I spent most of my teenage years stoned and still enjoy the occasional joint, so i have a soft spot for Marijuana and drug culture in general. I think it really helped make me who i am today.
A good friend of mine during that time recently passed away and i started getting some flashbacks and memories of my first time getting high. RIP Phil.
The first time i ever got high i was in 6th grade i was about 12 years old. I skated with a bunch of older kids so smoking weed was pretty much standard issue back then. We were on our way to an abandoned house to skate an empty pool. I remember getting there about an hour after school got out with one other friend and seeing the usual older kids there already.
One of them pulled a bright red school lunch tray out of his back pack. i remember laughing and thinking what the hell is that?! Then he busted out a phillies blunt and a ziplock bag. He cracked the bag open, stuck his nose in and just said “ahh yeahh” with a smile on his face and proceeded to break up the weed on the tray. i was intrigued.
I tired play it cool and casually made my way across the yard closer to the action. I was cool with the guy rolling the blunt, he saw me looking at what he was doing. He looked up at me and said, “what up man.. you want to get in on this?” I looked at my friend that i came there with.. He gave me one of those shoulder shrugs like.. fuck it.. lets do this.
The blunt was ready to go. This kid was a like a master blunt roller at 15 years old. To this day i still think of that moment as a reference every time i roll weed up. I had tried smoking once before with some other friends but diddnt get high so i was on a mission to do so. There was about 8 or 9 of us there, i was 3rd to hit it. I took the blunt, looked at it and took a standard cigarette type of drag then handed it over to one of the other guys. He handed it back to me.. told me to take another one and hold it in as long as i could. I did it and damn near coughed my lungs out.
I sat down and about 5 minutes later my head and face began to feel strange.. almost like my head was on a balloon and my face had static on it. I knew it was coming, I kind of got nervous. I lived 4-5 blocks away from the house. I made up an excuse to bail and said, “oh shit, i forgot to check my mailbox”. i was trying to fish my report card out of the mail because of my shitty grades. i peaced everyone out and began to skate home. Every sidewalk line felt like rolling over a boulder. My feet were picking up all the vibrations. It almost tickled. I got off my board and decided to walked the rest of the way home.
I was a typical latchkey kid.. my parents diddnt even get home till about 6pm so i figured i had plenty of time to just sit around, be high, and act like a dumb ass at my house. By the time i got home i was high and i knew it. Everything was kind of jittery and slow. I started getting that warm tingle all over. i went to the bathroom to wash my face and i stared at myself. checking for all of the tell tale signs you hear about in the textbooks at school. My eyes were totally bloodshot and super low, My mouth was dry as a desert. I thought to myself.. this is it, ive crossed over.
Just as i dried my face, i hear keys jingle and the front door open.. my dad was home early for some reason. I was sketched out. I opened up my eyes wide and walked out of the bathroom, “hey dad, your here early”. “i had a appointment” he said. “oh.. I dont feel so good, i think im gonna go take a nap” i replied “ok whatever” he answered.
I did just that.. i decided to try and sleep it off. I had the most tripped out dreams that day. I seriously felt like i figured out the meaning of life that afternoon. From that day on.. i was pretty much hooked. Not on a dependent tip, but more like a big fan of the benefits, enhancements, and mental expansion of it all. I have a handfull of horror stories but for the most part it was pretty fun and smooth sailing as a pothead.
I diddnt even really stop smoking until about 4 years ago when my wife was pregnant with my son. She had to quit, so i did too (it was only fair). I got so much shit done not being high everyday it was insane. But its cool because i have all my memories, ideas, and thoughts from those days to last a lifetime.
I still have a casual smoke every now and then but its never the same as it used to be and i dont think it ever will. It was a chapter of my life that is pretty much over. I wouldnt go back to the stoner life, but i wouldnt have had it any other way either.