slimvictor
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2008
- Messages
- 6,483
After 13 years of daily use, I stopped smoking weed. But quitting only made me feel better about the drug
My relationship with pot started off badly. I lost all my high school friends after self-righteously refusing to smoke. I preached at everyone until our friendships evaporated. “I know if I try it, I will like it too much,” I remember saying — perhaps the only smart, true statement I would utter for many years to come.
The hardest friend to lose was a guy I’ll call Kevin. Kevin got me off Ratt and onto The Smiths. He got me playing guitar, which continues to provide me with happiness and social adventures at the age of 39. Without Kevin’s musical influence, I surely wouldn’t have moved from Florida to my beloved New Orleans after college. I worshipped Kevin until junior year, when he began smoking weed and abandoned me and my antidrug bitching. That same year, Kevin’s parents bought him a very nice car, which he crashed while skipping school and tripping on mushroom with his new drug buddies. At the time, I felt depressed but also extremely right.
When I finally broke down and tried pot in college at the age of 20, I realized I’d judged it totally wrong. Judgments regarding weed never prove factual, since the drug affects everyone differently. Some people plant themselves on the couch with snacks. Others grow manic and suffer panic attacks. I think of weed as a relaxant, a simple inverse of coffee — and not just because I smoked every morning for a long, long time.
Weed never made me unproductive. In fact, it helped me work. I’d leave fun parties because, within moments of smoking, I had to rush home and produce something: record a song, write a story. If asked, doctors might claim I suffer from ADD, although I’ve mostly lived by the advice “never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” I did visit a counselor once in hopes of replacing weed with a nonsmokeable drug that my daughter couldn’t see me take and that wouldn’t get me arrested. I told the counselor we could skip all the talking if he could refer me to a psychiatrist with a prescription pad. First though, I told him how much weed helped me. He nodded, confidentially agreed, then gave me a number I never called. I feared pills would kill my libido and my desire to record music and write, whereas weed made me more horny and creative. So, no thanks, doc.
Most important, though, weed made me calm and nice. I grew up in a tumultuous, mildly violent Irish household, which burdened me with lifelong anger issues. Before becoming a real and true pothead, I fought ferociously with my long-term college girlfriend — a fiery girl herself who was prone to throwing punches. Like my mother, I had trouble getting along with everyone. Unlike mom, though, I refused to ignore the common denominator: me.
So the discovery of pot was, for me, a mellowing godsend. Weed severely dampened my anger. My volatile girlfriend and I enjoyed more mindblowing sex while high. Also, once I officially gave in to a pot lifestyle, my brain slowed down by the perfect amount to let me, for the first time ever, sit and enjoy a book. I was even able to organize my thoughts enough to write a few books of my own.
Weed always provided outstanding musical companionship. Life never felt more perfect than when it was reduced to just me, pot and a four-track recorder. I remember wearing headphones and smoking a fat joint at the moment I received the phone call telling me I’d failed the drug test required to sell guitars at a Florida music store. That sounds ridiculous, but businesses whose employees pass drug tests get nice insurance breaks. “We all smoke here,” admitted the flustered guitar store manager. “How could you let this happen?”
Years later, I passed a drug test at New Orleans downtown public library with the aid of an orange drink called Vale, and then I began counting down six months of probationary days until the second test. Unfortunately, my library bosses loved me so much that, after five months, I arrived at work to news that they wanted to make my employment permanent immediately: “Just walk around the corner to the clinic and get the stupid drug test out of the way, and you’ll be ours forever!” announced my sweet old-lady boss. Despite first ducking into Walgreens and purchasing a tiny bottle of bleach to hide between my butt cheeks (I’d been told bleach confuses piss tests), I lost that job. It felt like being fired for drinking coffee.
Humiliated, sad and broke, I nonetheless refused to quit smoking, vowing to never again apply for a job that required drug testing. I’d also, by that point, realized I should never, ever try any “real” drugs (“I know if I try it, I will like it too much”). I have stood by both of those convictions ever since.
cont at
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/confessions_of_a_pot_addict/singleton/?google_editors_picks=true
My relationship with pot started off badly. I lost all my high school friends after self-righteously refusing to smoke. I preached at everyone until our friendships evaporated. “I know if I try it, I will like it too much,” I remember saying — perhaps the only smart, true statement I would utter for many years to come.
The hardest friend to lose was a guy I’ll call Kevin. Kevin got me off Ratt and onto The Smiths. He got me playing guitar, which continues to provide me with happiness and social adventures at the age of 39. Without Kevin’s musical influence, I surely wouldn’t have moved from Florida to my beloved New Orleans after college. I worshipped Kevin until junior year, when he began smoking weed and abandoned me and my antidrug bitching. That same year, Kevin’s parents bought him a very nice car, which he crashed while skipping school and tripping on mushroom with his new drug buddies. At the time, I felt depressed but also extremely right.
When I finally broke down and tried pot in college at the age of 20, I realized I’d judged it totally wrong. Judgments regarding weed never prove factual, since the drug affects everyone differently. Some people plant themselves on the couch with snacks. Others grow manic and suffer panic attacks. I think of weed as a relaxant, a simple inverse of coffee — and not just because I smoked every morning for a long, long time.
Weed never made me unproductive. In fact, it helped me work. I’d leave fun parties because, within moments of smoking, I had to rush home and produce something: record a song, write a story. If asked, doctors might claim I suffer from ADD, although I’ve mostly lived by the advice “never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” I did visit a counselor once in hopes of replacing weed with a nonsmokeable drug that my daughter couldn’t see me take and that wouldn’t get me arrested. I told the counselor we could skip all the talking if he could refer me to a psychiatrist with a prescription pad. First though, I told him how much weed helped me. He nodded, confidentially agreed, then gave me a number I never called. I feared pills would kill my libido and my desire to record music and write, whereas weed made me more horny and creative. So, no thanks, doc.
Most important, though, weed made me calm and nice. I grew up in a tumultuous, mildly violent Irish household, which burdened me with lifelong anger issues. Before becoming a real and true pothead, I fought ferociously with my long-term college girlfriend — a fiery girl herself who was prone to throwing punches. Like my mother, I had trouble getting along with everyone. Unlike mom, though, I refused to ignore the common denominator: me.
So the discovery of pot was, for me, a mellowing godsend. Weed severely dampened my anger. My volatile girlfriend and I enjoyed more mindblowing sex while high. Also, once I officially gave in to a pot lifestyle, my brain slowed down by the perfect amount to let me, for the first time ever, sit and enjoy a book. I was even able to organize my thoughts enough to write a few books of my own.
Weed always provided outstanding musical companionship. Life never felt more perfect than when it was reduced to just me, pot and a four-track recorder. I remember wearing headphones and smoking a fat joint at the moment I received the phone call telling me I’d failed the drug test required to sell guitars at a Florida music store. That sounds ridiculous, but businesses whose employees pass drug tests get nice insurance breaks. “We all smoke here,” admitted the flustered guitar store manager. “How could you let this happen?”
Years later, I passed a drug test at New Orleans downtown public library with the aid of an orange drink called Vale, and then I began counting down six months of probationary days until the second test. Unfortunately, my library bosses loved me so much that, after five months, I arrived at work to news that they wanted to make my employment permanent immediately: “Just walk around the corner to the clinic and get the stupid drug test out of the way, and you’ll be ours forever!” announced my sweet old-lady boss. Despite first ducking into Walgreens and purchasing a tiny bottle of bleach to hide between my butt cheeks (I’d been told bleach confuses piss tests), I lost that job. It felt like being fired for drinking coffee.
Humiliated, sad and broke, I nonetheless refused to quit smoking, vowing to never again apply for a job that required drug testing. I’d also, by that point, realized I should never, ever try any “real” drugs (“I know if I try it, I will like it too much”). I have stood by both of those convictions ever since.
cont at
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/confessions_of_a_pot_addict/singleton/?google_editors_picks=true
But honestly IMO, since the weed wasn't stopping you from having a more or less productive life (as you were working/living) and it helped you be less angry and more happy, I'd say cutting it out, at least entirely, is unnecessary. Be it that the not working for a drug testing company anymore part is a good idea, their tests shouldn't mess with your lifestyle (essentially your hapiness)- they should inspire you to act against the laws that allow them to remain and keep weed illegal. You weren't a crack addict throwing away his life and all his money in something that would eventually kill him, nor were you on probation where smoking and failing a drug test would end you up in jail. It could be worse... Not to say you should start up again on anything drug related, but you should do what makes you happy; of course always modestly and within reason -you only get one life, live it to its fullest.
