DOSE:

Cannabis

(daily)

BODY WEIGHT:

82 kg

Ever since I was a kid, I have always been a very active one. I was rushing from one thing to another always giving one hundred percent of myself.

I first smoked cannabis when I was 17 years old at a party with some friends. The first time I did not feel a thing so I was convinced it had no effect on me. Therefore I did not do it anymore till about one year later. That year I was in the last year of high school and we decided to smoke after school. This time I really felt the effect of the drug. Everything was so hilarious, all I could do was laughing up to the point where my abs started to hurt. Because of this mind-blowing experience and the fact that it seemed to have no side effects, my friends and I started to smoke twice a month or so.

I remember that everything was special when I had smoked weed. All sensations were perceived with a stronger intensity. For example when I would watch a movie when I was high, it was really like a 'lived' the movie, music too was one intense trip, a conversation with friends seemed to have so much more depth. If we would smoke with some friends, we would be sure to have great times just by being stoned and laughing and all. Yeah those were good times. Meanwhile our use of cannabis started to rise to almost every day of the weekend and occasionally during the week.

After the last year high school we all went to the university in the same town (our hometown). However I was the only one that decided to leave my parents house and live by myself. I wanted to be my own master. By this time almost all my (close) friends smoked weed and we hardly ever saw each other without smoking a few joints because there was always somebody who had weed on him. When nobody had any and we were at a party for example we would put all our efforts into finding some weed so we could have a good time together, sometimes wasting half of the time we spent at that party. Because I was the only one who had my own place indoor smoking (in winters) was always done at my place, so I was always there whenever there was smoking done in our group of friends.

Not only did I smoke with my friends but I also started smoking more and more when I was alone. I started buying weed more and more, and whenever I had my own weed I would smoke a lot (say 2 grams a day - 10€ - Belgian price). I would smoke at every possible occasion up to the point where I started inventing occasions. 'Hey it's saturday morning, seems like a fun moment to light a joint'. All was still going fine as I still had no side-effects.

During the next few years I kept smoking at that pace. However over time I started to feel more and more of the less enjoyable aspects of smoking weed. At first I didn't get the same high I used to get before. There was less laughing, music still felt special but it was no longer mindblowing. At the same time my friends and I felt like we needed to be high in order to be able to have good times. After that I started to act weird and suspicious and guilty whenever I was high. While being high, it sometimes felt like friends I had known my whole life, weren't being real to me, even though they probably were being real. I would say the weirdest things, and than be surprised they couldn't keep up with my train of thoughts. We used to joke about it and say I was being dysfunctional again.

More and more I also started to forget things and become lazy. I saw no reason to get up but to smoke a joint. And once I had smoked that joint I would be so tired and lazy again that I was not able to do much more than to stay in bed. This became so bad up to the point that last year I did not do much more than spent my time in bed or in the sofa. I don't know whether it was because of all this laziness or the weird conversations I started to have with myself in my head but at night I could never fall asleep. Whenever friends came over I would be so very dull and idle and unable to joke about anything. Luckily I have always been a good student and never did I fail my exams. I often felt like I did not want to smoke but I could not resist it. I am sure I was (and still am) addicted. A few times I said I would quit but my record was only 22 smoke free days and that was an exceptionally long period. Most efforts to quit ended the next time I smelt weed.

One month ago I had to leave to another country to do research for my thesis (I am in my fifth final year of university). And in this country it is very hard and dangerous to get weed, especially coming from Belgium where it is as good as legal, and therefore not being used to be careful. So I did not smoke anything during this time. During this month I have felt my head become more and more clear. It is like the fog has been lifted in my had. This however does not mean that I don't feel like smoking a joint again. Every day I spent time thinking how nice it would be to just relax and smoke a joint.

Now that I am back in Belgium I have had a few times the opportunity to smoke but I succeeded in saying no. Every time I said no I was really glad I said so, even though I would really like to be high once again. There are still a lot of my friends that smoke weed and most of them are able to do it in a controlled way. Me however, I know I will never be able to handle cannabis like the casual fun thing it was when I first did it. I just hope I can hold on and stay sober from now on. I just hope I can become that very active person I used to be again, step by step, no by no.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 57929
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Aug 26, 2009	Views: 12,226
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Cannabis (1) : Addiction & Habituation (10), Not Applicable (38)