Coming to terms with an adolescence of cannabis use

I have now spent exactly 25% of my entire life “in a relationship” with cannabis – from the age of 15 I have been a pretty much an every day smoker – I am now 20 and facing a lengthy term in prison – whether the cannabis is to blame or not the simple fact is that I would not be looking at this sentence had I never smoked cannabis.

I first started smoking cannabis at my second boarding school when I was 15 – I had tried it earlier but always deemed myself too young and too good a footballer to pursue it as a hobby however having started smoking and seeing the majority of people in the upper years smoking weed I never saw anything wrong with it – I even remember the first few times I smelt the stuff it reminded me of my mother as I later found out that she was rather partial to a joint or two back in her day – and if your mum does it then that immediately kicks down any barriers between right and wrong that are manifested in every teenagers head by teachers, newspapers, parents (and anyone else who does not have a clue about what cannabis is/does).

I think the teachers did know that drugs were a problem at my school – probably why we had a guy come in and do a talk on drugs and about how he fell off a three story building whilst on LSD – hence why the crutches and limp that he wore were a permanent addition to his body. It was in fact an extremely interesting talk which I enjoyed a lot – far better than triple PE or whatever it was replacing, however I was also interested to find out that another of my good friends (who lived on the street opposite me in London but also went to a boarding school in Cambridge) had actually smoked a spliff with this same guy after the talk he’d done at his school – no surprises there. I could sit here and preach all day to my little sister about how she should never smoke weed however if she was to offer me a joint after of course I’d say yes.

I must also say that I went to an extremely old fashioned (and therefore boring) school in the heart of the Cambridgeshire countryside where if you can handle watching the same dvd or playing the same Playstation game for the whole year you will never ever have the urge to smoke or take drugs – if however you are slightly creative I’m afraid weed and smoking is the best option as the fun and companionship involved with this makes long summer evenings sitting in fields with a guitar making fires an absolute joy – those evenings were certainly some of the most care free and best of my life.

I would be lying if I was to say that my personal/school/university life hasn’t been affected by this intense relationship however I would also be lying if I was to say that cannabis has done nothing but harm to my life – most if not all of my fondest memories involve some sort of joint or bong – it is perhaps these views however as to why I find it so difficult to kick this habit – although I am constantly arguing with myself and the law over this. However I must also admit that before smoking cannabis I had aced every single exam that I ever took – the next 15 I took (GCSE’s, AS and A levels) saw me take home only 7 A’s – from this a journalist could now conclude that cannabis makes you 56% less bright – which is wrong, its because previous years that I had spent revising I was now spending getting stoned and listening to music. In actual fact it’s a miracle that I managed to scrape any A’s whatsoever after 15 as all exams were a product of no work.

One of my biggest problems with smoking so much weed over the years has been the eventuality of holidays, especially since my dad used to own a travel company only until last Christmas, I was very fortunate in that I used to go away a lot more than most – usually 5/6 times a year. However as a full time weed smoker I always had to take the risk of smuggling a little bit of percy on holiday with me – touch wood to this day I’ve never been caught and have done it for as long as I can remember – its come to the stage where weed is on my “suitcase checklist” as the nature of a holiday being to relax, I would be a fool if I thought I could relax without weed. The self justification was always that if I was to get caught it would always be an amount that was clearly for personal consumption in which case they would either give me a fine or a caution and let me on my way – so be it even if I was to get caught and not allowed to fly this would just mean that (after a short stay with her majesty) I had the house to myself for a week or 2 – which always culminated in a mass gathering of all of my best friends. I must also say that my “problem” probably became evident last Christmas when we went to France skiing for a week – in which my brother and myself had calculated that half an ounce would suffice for the 1 week that we were there – I don’t think I have ever spent so much time in a bath whilst on a skiing holiday – I think I even hit the cinema instead of the slopes one day as I was just too stoned to ski.

It was at university that things started getting a bit hectic – I must also mention that I only spent one year at university as I was kicked out for selling weed after the first year. I know it is extremely cliché however I do believe that it was my use that lead to dealing – I found that on my extremely limited student budget (and with the addition of even more free time to my life) I could no longer afford to smoke the amounts that I wanted to smoke and being a long time user I had plenty of contacts to source from. However one thing lead to the next and I realised that I was not able to break even with the small amounts that I had started selling and so started selling more which lead me to smoking more which lead me to selling more… Then I got arrested.

I had always told myself that the amount of weed I smoked was down to the pleasure it gave me and that if at any stage I had wanted to give up I could have, I just never had a reason to, after all I have never once had any form of mental illness or sign – perhaps the odd bit of anger on the rare occasion that I didn’t have any but certainly far less anger and anxiety than I see most “normal” (non drug taking) individuals exude on a regular basis. I am also not naive enough to think that these things don’t happen – my best mate had a panic attack from smoking weed when we were 16 but since stopped and has never looked back so I appreciate that there is no solid rule for it – what I do believe is that everyone is different and if you are hearing voices in your head then give up – only a fool would smoke through it.

However now that I do want to give up or drastically cut down due to current circumstances these efforts have only been met with serious sleep problems, horribly vivid dreams (during the small periods of sleep that I get), mood swings, anger (which is extremely uncharacteristic of me) and just general frustration. Its got to the stage where I genuinely believe that if I was to go cold turkey I think I would cause more harm to myself and probably end up getting fast tracked to prison as I end up turning to drink and getting angry and violent – I’ve already been found guilty of a drink related offence when I was 18 which is another reason I have relied on cannabis so much in recent years as I have never done anything stupid whilst stoned – certainly compared to things done whilst drunk. It also pains me to know that the flooding of skunk into the market has pushed away weaker varieties of cannabis such as hash or thai weed which I believe would help me get off the skunk. Oh well, at the end of the day I am a product of my own making, I don’t regret anything that I’ve done and think that cannabis has got me through a lot of hard times and is also the reason that I still have my best mate – albeit he has stopped smoking we still see each other whenever we can and this factor has had no impact on our relationship whatsoever – I think people just need to learn to be more tolerant and stop creating social conforms and consequently outcasts as a lot of good people will have slipped through the net – I’ve certainly felt that I have been shunned by society because of my cannabis smoking which only makes you more of an outcast as you have little reason to satisfy those that have punished you so hard over the years.