DOSE:

smoked

Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

First off, I think that marijuana is a great thing. It's from the earth and as Ben Harper would say, 'what's from the earth is of the greatest worth.' I do however have an interesting story to tell about my experiences with MJ.

In order to fully understand what happened to me I will have to give some back ground information about myself. At age 13 I broke my nose while sledding in my back yard. At an age of coming into myself this was an extremely hard thing to deal with. I was just begining puberty and was already insecure with myself enough. Breaking my nose gave me a huge loss of confidence. I would look in the mirror and hate what I was looking at. I would feel as if I were the ugliest thing that ever walked the face of the earth. This mentality carried on into high school when I first started experimenting with drugs.

I began smoking pot when I was 15 years old, my sophmore year. At first I loved it. My two best friends (since pre-school) and I would buy a bag and smoke out of our gravity bong up in the woods. ABout a month after I started smoking myself and the same two friends were arrested for drinking at a movie theatre. At that point my parents decided that I would not be allowed to hang out with my friends any longer.

Instead of heeding their advice I revolted. Everyday after school I would sneak up into the woods and smoke with them anyway. This is when the trouble began.

See, I had this terrible paranoia of the drugs being laced. Everytime I smoked I would believe that the drugs were, in fact, laced and I would actually trip. The effects that marijuana had on me were extremely powerful, much like the effects of an LSD trip. I wouldn't remember half of the experience and I was having visual effects from it. On top of the visuals, I was coming to major realizations of myself, finding parallels between myself and my father. I remember feeling that my drug enduced state was the state in which my father was in as a child...only he was sober the whole time.

It got to the point where I wasn't hanging out with my friends for their friendship, I was instead hanging out with them for their drugs. The weed made me feel like they knew this. It made feel like they could see right through me, as if I were as transparent as glass. Coupled with the fear of being caught by my parents and the fear of the weed we were getting being laced, I grew more paranoid each time I smoked.

Each smoking session presented a conflict. Instead of enjoying the high, I would spend most of my time considering all of the possiblities there were of me getting caught, and then in turn, spend time thinking of ways of getting out of it. I also remember each time I would smoke I would always say something that would not strike well with my companions, and they would strike back with a verbal assault. I remember when I would get high it would feel as if I were in the previous stage of my life. Except all of the tribulations I encountered I would fail instead of pass.

This pattern of living continued for about nine months. I then decided that marijuana was not the drug for me. The damage however was done. Because of the constant feeling of failure, my drug induced state actually carried over to my normal state. I firmly believe that in those nine months of smoking pot I regressed as a person. My social skills were at an all time low along with my self confidence.

I stayed clean for about 3 years then something happened to me. I realized what had actually happened to me from drug use. It felt to me that the only way to reverse what had happened was to begin smoking again. So I did.

What I did was I started smoking with the same people and would force myself into uncomfortable situations. By doing this I trained myself to function while on the drug. I also began experimenting with drugs like LSD and mushrooms. A strange occurence happened with them. I found that it was easier to handle myself while in the depths of an LSD or mushroom trip. I could talk to people easier, function properly, and just plain be myself. On top of that I found that in some cases the visual effects were much less vivid on psychedelics than on weed.

Well it has been two years since I started smoking again and I do feel that smoking weed has helped in the search for myself. Still I do have instances where I cannot be myself if I am stoned ( they occur when I'm with the people I originally started smokeing with and not with other people).

I did not post this article to scare anyone or to knock weed. I did if for education purposes..I hope that I wrote this piece in a way that everyone could understand. I'm sure there are people who will read it and think 'this dude is crazy' or 'that's not possible'...well first off I think I am a little crazy, in contrast, everything I said was true. I hope that whomever reads this better understands the nature of drugs and the effects it can have on others' psyches.

Exp Year: 1998	ExpID: 27424
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: May 2, 2006	Views: 19,497
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Cannabis (1) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Various (28)