I like the person smoking all that weed has turned me into. I am very chilled out and not bothered as much by things, and I actually think I have gotten smarter. I am really happy where I am right now.
However, I have had to quit smoking weed because I absolutely despise how I am when I'm stoned now. Stoned me is a complete and utter burnout, a pathetic pussy around females when normally I have no confidence issues, and my priorities are way off. I don't converse nearly as well in social situations, and people who arn't stoned just seem like fucking robots to me. Smoking pot makes me hate the thought of having a career as an engineer. The addiction ended up really closing me up which is contradictory to the reason I got high in the first place- to expand my mind.
It is also the only drug I ever abused. I was smoking about an ounce a week for quite a few years, I'm 22 but I've blazed roughly 10,000 times in my life. I am really concerned about the often overlooked health complications of this behaviour. Obviously pounding drug smoke into your lungs from morning 'til night is really harmful and totally increases your risk of developing cancer. Something I never really thought about before because weed is supposedly 'so benign and harmless'. Also, smoking all that weed blatantly made me fucking retarded. It was harder for me to concentrate and read because I was so demotivated. However, all of this has cleared up since I stopped smoking.
At the peak of my addiction, before I quit a month ago, I was a suicidal wreck. Being on the pot so hard was without a doubt making me contemplate suicide on a regular basis. Those thoughts have completely subsided since I quit. Also, quitting was fucking HELL. One of the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Couldn't sleep and lost my appetite, but those were minor issues compared to the emotional fucking purgatory I went through for a week. I had lost the love of my life. Pot is absolutely everywhere and I have had to isolate myself from my social life. I don't trust myself being around that shit at all because even though it has been a month I still think about pot on a regular basis.
I have used mdma, cocaine (never again the stuff is for clowns, it's behind a fucking WAR, bad karma if you ask me, and so impure), and psychedelics pretty extensively and I have never felt a pull towards any of them like I did with weed. It is by far the most addictive drug for me. I like to cook really healthy food, and go to the gym 2 hours every day. Weed is the only drug that allows me to keep up this healthy lifestyle- I can still be good to myself as a stoner. Actually, it is probably the reason why I am such a healthy, physically active person in the first place! It made me very self aware of what I was putting into my body and how I was treating it. Like, junk food fucking sickens me now.
I have also met a lot of people in my life who are no doubt slaves to the dope as I was. It clearly has affected them negatively- they are university dropouts doing nothing with their lives, or social zombies, etc. I have never seen any other drug fuck up as many good people. Like, you know there are risks when you start on a hard drug. But weed is so accepted, everyone who smokes it acts like it does nothing to them, even addictions are overlooked because it is apparently 'unaddictive'. But the dope monster will suck you right in and steal a lot of love from your life.
So, yeah... that might have sounded overly negative. But smoking weed eventually set me on a great spiritual path. I now realize there is so much more to life than worrying about the ego. So, even though those 5 years of my life would have turned out complete differently if I had never smoked pot, at least I managed to still get an advanced engineering degree while high out of my mind. I really don't regret smoking pot, and not too many people seem to get really addicted to it such as I. And the long term effects are only positive so long as you can get away with it and get your degree or whatever you are doing with your life. It is the one drug I think you can abuse the hell out of without it forever negatively impacting your body and mind.
Oh and another thing, pot was a pretty good study aid for theoretical physics. Having a second point of view from an outside perspective never hurts when you're dealing with crazy fucked up math describing the universe.