My Experience With Weed. Please Share Yours!

It’s not good. How is yours?

Photo by Chase Fade on Unsplash

Three of us were having a conversation about weed. All three, weed smokers at some point of our lives. One (me) already quit, another a sporadic user and another a regular one.

The sporadic user said weed didn’t do him much good. I said the same.

‘It’s because you haven’t smoked much. Once you get used to it, it won’t harm you,’ the regular user said.

‘No, I have tried it a lot! In fact, I have done everything to conquer it. I have tried to enjoy the mental games by strengthening myself. I have tried to use it, exploit it and conquer it. I have tried to enjoy the game it plays with my mind and smirk at it. But it just doesn’t work for me,’ I said.

After that, I got excited and shared one of my experiences with weed:

I was alone in an office one night. Everyone had left. I had some weed given to me by a friend. I went to the roof and smoked a stick, trying to tell myself I was now strong enough for weed to bother me. Strong enough to fight the paranoia!

For half-an-hour, I was strong. I was excited at the idea of having conquered the beast that had been responsible for many fits of anxiety, paranoia and depression. I was excited at the thought of having been a strong person now.

45 minutes in, I started to get dizzy and my mouth went dry. The thoughts were normal — largely because I was doing everything in my strength to stop a few from coming. I thought it was time for me to leave. Feeling dizzier and drier in the mouth by the moment, I shut down the computer, turned off the lights, locked the doors and left in my car. Aphrodisia had kicked in and I was in a hurry to go to my bed, open my laptop and do what lonely young men do!

The distance between the office and my home was 10 minutes. I must have been driving for about 5 minutes — still feeling dizzy — when I reached to a major junction. Cars and bikes with headlights stormed from all directions. I got blinded for a while. But I tried to maintain the traffic discipline and drove. But things had changed:

I got nauseous. Seriously dehydrated and experienced vertigo.

I struggled to keep my hands on the steering. My legs were shivering. I thought I could drive no more. But it was still rush hour so stopping the car wasn’t a good idea. I kept driving. It kept getting worse. My heartbeat went faster and louder. I don’t know what I did and how, but I reached home.

At home, as I parked the car and shut the gates. A strange question hit me:

‘I hit-and-run someone, didn’t I?’

I got more nauseous. Severely dehydrated and experienced serious vertigo.

‘I have hit-and-run!’ kept popping in my head.

‘The police will be here anytime now.’

Of course, the police didn’t come and after the attack was over I could recall clearly that I hadn’t done anything as such. But the impact was devastating. I don’t remember having smoked it since.

‘Yeah, it happens to some. Such people shouldn’t smoke,’ the regular user said after I narrated the incident.

‘How’s it with you?’ I asked.

‘Oh! I get hi~~~gh. I feel rela~~~xed. And the sexual side of it is just unbe~lie~vable. When I fuck while high, I go on and on and on…’ he said.

I wish I could use weed like that, now that I am married, I said to myself.

But why does it work on some and not on others, I wondered.

‘It must have something to do with blood-pressure and all,’ I had been explaining myself.

But yesterday I had a different perspective.

Maybe it isn’t about blood-pressure, maybe it is about character!

The regular user I talked about earlier is one of those fun-loving guys. He likes to go to parties, on trips to Goa and Thailand, watch and talk football. Take one day at a time.

Once I had tried talking classical music and philosophy with him but he kind of scolded me by telling me those things were for the boring or for the old.

‘Don’t waste your time on those things. Life is for enjoyment. Enjoy!’ he had said.

Of course, my version of enjoyment does include classical music and philosophy. And introspection and self-awareness and self-enquiry and mental exploration and all that!

But he isn’t someone who will sit and wonder why he or the universe exists. I will bet every dime on the fact that he doesn’t sit idle in front of a lake thinking of how deep he has reached in his wisdom about life. Nor will he sit in front of a sea questioning whether he should be powerful in society or not. He lives by the day and does what’s supposed to be done by a modern youth.

There’s where I see a difference in character:

I have done all those things (Sitting idle in front of a lake, sea, etc.)

I see myself as too self-aware (emotionally too) for weed. Yes, it does make all people self-aware but maybe not to the extent as it impacts me. Because I get emotionally traumatized by it. Because maybe I suffer from emotions too much. I have always been troubled by them. That’s why I say, it’s in the character.

Maybe I am being judgmental or maybe I am missing a trick or two. That’s why I would love to know your experience with this thing called weed.