POTHEADS: LAY DOWN YOUR WEED

I remember sitting in a basement my junior year smoking weed when an
ex-pothead came downstairs. Well, I kind of remember it. He sat down and
looked at us with amusement. We looked at him with contempt. He saw that we
were wasting away our lives. We saw that he was exposing us.

After having never smoked in high school, and with only a few experimental
tries after that. I officially became a pothead toward the end of my
sophomore year.

I completely immersed myself in that counter-culture and it suited me. I
loved weed. And I was mentally addicted to the drug that does not
physically addict. Which only means that when you run out, you don't get
the shakes; but you've still got the "Joneses."

I was very happy with my little addiction. I could argue all night long why
it was better than alcohol and tobacco, which I didn't smoke.

All potheads have these same little bullets of information ready for
battle: marijuana is non-physically addictive, has proven medicinal
effects, does not make you aggressive, is safer to drive on than alcohol
and of course, marijuana has directly killed absolutely zero people.

I was able to convince myself why those arguments mattered. Though, the
point I was missing was that it is irrelevant which is least bad. Marijuana
is still a drug, and it's still a crutch and though I fancied it myself
once, I was no revolutionary despite a Bob Marley "Freedom" flag on my
wall. It was also far from novel; the more deviant I was, the more familiar
a story it became.

Still, I was having fun. It made everything so much better, I thought.
Doing the dishes sucks, but have you ever done them ... on weed?

And I was writing some really deep columns, or so I believed. Now I cringe.
Picture Mikey from Swingers somehow listening to all the messages he left
for Nikki in the most uncomfortable scene in recent cinema history. That's
how it is for me when I read some of those babblings. I guess now I have
some "young and stupid" stories for my kids.

The worst part of my marijuana career, looking back, is seeing my best
friends following the very same "alternative" path; the same path complete
with wagon ruts as deep as the Platte River Road but with signs to mark
your progress from "weekend high" to "wake and bake." We were not pioneers.

Like those before us, most notably the explorers Lewis and Cheech, we were
able to rationalize to ourselves that the negative effects were damn near
none. We didn't care that our sea of sperm was being reduced to a small
overcrowded pond upon which the midday sun was beating down. We didn't care
about our lungs; after all, we could have been chain smoking cigarettes.

We didn't care that people were looking at us with sorry glances and
picturing us hanging out with Acid Man in a few years. In fact, we kind of
reveled in being looked upon as "outsiders." What did we care about ... the
ignorant sheep of America? Baahhh.

Most importantly, we told ourselves our lack of motivation was really
because of our realizing what was really important and finally seeing that
capitalistic ideals had nothing to do with being happy.

That may be true, but the fact is, this ain't Canada. This is America, and
that's the way it is. It is almost necessary for the pothead to "hide out"
and not participate.

These are not behaviors conducive to graduating college, unfortunately.
Many of my friends dropped out. For some, college just wasn't for them.
Others just couldn't handle it.

Somehow, I made it even though I lost a lot of credit hours and GPA points
to apathy and Tony Hawk 2.

And now I've quit. I'm on the wagon. I'm recovering from a drug that "isn't
addictive", and I don't even miss it. I kind of feel like Thurgood Jenkings
at the AA meeting in the movie "Half Baked."

And though I still know how to argue weed against legal recreational drugs,
I don't.

When watching the Super Bowl, I find it ridiculous seeing 12 Bud Light
commercials and one that is anti-weed showing how a girl got stoned and
knocked up. I still must laugh at the irony and point out stoners rarely
have the libido to try and get laid, and if they did want to take advantage
of a girl, they would probably just do it the old-fashioned American way
and get her drunk. Granted, some of these old feelings die hard.

I still maintain that the war on drugs is a joke and that they should
either criminalize or legalize all recreational drugs. I think that saying
one drug is bad, but another is OK is the wrong message.

They're all bad, and are all capable of doing the same thing in the end.

When you quit a drug, the people you used to do it with try to stop you -
they support you consciously - but subconsciously they know you're exposing
their lie. And that's scary for them.

And so, here I am, that same guy downstairs who has learned his lesson. And
many of my friends, lately, are learning the same.

Anything in excess is bad.

Believing your own lies, doesn't make them true.

And 4:20 is just another wasted minute.