Splits from the Bong
I first tried weed in high school but I didn't feel anything, as often (always?) reportedly happens. The second time was in college, when I first attended after high school, at the age of 18. That time marijuana intoxication felt profound, and I think I became 'addicted' then, in some sense of the word; I really liked it, at least. I remember feeling so free, and so creative. I would say crazy things and do crazy things. I had an irresistible urge to socialize, in overly intense and strange ways, and I got myself into trouble a few times.
For years I would smoke it whenever I got it, which wasn't often, in Maryland from 1993 to 2015; a few times a year if I was lucky. Then I moved to California and I could buy it at the store like a drunk buys liquor. For a while it was great -- I'd come up with great ideas and write them down in a text file, or compose music, draw pictures, invest in bitcoin, cut off two of my guitar strings to make my own brand new instrument, or drive out and play the recorder in the McDonalds parking lot. I think weed makes me more creative, in an overly intense and temporary way, and reduces my anxiety (notably social anxiety), in an overly intense and temporary way; marijuana intoxication is not all bad, like anything I suppose. On inconsistent average I smoked 1 to 5 one-gram or half-gram joints a week, for seven years, which is not a huge amount compared to some users, but it's a decent steady stonage, man. I was a pothead.
Then something HAPPENED: pot stopped feeling profound, and I only got the proverbial "workin' man's high": get the munchies and go to sleep. I think this was more a change in psychology than physiology; I got tired of "plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines" (-- Pink Floyd, "Time") and stopped paying much attention to my stoned mental acrobatics. I think they still took place, but the volume got somehow turned down on them, or maybe I just didn't give them a special status and therefor remember them as well. At any rate they got put more in a more appropriate place: "not reality."
Around about the time of this change on how I regarded my own intoxication, I also recognized that I was somehow addicted to weed -- that I liked it a little too much, especially considering that I'd just smoke, pig out, go to sleep, and wake up feeling shitty. There's A NARRATIVE IN THE CULTURE that weed is not addictive, but I and many others experience it as addictive. It might only be addictive in the way that anything that triggers dopamine can be: food, goal-oriented work, exercise, etc, but I think there's something else going on with drugs per se. Maybe it's their pushbutton nature -- light up, smoke up, feel good, while there's nothing really *there* otherwise, as opposed to, say, with physical exercise, which is more 'a thing' apart from its neurochemical impact. I think the way reality is supposed to work is, you do a thing, and it feels good. Doing drugs doesn't really count as "doing a thing" so it's like you're just feeling good with no real material, product, benefit, or importance to it. This drug nature of weed, or my dependency, or just "liking it too much" seemed somehow not right, so I tried to limit my smoking. At one point I was down to 1 joint once every two months, and I thought I could sustain that. But the problem was, believe it or not, that I would look forward to that 1 joint for 60 days -- that was the main event (or close to it) in that period of time.
So, I decided to quit weed. It's been about 3 months now since my last joint. I had a close call one day when I drove to the weed store and parked outside it and sat in my car for a little while, but didn't go in, instead just getting drive thru Mexican food. Which reminds me: it's very hard to control eating while being a pothead. I have done it in the past but it's not reliable. Another strike against weed is the severe suicidal depression that reliably takes place after a weed bender (or even just 1 joint). These two issues (munchies and depression) are the biggest 'real' reasons I quit ('real' as opposed to simply not wanting, for nebulous or intuitive or emotional reasons, to be substance-dependent).
That is my minor little addiction story. I don't suppose it compares to meth or crack or heroin users' experiences but it's at least a little shadow of that. At this point I think I can say that I hope I never smoke weed again. Edibles don't grab me in the same way; somehow the addictive mechanism isn't there, for me. Maybe others have experienced something similar? So it's kind of a good version of a catch-22: with edibles, I don't really even want to do them so why do them, and with smoke-ables, I like them so much I'm addicted so I should not do them. This means no weed. Also, the taste of marijuana edibles disgusts me; I have had to hold back vomiting at times. Even when I take THC pills the oily weed burps afterwards make me shudder.
Maybe weed is not a that big deal, but it would still feel like a failure if I smoked a joint now. And there's something else: I don't like the different world that weed puts me in. Or rather, I don't like that that world goes away in a couple of hours and all that profundity and experience and etc amounts to nothing; it seems like a cruel or just bad joke. In the Rasta religion weed is a sacrament. Maybe they use rituals and tropes to cope with addiction, like only doing it at very special times or something. A guy I worked with who tried LSD wanted to save it for special occasions and maybe this is what you have to do, or should do, in order for drugs to be spiritually meaningful. If you smoke up all the time you get used to it.
Even on my deathbed, I don't want to do weed again. In fact that would seem like I was cheating myself out of my final 'real' experience, instead just taking a fake weed trip that isn't 100% "me." I can see that the dopamine you get from weed is the same dopamine you get from food or exercise, but somehow it seems and feels different, as I detailed. I don't know a lot about this, but apparently your brain has receptors that are basically tailor made for weed, which is weird.
There are other things to say about weed: 1) legality, 2) aesthetics, and 3) user culture.
1) People are in jail, sometimes for 10, 20, or more years, for marijuana possession and distribution. I think this is more nuanced and not such a travesty as it's made out to be. I mean yes, it's bad that people suffer in jail, and maybe jail itself is not an evolved way to cope with lawbreakers, but if you break the law you break the law. I remember in a movie about prohibition, the character played by Kevin Costner (Elliot Ness?) refused to ideologically defend prohibition but only says that alcohol is against the law, and he is a cop, so he's going to bust moonshiners. I like this for some reason. I don't know enough to have much of an opinion on broad drug legalization, but there are logical issues that existed before and are becoming more glaring now: why are mushrooms and LSD illegal, if weed is legal? Crack, heroin, meth, etc, are more harmful, so I can see a line that could be and is drawn there. The Portuguese government experimented with broad drug legalization, which I glean, with cursory glances and web hearsay, was a success. Maybe broad legalization is just a matter of time, but I don't think it's a clear cut issue.
2) Weed stinks. It's gross. It's on fire. People don't want it around, ostensibly for those aesthetic reasons but I suspect also because its social stigma colors it bad. Just like with any drug, handling it, playing with it, and the machinations of smoking marijuana become part of the whole thing. I never learned to roll a joint, that said. But I had pipes and bongs and lighters and so on, which of course I ritualistically threw away, as one does. I even built a device I never saw anyone else use: secure a cheap Bic or Bic-type pen -- the kind you find in hotel lobbies -- and gut it (yank and pry out the writing tip, ink tube, and end cap). You now have a white plastic tube with "Marriott" written on the side, into which will fit perfectly and snuggly, as if designed that way, a pre-rolled joint, which are all the same size I think for no other reason than it makes the most manufacturing sense ("Why is a soap bubble round?"). Stick your joint in your pen tube and puff away -- now you don't set your nose on fire when you light up. Genius? Yes. Roach clips, as seen in The Big Lebowski, are dumb, because they don't place the joint further from your face, but only further from your fingers.
3) It seems that the 420, Bob Marley, Cypress Hill, black-lit leaf poster, tie-dyed, "1960s without the social conscience" thing has died down in the face of marijuana legalization. Now people of all stripes just smoke it, just as all kinds of people drink alcohol but don't make a big deal of it or engage with related props. If you were into weed culture then this might be perceived as a loss, but I never was. It seems contrived, hamfisted, and adolescent, sort of like heavy metal songs about demons and wizards (which I like).
It's sort of interesting that I mostly quit drinking when I turned 21, and quit weed around the time -- not precisely but pretty much -- when it was made recreationally legal in California. The further away I get from weed the more I realize what a big part of my life it was and that I'm mostly, I think, happy to have left it behind. I've been able to take up meditation and regular exercise I think in part to fill the hole left by quitting, and in part because weed made me lazy (another good reason to quit). And now I'm blogging again!
Say "not right now" to drugs.