I've been smoking regularly for three years now. The first time I tried it I was 9 or 10, and it was a joint that some older kids in my complex were smoking. I didn't smoke again until the summer between 7th and 8th grade and began to occasionally smoke once every few months after that. I stopped completely for the first half of grade 9, but in March of 9th grade when I turned 14 I started smoking every weekend with my best friend, and since then it's been a regular thing.
I'd say I smoke about 3-5 times a week, and I've cut down a lot in the last year. Last year I was smoking about 2-3 grams a day, every day for about 11 months. It was bad, I honestly should not have been smoking that much weed, and I was self-medicating, partially because I have back problems, mainly problems with my sciatic nerve that sometimes make it physically challenging to get out of bed, but also partially blocking out the world from all the bad stuff that was happening at home. I didn't want to live when I was sober, and smoking made it bearable. I have been 'unofficially' diagnosed by a psychiatrist as having borderline personality disorder, PTSD and a generalized anxiety disorder (basically, "You're not 18 yet so we cant slap a legit diagnosis on you, but this is what we think is wrong") so a lot of the time when I was sober I couldn't get comfortable, I was always incredibly on edge, my mind was constantly reeling, I felt empty and despondant, and it got to a point where I couldn't even laugh anymore, and I eventually began to have problems with depersonalization because I wanted so badly to not be me and not be in my reality, so I would sit down and smoke a half a gram or more in a sitting just so I could be so high that nothing really mattered, and the world when it was hazy and giggly and high, was fun. Not the way it was when I was sober.
Now my smoking habits are very different, I smoke almost every day, but I hardly ever smoke by myself anymore unless its for physical pain management (like I said sciatica and also it works wonders for my period cramps) so when I do smoke it's with friends, and I'll smoke between 2-3 poppers (.3 grams or so) with tabacco out of my bong and then we'll go watch a movie or play Settlers of Catan or we watch videos on youtube and then in three or four hours we might go smoke a little bit more and then continue doing whatever it is we were doing. Sometimes I still use marijuana as a coping mechanism for my anxiety, and PTSD symptoms, as it can work as a great fast-acting relief for an anxiety/panic attack.
As for the argument that marijuana is a gateway drug, I personally believe that isn't true. I know many people who smoke marijuana every single day and have never touched another drug. I actually know more people who don't smoke weed at all that like to do harder drugs. I've found that more often than not, people who are very into cocaine especially don't like marijuana (also when I was taking a lot of MDMA early on in high school I stopped smoking marijuana for about two months because I was always high on M). As for the fact that if you're buying marjuana it's more likely you'll be offered harder drugs, I agree, but I have been at bars before with my older friends where everyone is sitting around drinking and talking to people and somebody will offer drugs to one of my older friends, usually MDMA, painkillers or cocaine, those are the big ones in this city. I also think that people who smoke weed may be more likely to try other harder drugs, but I don't believe they are more likely to become addicted to them. If you are going to become an addict, I believe it's already in you no matter what you've tried before.
From personal experience, when I was in grade 10 my friends and were taking a lot of MDMA, 3-5 pills a week (which may not seem like a whole lot to a lot of people, but when you're 14-16 years old that's quite a bit and racks up to about 30-50 dollars a week just on MDMA alone. We all began smoking weed around the same time, and we all started taking MDMA around the same time. Out of the 11 of us that were doing it a lot, five of us moved on to even harder drugs. Out of the five that started doing harder drugs 3 of those 5 do not smoke marijuana anymore, those three choose cocaine as their drug of choice. 1 of us chooses to huff spray paint (we dont speak to her anymore), and the other one is on just about every drug you can imagine (he was already getting into heavy drugs in grade 9 and 10 when the rest of us were first trying MDMA). The other 6 of us, one no longer smokes marijuana for personal reasons and the other five do on a regular to occasional basis. I just think that if you're going to move onto harder drugs, it's going to happen somehow whether you smoke marijuana or not.
July 3rd, 2013 at 10:48am
