Re: Smoking Weed
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I'm not even sure if I should respond to this, but what the hey, the Interweb is anonymous and I'm as much an attention whore as anybody else. So here we go...
I am a COA (child of alcoholics), my old man's sour mash was my 'gateway' when I was about 12. I smoked weed for the first time at 13. I (my phrase for it) 'turned pro' at 17, summer after high school. Never looked back.
Went through college day and night stoned. I should point out, I'm 41, so this is the early-mid 80's that I'm in school. I connected with some ex-hippie/hillbillies who grew in the Ozark Mountains. 'Skunk' as we called it, and thought it was indica strain but I'm having my doubts now, was $40 a quarter and plentiful. It was pale green with bright red hair, the buds were small and round, the plants rarely over four feet tall. My point is, in a day when most people were cleaning the seed out of their crappy 'Columbian' on fold out LP covers with the flap of their Zig-Zag packets, we were puffing pretty good [censored].
I did graduate, with a mediocre GPA from University of Arkansas. Take that as you will. My motivation was never great, and I've suffered from depression most of my life. Which caused the other, IMHO is a chicken/egg question.
I moved to Atlanta to look for work. Found an OK retail job selling cameras and video equipment, connected with new friends who smoked.... and nothing. That was it for almost ten years. I was stoned day and night. I chewed gum at work so I could do a presentation without horrible cottonmouth. I didn't look for anything better in life, because I still didn't know what I wanted to do, other than smoke dope. I paid my bills, drifted from gf to gf, and really didn't do anything.
As the Pink Floyd song goes, "...and then one day you find, ten years has got behind you..." I realized I had to get off the dime. Flailed from sales job to sales job, finally started self-studying IT stuff because of the mad paychecks IT geeks were pulling, and what the hell, nothing else was doing it for me.
I got a decent job and before long moved to California in 2000. Through an old college friend, made a connection my first day here. Hell, I was in heaven, I had a decent job for the first time in my life and some dude would deliver Mendicino county homegrown right to my door! (That's when I discovered my love of casino gambling, also...)
Finally I met my wife, which is what really woke me up. Now I'm married and have a great little daughter, I've been through some treatment for my depression, and life is much, much better than I ever thought it could be. I'm a night poster because my job now is working night shift in a NOC for a regional HMO. I'm pretty happy with it, and I see an upward career path. I'm actually in control of my destiny now.
But, I still hanker to get stoned. My wife hates weed, and that's a good thing because I am most definitely an addict. I would still score a quarter every few months, but I can't smoke 'in the evening'. I treat the [censored] like an addict. I am stoned day and night until it's gone. I consider myself 'on the wagon' now. I just can't touch that [censored] anymore.
I did harder drugs here and there along the way, I've done acid in the neighborhood of 50 times, and of course a fair bit of coke. However, weed was always my mainstay. I do not agree that it's a 'gateway' drug. Rather, I believe weed introduces a person to the drug subculture and the folks who run in it. One will take it from there, how far one wants to go.
My old best friend from high school, my #1 weed-blazing buddy, was killed in the mid-80's while robbing a liquor store. He wiped out on meth, by that time I barely knew who this person was.
That's the end of my long, long-winded story. I think I'm writing it as something of a warning to the youngsters here, though I can see their eyes rolling right now. So be it.
If I had applied myself all those years, maybe I could be in something more of a position of Jake the Bake, who is roughly my age and seems to have his [censored] well together. As it is, I'm behind the 8-ball, but at least I'm living now.
Good luck.
-ChipWrecked
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Great Post, I identify with some parts of it myself.
Indiana, take it from me, if it was a coinflip to try it or not, the egde would be on the negative side.
There's still so much we don't know about weed, including the diverse effects (long term) of the different strains and effects it has on some people, and possibly the way its grown.
Sure, you could try it once but MJ generally does make people fall in love with it and I agree with Chipwrecked that it's gateway is into that subculture.
I guess one of the things I really hate about MJ is the loss of motivation. You can't imagine how demotivating it is, and anyone who argues otherwise I can guarantee either a) doesn't do it enough or b) doesn't do anything physically demanding enough often (strenous exercise)
A common argument is "alcohol kills brain cells/people everyday/destroy liver" etc from the pro-Weed people, of which I used to be a part of, but they can't explain the otherside of the coin "weed can potentially cause either the same or a higher risk of lung cancer/weed can potentially cause mental illness and/or depression or 'bring it out in people who might have got it anyway" etc etc.
There are too many variables re: MJ and if I was you I'd stick to drinking a few beers now and then.
One last thing ... most people view addicition as physical addiction and cite alcohol and heroin, things that after your body stops recieving them after it is dependant it reacts with seizures and pain etc.
Physical addiction starts as Psychological addiction, and MJ is off the charts on Psychological addiciton ... just about no other drug causes the Romanticism that MJ causes with its subject ... it is truly that Psychologically powerful.
The problem with 'I'll try it once' is ofcourse Psychological Addiction, try it once and you'll probably try it twice and then end up doing a cone a day and equating it as a different 'beer' for you than everyone else. (ofcourse anybody who does do a cone a day knows its not for long, it eventually becomes 2-3 and then 4-6 as your tolerance goes up)
Stick to beer IMHO, may make you dumb and fat over time but better the devil you know.
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