DOSE:

repeated

smoked

Cannabis

(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

First off, I'm an 18 year old male and come from a very conservative, religious family with very authoritative, domineering parents. Up until now, they and everyone around me conditioned me with the concept of the 'shady, evil drug dealer that solely lives to ruin lives' and that ALL drug users are hopeless, lost, and are slowly degenerating to their death. I always thought that only the baddest of the bad boys did drugs, and that at the most I'd only get to know 1 or 2 people that smoked marijuana. I was around a good crowd, after all, and most of my friends were people I met at my church/through family friends.

My stance on marijuana changed after I did extensive reading on cannabis and its effects, pros, and cons online, from sheer curiosity. Based on my research, I concluded that marijuana wasn’t as bad as I was told. At this point I wasn't actively searching for marijuana; I just decided that I would be open to the idea of experimentation anytime in the future.

When I was 17, I started occasionally drinking alcohol at social events, and that was in moderation. I've never drank enough to get 'wasted' up to this date. Also, one of my friends I worked with tried smoking cigarettes and told me that it takes a while to get addicted, and convinced me that a few cigarettes wouldn't be detrimental to my health. I went ahead and smoked a few cigarettes here and there with him, but later on realized that I was not even inhaling properly. I've lost interest in cigarettes since and don't care much to try smoking again properly.

I can tell you that cigarettes are the true gateway drug--for me. Even though I was open to experimentation with marijuana, I had the notion that I should smoke cigarettes before smoking marijuana. Marijuana seemed like the next step up, and once I smoked cigarettes it just seemed ok and proper to try marijuana next.

Being my first semester in community college, I made some new friends. Some time in between my classes, they said 'hey, we're about to go smoke some bud... you wanna come?' At this point, I was not scared of trying bud as much as I was scared of the consequences of my parents finding out. Well, I reasoned that I had a couple more hours till I went home and that I wouldn't be high by then and they wouldn't notice anyway, but I had a test coming up in my next class and I didn't want to take it while high... I was worried I would fail it, so I told them that I will come with them but I won't smoke any bud. To my great surprise, they immediately said 'that's cool, no pressure, man.' and did not insist on me smoking marijuana like I expected them to.

I soon found out that they went to smoke bud pretty often... just about every other day in between classes. The second time I went with them I was smoking it but apparently I was just holding the smoke in my mouth and letting out it pretty quickly as one would do with a cigar. One guy noticed that and told me 'hold that shit in, man!' I sucked it in a little deeper but still not a proper inhale (I was trying to avoid the feeling where it burns my throat), but at the time I thought to myself that I did it right. I was expecting to get high but nothing came out of it and I wondered what all the big deal was because I smoked marijuana and still felt normal. The second time I smoked with them, it was the same thing pretty much. No proper inhale, no high.

One of the guys mentioned that he made brownies from cannabis and I was intrigued by this idea... Since I wasn't sure whether or not I was smoking right, the brownies MUST GUARANTEE the marijuana experience, right? I told him we should make some and he told me I'd have to chip in about an eight of bud... We picked up an eight and got to his house and we had all the supplies ready (brownie mix, etc). Well, he took out the bud and said 'wow, this stuff smells like hash... This is some super shit. You can't make brownies with this; you gotta make brownies with shake (crappy bud). We’re gonna smoke this shit!' (Later on I found out what we had was the Northern Lights strain)

Well, he rolled up a couple of joints and since I didn't want to smoke this bud incorrectly as well (the fact that I paid for it gave me extra incentive to get it done right), I let him know that I didn't think the previous blunts we smoked with his friends hit me that hard and that I want this stuff to work. He gave me a nice tip of breathing in some air after I take a nice drag of the smoke, and told me not to be afraid of the burning sensation and that if I don't cough, then I'm not trying hard enough...

So I took the biggest hits imaginable, breathed it in as deep as possible, and held it in for as long as possible... I even started feeling a little dizzy as I would if I kept holding my breath for a long time. I was coughing for a couple minutes non-stop and the back of my throat burned pretty harshly. We went through two joints this way.

Then we sat back and were watching Final Fantasy on his TV. A minute or so went by and I wasn't feeling any different, and I began to feel the disappointment of wasting bud and not getting it done right. I asked him 'Am I high?' and he said 'You'll KNOW when you’re high, trust me..' and I said 'then I guess I’m not...' to which he replied 'just relax and forget about it...'

About a minute or two later I asked him if he had anything to drink. I got up and followed him to the kitchen where he had some Coca Cola cans. As he handed me the coke, I looked at my hand holding the coke and felt like I just woke up in a dream. For a split second, I couldn't figure out why there was a coke in my hand and where I got it from. I asked him 'hey, did you just realize that you gave me the coke and I forgot that you gave me it and looked at my hand and realized there was a coke. Then I had to think about where I got it from and I remembered I got it from you!' Then he looked at me and smiled and said with the coolest voice ever 'yeah man, you’re stoned :)'

The next few moments felt like falling asleep and re-awaking in a new dream every 10 seconds. I had no paranoia or fear whatsoever... I was very amazed and pleased with my newly-found high... It felt out-of-this-world and much more than anything I could ever imagine being sober and inexperienced. Basically, I was pleased that marijuana did not disappoint me with a less-powerful feeling that I was expecting.

In my first minute of being high, I thought 'this is way cool! I'm aware that I’m in an altered state... why worry? I'm gonna make the best of this! I'm going to explore everything there is to it!’

I started walking back to the living room and to my delight life as I was seeing it was chopped up in 'frames'... I was watching my legs as I was walking forward and it gave me a Max Payne 'bullet-time' sort of a feeling, where everything is in slow-motion. Looking around, walking around, and generally turning my head gave me this delightful slow-motion feeling. None of life's animations seemed liquid at the time; everything came frame-by-frame. It's like greatly reducing the framerate on a video.

I proceeded to talk to my friend. I was laughing at everything he said. He has military experience and he started explaining to me how a mounted grenade launcher works. He was describing how to load and fire an RPG and watching his hand gestures was amazing and hilarious. No matter what he talked about, I laughed like crazy but I didn't really get that painful feeling in my abdomen like I'd get after I laughed for a long time... I felt like I could laugh the whole day.

We kept talking and I realized that in this state I could not take life seriously because I was extremely happy and carefree no matter what I heard... good or bad. Then for a minute I pondered how hard life would be if I had to go through the rest of my life in this state. I felt that I would be unreasonably happy with my family members no matter what the issue was at hand, and that they would try to express satisfaction or sadness and that I would not be able to relate empathetically and this in effect would sadden them further and insult them. But then I realized that this is just a temporary state I was in and keeping this in mind relaxed me and allowed me to forget about the dilemma.

At this point I felt very high. One thing that made me feel semi-sober any time I wanted was concentrating on the TV. I think having a TV on for the first-time user is a good thing.

After about half an hour in his living room, we decided to go outside. While walking I felt extremely excited and euphoric, to the point where my legs were shaking from sheer excitement and happiness. I had the biggest grin ever on my face, and just the act of walking over to the door and opening it felt like winning the lottery. Then I stepped outside and the weather was beautiful. It was about 75 degrees and sunny and there was lots of greenery. It was sort of a springtime scene.

I took a nice look around and everything was breathless. Everything was layered like a popup book. There was the background, the front-most layer (my friend), the second layer behind him (the bushes) the third layer behind that, etc. It was like watching a living, moving popup book. Watching my friend smoke his cigarette was incredible; canvassed on the existent but non-animate world, he seemed 100 times more alive than ever; he was like an amazing, meaningful existence in an artificial, meaningless world. Everything around was still beautiful, but it seemed to have no purpose other than just existing. My friend's existence was the only 'important' thing in the world... Everything else might as well not be there... the bushes, road, car, houses etc all seemed very artificial, like being in a dollhouse. The friend was the only thing filled with energy and meaning.

At this point I told him I should be getting back to college and he told me to drive over there, but I insisted that I could not drive in the state I was in. Then he told me to walk since the college was a 10-minute walk away. For the next 5 minutes, I told him that I was too afraid to cross the intersection that I would get confused and get run over. As much as he tried, he couldn't convince me that I'd make it fine so he walked me across the intersection and I walked over to the college. I greatly enjoyed the walk - it was filled with fresh air, great scenery, and overall calming.

At the college I got a hamburger and eating it was a main event of its own. I could feel every single element of the burger sliding down my mouth and throat; the buns, lettuce, tomatoes, sauce, all individually. That burger went down in 10 seconds flat and I got some large fries but the fries were not as enjoyable. They were dry and salty and being high magnified that 10 times but I finished them anyways; I wasn't gonna let good food go to waste. While drinking soda, I felt sort of like Casper the ghost, where I couldn't really feel the physical existence of my neck, mouth, and throat, but I could feel the stream of soda going down. It was very awe-inspiring. Imagine how Casper would feel if he were to take a drink or eat something... That's as close as I can get to describing the feeling of drinking something when I'm high.

For the next hour and a half I walked around and had some of the most pleasant conversations with random people around the college. Free of any inhibitions, I would happily talk to strangers as if I've known them for years and everyone was really friendly and accepting. The great part was the way I started noticing all of the subtle acts of body language by the people. I was gauging their true emotions and reactions by the body language I was subtly observing and paying much more attention to these details than their actual words. This allowed me an amazing level of control over the conversations and I could take it any way I pleased and make the person feel any way I wanted them to feel. Realizing this, I tried talking to a few girls around campus; the awareness of their body language made me feel like I had the ULTIMATE ADVANTAGE in the romantic world... I felt like the smoothest guy around, like a true Don Juan. It drove the women crazy and 2 of them asked to exchange numbers because 'I would be a good contact' for them. The third one I asked for her number and she readily gave it to me and seemed happy that I asked for it.

For the remainder of the high I just walked it off. When I became more sober, I reflected on my experience and felt like I had discovered one of life's greatest miracles. Those few hours felt like a lifetime, they felt like the best hours I had ever lived. I concluded that I was extremely pleased with the whole ordeal and definitely looked forward to smoking cannabis again.

The rest of the day when I was sober, I felt very friendly and mellow. This was a pleasant surprise to me considering that I am usually a tense, aggressive person who is always suspicious and ready to attack at any given moment. I blame the high testosterone level in me for this. When I got home, I had a great time with my younger siblings and actually felt like listening to them and spending time with them; usually I just feel like ignoring them and don't really pay attention to their words. I was also especially nice to my parents and they complimented me on the way I was acting. I thought maybe this was just a psychological effect from the relief of getting high and not being caught, but I get this friendly, mellow feeling after every time I get high, so the relief of not getting caught is not the case. I call this friendly, empathetic feeling the 'after-high.' It's like having a hangover where instead of having headaches and being depressed, I appreciate everything around me and are more empathetic and compassionate towards people. How much better does it get?!?

I simply love smoking cannabis because I have a lot of fun, it's very sensual, there is no bad hangover, it doesn't cause any neurological problems, and promotes appreciation of life and peace. To this day I still don't understand why the drug of choice of most of my friends is alcohol; it has lots of bad side effects and is nowhere near as fun as cannabis. I've introduced a few of my friends to marijuana, after informing them of the myriad of facts and clearing up all the myths and misconceptions they had, and they love it just as much, And I also discovered the sub-culture of marijuana... it turns out that 75% of my friends from church also smoke bud and even some of my cousins. It's pretty amazing.

Some people think marijuana is a waste of money. I beg to differ. For a dime-sack worth of bud ($10), I can roll a blunt that gets 4 people high (we make sure not to waste bud and we take good hits). That's about $2.50 per high per person. It's funny how all the sober, non-users think they come out ahead and wise. For my sober friends to have a good time, they can easily spend $50-$100+ in a day. All I gotta do is chip in $2.50 and I have 10 times more fun that they can even imagine having.)

I found it to not be physically addicting at all! I can easily smoke 4 times a day for a week straight then go cold-turkey and not smoke for a month at a time or more if I wanted. I don't abuse marijuana and only use it recreationally.

In summary, I give cannabis THREE THUMBS UP. It has done nothing but enhanced my life and has made me happier, more motivated, and appreciative. I thank God for creating such a wonderful plant!!!

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 52288
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 28, 2006	Views: 84,584
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Cannabis (1) : Various (28), Retrospective / Summary (11)