knew drugs were bad, but I had no idea why. I didn’t know about the affects it has on your psyche, and I was very curious. I guess my usage was more of a dabbling in a taboo, but it turned into a trip to hell, and now I’m on my way back.

I started using Marijuana once every two months with friends for fun, then, a couple years down the line, I started using it more and more with friends. One week during the middle of my senior year in High School, I started using it at night once a week, which turned into twice a week until I used it every night to get to sleep. I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t get my mind of my ex-girlfriend I broke up with a year ago. This was a lie I sold to my self so I could smoke. This is addiction working first hand. At first it was really fun. I stayed up and watched movies or played video games. I didn’t even like to smoke with my friends very much at this point although I did. The way I saw it, smoking with my friends took time (and weed) away from smoking it at home by myself. Most of the time I was high got really bad paranoia, at home, and with my friends, which is also part of the reason I didn’t like smoking with people, but still, I smoked.

When I got into college, it was a fucking free-for-all. I was at Santa Barbara City College in Isla Vista, the university town of UCSB. Girls, surf, weed, (oh yeah, and school) was what it was all about. Parting on an average of three to five days a week, there was hardly enough time for school. What made it even easier for me to feed my addiction was the fact that my roomie was a dealer, and my best friend from High School moved in down the hall from me in the dormitory. Things were perfect for the life I was living.

Still, I was very lonely. The only friends I had were people I smoked with. Relationships with friends that didn’t smoke diminished over time, relationships with my smoker buddies sucked anyway because I never invested any of my emotion anyway. I just smoked with them, and that was it. This isn’t Marijuana’s fault. It’s the lack of love for myself that was accompanied by weed that is to blame. I knew it the whole time, but I did nothing to help myself. I didn’t want to help myself. I hated myself in the first place, and Marijuana only eased the pain. I realize now that I needed professional help sooner than when I sought it. Even still, I sought therapy at a young age in Middle School, and it still did no good.

For a while I was able to sustain a decent GPA until the second semester rolled around. I quit going to class so I could smoke and play computer games down the hall in my best friends suite. By this time I was so broke, I just waited around in my friend’s dorm until they would smoke. I became a filthy mooch. I lost so much respect for myself because of it. Some weedless days, I would lock myself in my dorm room all day and mope around and wish that death would come and take me. I began to get very depressed and would not go to class and only went to work. Life sucked so bad I began to pity the distance from my window to the ground because it was not high enough to take my life. I began to wish death upon myself on most days, and it had become my hell.

The school year ended and I attended half a summer school session until I dropped out. I moved out of the dorms into the main party strip in Isla Vista. Things were fine for a while until I became very depressed again, and could not imagine staying another year in that shit-hole of a place, and I desperately wanted to move home. My parents understood and I moved back home where I only dug deeper into my Marijuana addiction.

In Santa Barbara, sometimes I would broker very cheap weed to my friends because I had the hooks but no money, and for this my friends would smoke me out. Upon my homecoming, I had attained enough knowledge about the slang-game that I was able to start selling. I never worked on fronts and bought all my own Bud. I got a job and after about a month I was pushing two ounces, every three days, which was enough for me to smoke for free and make money. I knew I was pushing small-time, but it was a nice little nitch I had made for myself. This bubble was short-lived, and burst after I started getting into selling other drugs (i.e. ecstasy, coke). I was also, once again very curious about these drugs which were fairly new to me especially coke because I never had the money to do any. I never got addicted to coke, but I did have a landslide run-in with ecstasy that pretty much put me out of business because I hadn’t enough pills and was taking most of my stash. Plus I was dealing out of an ice cream shop I was working in at one point, and shit was getting hot.

After I went broke, I figured it was time for a change in a big way. There comes a point in your life when you’re so fed-up with the life you’re living, that you just can’t see yourself ten years down the road as a happy person any more. I decided it was that time for me. I was tired of hiding everything from my parents and living a double life. I was tired of driving around with enough drugs and paraphernalia to land my in jail for 4-6 years with a felony. I also resented the fact that keeping drugs in my house also put my parents in danger as well.

One day, I came out to my Mom as she got home from work. I sat her down and brought out my smoking pipe (named spot) and a jar of weed. I explained everything to her except for the dealing because she would have never understood. I told her about my addiction and that I wanted to stop. I told how depressed I was and that I wanted help. It was time for change and she understood that very well. Her reaction was priceless. She had no idea but replied, “So, that’s why you look like shit all the time”.

“Yes, mom, that’s the reason why =)”.

I felt that a big load had been lifted off my shoulders, but I knew I had a long road ahead of me. Four weeks following my confessions where the worst days I’ve seen in a long time. I was angry all the time and didn’t want to talk to anybody. I also got a therapist again to help me out with my depression. Last week I had a relapse after being clean for a month and two weeks. I smoked for a week and realized why I can’t smoke it any more. I’m not even searching for euphoria any more. I’m just searching for a mind alteration to take me away from my current, painful train of thought. My therapist understood and is now tying to put me on anti-depressants, which I think I have needed all the while.

I’m also attending my first Marijuana Anonymous meeting today. I really nervous about it and I don’t want to go, but I know it will work out for the best anyway. At least I’ll get to meet people like me. It’s hard for me because I know the problem isn’t mainly Marijuana, it’s my depression. When coupled together, they take me down. As long as I have a therapist to guide me, I have confidence I’ll make it through this. It was her idea to go to MA (Marijuana Anonymous), and I trust her, so, “what the hell?” I thought. Thinking about it, having a therapist and going to MA addresses both of the things in my life that are taking me down, depression, and Marijuana.

All my life I’ve searched my soul. I’m 19, and I realized yesterday on a four-mile hike, well, you couldn’t explain it. Sometimes you reach a point in your life when you know you’ll be OK. Things are beginning to make sense and come together in my life, but I couldn’t have gotten here without my parents. Once you bring family into your situation, whatever it maybe, people who really care about you won’t let you slip again. You’ve just got to make a decision to let them into your life. There comes a point when you’ve got to let yourself be helped. My next obstacle: to let myself be loved by others and myself.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 52875
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Apr 8, 2007	Views: 55,929
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Cannabis (1) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Depression (15), Addiction & Habituation (10), Not Applicable (38)