I’ve done it. I’ve smoked weed twice since I’ve been up here. The first time was on Friday, and I had a great experience. The day began with Erin taking me out for a sushi buffet for lunch. Afterward, at her house, I sipped on a Tequila Rose cream liqueur while she rolled up a reasonably thick joint comprised of two different types of marijuana. After we smoked it, we sat on the patio, smoking clove cigarettes and talking about the nature of perception. I also had a very nice cigar and drank a cup of chai tea while I was there. I felt myself slipping to the dark side of introversion and paranoia a couple times, but each time I was able to talk myself out of it. The more I talked, the better I did. It was one of the best times I’ve had in awhile.
The second time I had breakfast with Erin & Al DeLarge at the Waffle House, then we went to Erin’s house to get high and play Rock Band. I took a reasonably large hit off of the vaporizer, but I must have done something wrong because I got absolutely no high out of it. I don’t get it. Erin and Al seemed
blitzed. We had a decent enough time but it was rather short as Al had to get back to his wife.
Me and weed have had a tortured history. I first started smoking it back in 2000, when I was hanging around with Christian all the time. I had been exposed to it before but never picked it up as a habit. Christian, however, was a full-edged psychological addict. Before it was all over I was smoking three to four joints a day — there was never a time that I didn’t want to be high, there was no activity I wished to engage in while sober. They’ve released studies saying that marijuana abuse is connected with psychosis, so I don’t know if any of this played into any of the illness that hit me later. Al thinks all such studies are bullshit, but in all the books I’ve read there does seem to be a correlation between drug abuse and the emergence of mental illness. So I don’t know.
I was a pretty useless sack of shit during that time. Not that I’m not now . . . . Well actually I guess I’ve always been a useless sack of shit. Back then though, instead of just playing videogames, I got high and played videogames. I let my apartment get filthy. I shirked my job responsibilities — I was working for Erin at her startup company, though, so not much was required of me. Every month I assigned so many hundreds of dollars as “weed money” to be smoked away as fast as possible. It seemed like all my friends picked up the habit, also.
After my illness, though, I found that marijuana sometimes gave me extreme paranoia fits. I would think that the fourth dimension was imploding, or that black helicopters were sure to whisk down and take me away for having drug paraphernalia on my person (a Class D felony the second time around). I would sit in stone silence no matter who I was with, wrestling with my internalized fears. I eventually decided enough was enough and swore off the stuff, moving back to [REDACTED] to escape my friends’ influence. I’ve been clean for about two years now.
Until now. I don’t know what this means for the future. I probably won’t start smoking it anywhere near the degree I used to, but I may indulge once every two months or so whenever I visit Lexington. Unless I have a bad trip again, that would probably put a quick end to it. Right now I don’t particularly want any. There has always a danger of a slide into addiction once again, though — I’m sure my family and my Therapists would be up in arms and tell me never to go to Lexington to visit ever again. Most of my friends don’t seem that concerned. I’ve had one of them tell me that they thought marijuana was the ideal medication for my depression. Another basically told me my fits of paranoia were my own fault, and that “it’s all about the attitude you have going into it, man.” He says that he sees no reason for me not to smoke weed, given that I . . . . have basically no prospects. We shall see–